Diamond painting rewards detail more than most crafts: drills are small, and a canvas can easily hold tens of thousands of them. That makes it an excellent home for personal photos, provided the chart uses sensible colours and the drill list is accurate. This generator handles both, and its realistic view renders each cell as a drill so you can judge the effect before you order anything.
How it works
- Add your photo. Drop, paste or choose a JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or iPhone HEIC file. A sample picture is loaded until you do.
- Choose the width in drills. From 40 to 400; 160 is the default. Pick square or round drills in the advanced settings.
- Set the colour count. Anywhere from 5 to 120 DMC-numbered drill colours. Each colour is found by clustering the photo and then snapped to the nearest DMC colour by CIEDE2000 difference.
- Download. The PDF holds a cover page with the finished size, a colour key with symbols and drill counts, and chart pages with a bold line every 10 drills. A CSV shopping list is also available.
Tips for a great diamond painting from a photo
Go bigger than you think. A 160 × 120 painting is already 19,200 drills, yet a face in a group photo might cover only 30 of those across. If the photo has people in it, crop to them, and consider 200 or more drills wide so features like eyes and mouths get enough drills to read.
Use more colours than other crafts. Unlike thread or yarn, drills cost nothing extra to “change colour”, since every drill is placed separately. That means a high colour count does not make the work harder to do, only harder to sort. Skin, sky and water gradients look smoother with 50–80 colours.
Try diffusion dithering for gradients. Diffusion scatters drills of neighbouring colours to suggest in-between shades, which can smooth a sunset or a soft background. It also creates many isolated drills, so compare it with None before deciding. For logos, pixel art and flat illustration, keep dithering off and turn on “Preserve exact colours”.
Keep confetti cleanup light. In cross stitch, single isolated cells are a nuisance. In diamond painting they cost nothing extra, and they often carry highlights in eyes and on water. Use Off or Light here, and only go higher if the preview looks noisy.
Brighten dull photos first. Indoor photos are often darker than they appear on screen. A small lift in brightness and saturation before conversion stops the chart sliding towards greys and browns, which look flat once drilled.
Think about the background. A busy background uses as many drills as the subject. If your photo has a plain backdrop, the background skip option can drop white or a picked colour within a tolerance, leaving those cells empty; you can then fill them with one calm colour in the editor, which keeps attention on the subject and speeds up the work.
More help
Read making a diamond painting from a photo for a longer walk-through, or browse the DMC colour chart to check a shade before ordering drills.
What you get
| Sizes | 40–400 drills wide from a photo; editor up to 2,000 × 2,000 |
|---|---|
| Colours | 5–120, matched by CIEDE2000 colour difference |
| Palettes | DMC |
| Downloads | PDF (cover, colour key, numbered chart pages, optional colour pages), PNG, SVG, shopping list CSV, .cpat project |
| Files accepted | JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, iPhone HEIC; .cpat and OXS patterns; PDFs made by CraftPatterns |
| Privacy | Runs in your browser. Images are never uploaded. |
| Price | Free — no sign-up, no watermark |
How it compares with other free tools
What you can expect here, every time — no tiers, no trial.
| Free printable PDF | Yes, with no watermark |
|---|---|
| Sign-up needed | No |
| Image uploaded to a server | No — processed on your device |
| Editor | Yes — pencil, fill, line, rectangle, mirror, undo |
| Progress tracker | Yes — free, works offline |
| Switch the same pattern to another craft | Yes — one tap |
Frequently asked questions
Why are drill colours given as DMC numbers?
Diamond-painting drills are widely sold using DMC thread numbers as their colour reference, so a DMC number is the most practical way to order loose drills. We use the numbering for matching only and have no connection with DMC.
How big will my diamond painting be?
Multiply the width in drills by the drill size. With square 2.5 mm drills, the default 160 drills wide comes to 40 cm; with round 2.8 mm drills it is about 45 cm. The height follows your photo's proportions and is shown with the finished size.
Square or round drills?
Square drills sit edge to edge and fill the canvas completely, which suits portraits and fine detail. Round drills are quicker to place and leave tiny gaps that give more sparkle. Choosing one changes the cell size and therefore the finished dimensions, so set it before you finalise the width.
Why are the drill counts higher than the number of cells?
Each colour's count includes 10% extra. Drills get dropped, stick together or turn out slightly misshapen, and running short of one colour near the end is frustrating.
How many colours should I use?
The default is 40, and you can choose anywhere from 5 to 120. Photos with skin tones, skies or fur often benefit from 50 or more, while bold graphics look crisper with fewer. More colours means more drill bags to sort, so stop once adding colours no longer improves the preview.
Does my photo get uploaded anywhere?
No. The image is decoded and converted inside your browser, and nothing is sent to a server. That matters for family photos in particular.
Can I print this onto a canvas myself?
The PDF is a symbol chart for reading and tracking, not a ready-to-use adhesive canvas. People typically use it with a blank gridded diamond painting canvas, or keep the PNG chart and CSV drill list as a reference while ordering drills.
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