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How to Turn a Photo Into Pixel Art

This is the guide I'd hand my past self. When I first started converting photos I ended up with a lot of muddy, unrecognisable blobs, until it clicked that three things decide everything: the photo you feed in, how big the pixels are, and the palette. Once those are right, it's genuinely a two-minute job.

What's actually happening

Real pixel art gets drawn by hand, one pixel at a time. Converting a photo is a shortcut. The tool shrinks your image down so clumps of pixels collapse into big blocks, then snaps every colour to the nearest one in a small palette. You get the look without the hours. The trade-off is that you're steering with three controls instead of drawing, so how you set them is the whole game.

Pick a photo that suits it

This is the part I skipped at first, and it's the part that matters most. Pixelation throws detail away, so a busy photo turns to soup. What works well:

• A clear subject. One face, one pet, one object beats a crowded scene every time.
• Decent contrast. Strong light and shadow survive the reduction; flat, hazy photos lose their shape.
• A simple background. Plain or blurred keeps the attention where you want it once the detail is gone.
• A reasonable size. A bigger source gives the tool more to work with before it shrinks things.

A portrait, a pet, a single object on a plain wall: all brilliant. A wide holiday snap with fifty things happening: not so much.

Load it in

Open the converter, then either hit Select Image or just drag a file straight onto the canvas. Everything runs in your browser, so nothing gets uploaded anywhere. That part mattered to me when I built it. I didn't want to fling personal photos at somebody's server just to pixelate them. You'll see a preview the moment the image loads.

Set the pixel size

The slider decides how chunky it gets. Small keeps the shapes, which is what you want for faces. Big goes bold and low-res. There's no magic number. What I do is push it up until it looks properly retro, then pull it back a notch or two until the subject reads again. If you want the full breakdown, I wrote a whole pixel size guide.

Choose a palette

This is where the mood gets set. Keep Original colours for a clean, modern pixelation, or switch to a console palette to really change the feel. The same photo can look calm in Game Boy green and completely electric in ZX Spectrum. Try a couple. My own soft spot is the Commodore 64, and I explain why in the palette guide.

Save it

When you're happy, hit Download 8-Bit and you'll get a PNG. Keep it as a PNG. If you re-save it as a JPG later, the compression smears those crisp pixel edges and quietly undoes the whole effect.

Stuff I got wrong early on

• Starting too small. A tiny source photo has barely any detail to begin with, so pixelating it leaves almost nothing.
• Over-cooking faces. Push the pixel size too far and a portrait becomes an anonymous blob. Ease off until the eyes and mouth still read.
• Picking too bold a palette for a subtle photo. All those gentle skin tones look rough in two colours. Save the extreme palettes for high-contrast shots.
• Re-saving as JPG somewhere else and wondering why it went blurry.