Pixel art maker

Pixel art, made simply

Pixel art is the deliberate art of the small grid: every square placed by hand, a limited palette, crisp edges. It started as a necessity on early computers and game consoles and is now a style in its own right, used for indie games, avatars, emotes, icons, stickers and prints. It is also the bridge between screen and craft, because a pixel grid is exactly what a cross stitch, fuse bead or brick mosaic chart is.

These tools give you three ways in. Convert a photo and simplify it into pixels, set a word or name in a pixel font, or start from a blank grid and draw. Everything runs in your browser, with no account and no upload.

Choosing size and colours

Size. Pixel art is about reduction. A 32-pixel-wide portrait forces you to keep only what matters; 64 pixels leaves room for shading; 128 or more starts to look like a mosaic of a photo rather than pixel art. Widths from 8 to 256 are supported, with 64 as the default for photo conversion.

Colours. Limited palettes are a big part of the look. Eight to sixteen colours give a classic feel; 32 to 64 colours allow smoother gradients. For drawn art with flat colours, turn on Preserve exact colours in the advanced options so each source colour maps to one palette colour without averaging.

Dithering. Ordered dithering creates the checkerboard texture associated with retro graphics, while diffusion dithering scatters pixels for smoother gradients. Both are optional; the default is none.

How the tools fit together

The photo to pixel art tool reduces a picture to your chosen size and colour count, with background removal, cropping and brightness controls. The pixel art text tool sets names and short words in three original fonts with optional borders, ready for banners, badges and title screens. The pixel art editor is a full drawing grid with pencil, fill, lines, rectangles, mirroring for symmetrical sprites and unlimited undo, which autosaves to your browser.

Export a crisp PNG at 1×, 8× or 16×, a chart PNG with grid lines, an SVG for vector work or a .cpat project to keep editing. Because a pixel grid is a pattern, you can also send any piece to fuse beads, cross stitch or brick mosaic and get real colour codes and counts.

Common mistakes

• Too many colours. A photo reduced to 64 colours often looks muddy; try 12 to 16 first.
• Scaling with smoothing. Resizing pixel art with standard methods blurs it. Export at the scale you need.
• Ignoring outlines. A one-pixel darker outline makes sprites readable on any background.
• Leaving stray pixels. Single pixels of a different shade look like noise; use confetti cleanup or the eraser.
• Starting too big. Large canvases invite detail that undermines the pixel look. Start small and scale up.

Pixel art ideas to start from

If you would rather copy than start from a blank grid, browse more than 60 original pixel art ideas: animals, food, plants, space, holidays, faces and retro objects, each a 16 × 16 sprite with shading you can study. The black and white pixel art collection is the simplest of all, two colours and no shading, ideal for colouring by square or a first bead project. To sketch your own sprites on paper first, print quarter-inch graph paper from our sister site PrintablePapers: a 16 × 16 sprite fills a 4-inch square, or use eighth-inch paper for 32 × 32 designs.

Getting started

1. Pick a photo with a clear subject, a word, or open a blank 32 × 32 grid.
2. Set the width and keep the colours to around 16.
3. Compare the views and tidy edges with the pencil and eraser.
4. Add an outline and remove the background if the art will sit on other images.
5. Download a Pixel PNG at 8× or 16× scale to share.