Pixel Art Converter

Pixel art lives on in indie games, avatars, stickers and retro-themed designs. This tool does two related jobs. It turns photos and drawings into pixel art with chunky blocks and limited palettes, and it enlarges existing pixel art without the blur that ordinary scaling adds.

Pixelating a picture

Choose a pixel size, the width of each block in the original image. Every block takes one color, sampled from the area it covers. Small blocks keep the image recognizable with a subtle retro feel; large blocks reduce it to an abstract mosaic. Images with a clear subject and simple background give the most readable results; remove distracting backgrounds first with Remove Image Background.

Limiting colors

Real pixel art uses few colors. “Best colors for this image” finds a palette of 2 to 64 colors that represents the picture well; 8 to 16 colors gives an authentic look. “Keep all colors” only pixelates, which is closer to a mosaic or a censorship effect. Retro palettes such as Game Boy, PICO-8 or Commodore 64 match the look of classic hardware.

Dithering

With a small palette, gradients such as skies and skin become flat bands. Ordered dithering adds a regular checker pattern between colors, a classic console look. Diffusion dithering scatters pixels more organically. “None” keeps clean flat areas, closest to hand-drawn pixel art.

Result size

“Same as original” draws the blocks at the original dimensions exactly, ready to post. “1 pixel per block” produces a tiny image where each block is one pixel, which is what game engines and sprite editors want as a starting point for further hand editing. “Custom scale” sets the enlargement of that tiny version.

Enlarging pixel art crisply

Switch to “Enlarge pixel art crisply” for existing sprites, icons and screenshots of retro games. Each pixel becomes a solid square, 1 to 32 times larger, with no smoothing. Integer scales keep every pixel the same size, which is why 2×, 3× or 4× look best. Grid lines between pixels can be drawn from 4× up, in any color, useful for tutorials, cross-stitch and bead patterns.

Transparency

Sprites with transparent backgrounds keep them. Every pixel is made either fully transparent or fully opaque, removing the semi-transparent fringes that look wrong in pixel art.

Saving

Save as PNG. It keeps every pixel exact and supports transparency; JPG would smear the sharp edges with compression artifacts.

Creative uses

Retro avatars from selfies, pixel versions of pets, game sprites from concept art, bead and cross-stitch patterns with grid lines, and stickers for chat apps.

Hand finishing

Automatic conversion is a starting point. Professional pixel artists clean up outlines, fix stray pixels and adjust colors by hand. The tiny 1-pixel-per-block version opens in any sprite editor for exactly that.

Pixel size and the target platform

Social avatars are shown small, so 32 to 64 blocks across reads well. Game sprites often follow fixed sizes such as 16 × 16, 32 × 32 or 64 × 64 pixels; pick a block size that divides your image into that grid and use the 1-pixel-per-block result.

Related tools

For dithering-focused looks with retro computer palettes, use the Image Dithering Tool. To pack finished sprites into one image, try the Sprite Sheet Generator. For photos rather than pixel art, enlarge with Upscale Image.