Image to Pixel Art Converter

At 64 cells across, a 4:3 photo becomes 64 × 48 cells: each cell gets an average color, then the nearest palette color

Pixel art conversion splits a photo into a grid of cells and paints each cell with a single color so the picture looks like pixel art. In the converter above, you set the number of cells across and the number of cells down follows the original ratio (a 640 × 480 px photo split into 64 cells across becomes 48 cells down). The tool averages the pixels inside each cell and then swaps that average for the nearest color in the palette you chose.

Drag the picture sideways to overlay the original on the pixel result at the same spot, and the "Cells per color" list below shows how many cells each color covers. When you save, every cell is enlarged by a whole-number factor such as 4, 8 or 16 into a PNG, so the edges stay sharp. The image is processed only inside your browser and is never sent to a server.

When to turn a photo into pixel art

• Making a profile picture or emoji: 32 to 64 cells across keeps a face recognizable. For small icons, use fewer cells and around 8 colors for a crisper result.
• Sketching a game sprite or tile: load a transparent PNG with the background removed and turn on the outline to get a first draft before you refine it by hand. You can also try a fixed palette such as PICO-8 right away.
• Planning a bead or cross-stitch pattern: one cell is one bead or one stitch. The grid adds a darker line every 10 cells to make counting easier, and "Cells per color" shows how many you need of each color.
• Making a retro thumbnail or poster: four Game Boy greens or two black-and-white colors with dithering look like an old screen.

How the conversion works

1. Split into cells: if the number of cells across is w, the number of cells down is w × original height ÷ original width, rounded. The pixel range for each cell comes from dividing the original width into w boundaries.
2. Average color per cell: the red, green and blue of the pixels in a cell are averaged, weighted by opacity. If the average opacity is at least half, the cell takes that average color; below half, it stays a transparent cell.
3. Choose the palette: "Auto" groups the cell colors into as many colors as you set using median cut (Heckbert, 1982), which repeatedly splits at the median of the widest color channel, then refines the group averages four times. PICO-8, CGA, Game Boy and B&W use fixed colors.
4. Pick the nearest color: the difference between a cell color and a palette color is measured as distance in the OKLab color space (Ottosson, 2020), which is closer to how the eye sees lightness and color difference, and the nearest color is used. With dithering on, colors are mixed at this step.
5. Enlarge and save: each cell is scaled up as-is to n × n pixels, with no interpolation that would blend neighboring colors. Saving 64 × 48 cells at 8× gives a 512 × 384 px PNG.

Transparent pixels are left out of the color average, so the second row also comes out purple. Painting this purple (128, 0, 128) with the PICO-8 palette gives #7E2553 (dark purple), the nearest color by OKLab distance.

Choosing the number of cells: for a 4:3 photo

Once the number of cells across is set, the number of cells down and the save size follow. The values below are for a photo with a 4:3 aspect ratio, such as 640 × 480 px.

For reference, the original Game Boy screen is 160 × 144 pixels (Pan Docs) and the PICO-8 screen is 128 × 128 pixels (PICO-8 manual). If your picture should fill one of those screens, 128 to 160 cells across is the benchmark.

Six palettes

A fixed palette never uses colors that are not in it. If you convert the sample image with PICO-8, "Cells per color" lists only the colors, out of the 16, that are actually painted on cells. The original Game Boy screen shows four shades of green, but there is no official RGB value, so the colors differ slightly from one emulator to another. The NES (Famicom) is not included because its screen colors vary with the TV and video circuitry, so no single RGB palette exists (NESdev Wiki).

The PICO-8 and Game Boy palette values, the Game Boy and PICO-8 screen sizes, and the dithering weights were checked against the original sources above on 2026-10-12. These values are not rules that change every year.

Dithering: mixing dots to make in-between colors

With few colors, smoothly changing areas such as sky or skin break into a few blocks. Dithering mixes two nearby colors dot by dot so that, from a distance, they look like a color in between.

With few cells, dithering can look coarse. A simple way to choose is no dithering at 32 cells across or fewer, and trying diffusion first for photos at 64 cells or more. "Original" does not reduce colors, so it needs no dithering.

Common mistakes

• Saving small and enlarging in another program: most image programs blend neighboring colors when they enlarge, which blurs the edges. Save at the size you need from the start, such as 8× or 16×.
• Re-saving the PNG as a JPG: JPG compression leaves smudges around cell edges and fills in transparent cells. Keep pixel art as PNG.
• Using more cells than the original has pixels: splitting a 300 px wide image into 512 cells only gives more cells than original pixels and adds no detail. The tool tells you about this just below the cell setting.
• Reducing colors while turning dithering off: painting a face or sky with 4 to 8 colors creates bands. Raise the count to 16 or more, or turn on diffusion.
• Leaving a busy background: with few cells, the background and the subject blend together. Load a transparent PNG with the background removed and transparent cells stay empty, and with the outline on, a line is drawn around the subject.
• Assuming social media keeps the original size: services may shrink or recompress uploaded images. If the cells get smeared, change the save multiple and upload again.

Limits and cautions

• All calculation happens in your browser. To average the cells, the original is read after being reduced to 1,024 px or less on the long side, and up to 512 cells across the result barely differs.
• Width is 8 to 512 cells and height is up to 1,024 cells. When saving, you can choose only sizes up to 4,096 px on a side and 4,096 × 4,096 px in area, because the canvas limit in iOS browsers is 4,096 × 4,096 (MDN).
• Only formats your browser can open are accepted. An animated GIF uses only its first frame, and formats your browser can't open (HEIC in many browsers) must be converted to JPG or PNG first. Files up to 40 MB are accepted.
• The Auto palette always gives the same result for the same image and settings, but it is not guaranteed to beat a color set picked by hand. If you don't like the colors, change the number of colors and compare.
• The outline is a simple method: it turns cells that are clearly darker than their neighbors, and cells next to transparent cells, into the line color. You can't choose exactly which lines to draw.
• It only imitates the colors of old machines such as the Game Boy and CGA. Hardware limits, such as how many colors each tile or sprite may use, are not reflected.

Sources

• 01Lexaloffle — PICO-8 User Manual128 × 128 screen, fixed 16-color palette (colors numbered 0–15) — checked 2026-10-12
• 02Lospec — PICO-8 PaletteHEX values of the 16 PICO-8 colors (Lexaloffle Games). The four Game Boy colors use the values of the Nintendo Gameboy (BGB) Palette on the same site
• 03Pan Docs — SpecificationsOriginal Game Boy (DMG) screen 160 × 144, four shades of green
• 04NESdev Wiki — PPU palettesComposite video output has no single palette that fits every game; a palette entry points to one of 64 colors
• 05Heckbert, P. (1982). Color image quantization for frame buffer displayACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics 16(3), 297–307. Color reduction by median cut
• 06Björn Ottosson — A perceptual color space for image processing2020-12-23. The OKLab transform (linear sRGB → LMS → cube root → Lab)
• 07Wikipedia — Floyd–Steinberg ditheringFloyd & Steinberg (1976), An adaptive algorithm for spatial grey scale, Proceedings of the SID 17: 75–77. Error weights 7·3·5·1/16. On the same site, Ordered dithering (Bayer, 1973, IEEE ICC)
• 08Wikipedia — Color Graphics AdapterIBM CGA (1981) 16 RGBI colors, color 6 brown #AA5500
• 09MDN — <canvas>: Maximum canvas sizeiOS devices are limited to 4,096 × 4,096; beyond that the canvas can't be used

Frequently asked questions

Tools to use with this one