How to Make Pixel Art from a Photo: Grid, Palette…

How do you make pixel art from a photo?

To make pixel art from a photo, crop it to one clear subject, split it into an even grid of square blocks, reduce it to a small palette of colors, and then decide whether to use dithering for gradients. Three settings do most of the work: block size, number of colors, and dithering on or off.

This guide is the practical side. If you want to know why AI image generators struggle with the same job, read Why AI Can't Make Real Pixel Art.

What you need before you start

You need a photo and a way to turn it into a grid. You can do it by hand in a pixel editor, or let a converter do the first pass and touch it up afterwards.

Most people start with a converter, because placing every block by hand from a photo is slow. A converter gives you an even grid and a fixed palette in seconds, and you can spend your time on the parts that need judgment: the face, the outline, the background.

Step 1: Pick and crop the right photo

The photo matters more than any setting. Pixel art throws away most of the detail, so what's left has to be easy to read.

Photos that convert well:

One clear subject. A person, a pet, a building, an object.
A simple background. A plain wall or sky beats a busy street.
Good, even light. The subject should stand out from the background.

Photos that tend to get lost: busy textures (grass, gravel, crowds), dark low-light shots, and wide scenes where the subject is small.

Crop tightly before you convert. If your subject only fills a quarter of the frame, it only gets a quarter of the blocks. Cropping to the subject is the easiest way to make the result readable.

Step 2: Choose a block size

Block size is how many source pixels go into one square of pixel art. It decides how "chunky" the result looks.

Big blocks look like early video games. Shapes become simple and faces turn into a few squares.
Small blocks keep more detail, but the result looks less like pixel art and more like a low-resolution photo.

A useful way to think about it is blocks across the image. On Artgen, images are scaled down so the longest edge is at most 512 px before conversion. At that size, a block size of 8 gives you up to 64 blocks across the long edge; a block size of 16 gives you up to 32; a block size of 32 gives you up to 16.

As a rough guide:

Avatar or icon: larger blocks, so it still reads when shown small.
Portrait where the face matters: smaller blocks, so eyes and mouth survive.
Scene or landscape: medium blocks, and accept that small details will merge.

If you're unsure, start in the middle and move in one direction at a time.

Step 3: Choose how many colors

Pixel art uses a limited palette. Fewer colors look more retro and graphic; more colors stay closer to the photo.

8 colors: strong, poster-like, very retro. Good for simple subjects and icons.
16 colors: a balanced default for most photos.
32 colors: smoother skin tones and skies, closer to the original.

Where the colors come from matters too. A palette picked from your own photo keeps its overall mood. A fixed preset palette (like a classic console palette) gives a more uniform "era" look, but can shift colors a lot.

Step 4: Decide on dithering

Dithering places two palette colors in alternating blocks to suggest a shade the palette doesn't have.

Dithering on: gradients like skies, skin and soft shadows look smoother, with a grainy texture.
Dithering off: flat, clean areas of color. Better for icons, avatars and anything with hard edges.

A simple test: if your photo has a large smooth gradient, try both. If it's mostly flat areas and outlines, leave dithering off.

Step 5: Convert the photo with Artgen

Artgen's photo to pixel art tool handles the grid and palette for you with a fixed algorithm.

Open photo to pixel art and sign in. Upload a PNG, JPEG or WebP image up to 5 MB, or click "Try a sample image".
Set Pixel size (4 to 32, default 8), Palette colors (8, 16 or 32, default 16) and Dithering (No by default).
Click "Convert image". Changing a setting doesn't update the result until you click it again.
Compare the result with the original, then download the PNG before you leave or refresh the page.

The palette is picked from your own image with median-cut, and the same image with the same settings always gives the same result. That makes it easy to compare settings side by side. It's a fixed effect: free with sign-in, no credits needed.

What it won't do: the output is a single PNG, and transparent areas of your upload become white. It doesn't make sprite sheets, animation frames or bead and cross-stitch patterns.

Step 6: Clean it up by hand

A converter gives you a solid first pass. A few manual fixes make it look like pixel art someone drew:

Fix the eyes and mouth. At small sizes these often blur into one block. Redraw them with one or two clear pixels.
Add an outline. A dark one-pixel outline around the subject separates it from the background.
Remove stray pixels. Single isolated blocks of an odd color usually read as noise. Replace them with a neighbor's color.
Simplify the background. Fill it with one or two flat colors if it competes with the subject.

Any pixel editor works for this. Zoom in far enough that each block is easy to click.

Common mistakes to avoid

Changing everything at once. Change one setting per conversion so you can see what it did.
Using too many colors for a tiny image. With few blocks, extra colors mostly add noise.
Skipping the crop. A small subject in a wide frame almost never survives large blocks.

How to show pixel art at a larger size

Pixel art is often displayed larger than it was made. To keep the edges sharp, scale it up by a whole number (2×, 3×, 4×) with nearest-neighbor scaling. Other resampling methods blur the blocks into soft edges.

On the web, the CSS rule image-rendering: pixelated; tells the browser to keep the pixels sharp when it scales the image.

FAQ

**What's the best block size for pixel art from a photo?

** There isn't one. Use bigger blocks for icons and a retro look, and smaller blocks when faces and detail matter. Start at the default of 8 and move one step at a time.

**How many colors should pixel art have?

** 16 is a good default. Use 8 for a bold, retro look and 32 when gradients and skin tones need to stay smooth.

**Should I use dithering?

** Use it for photos with smooth gradients, like skies and skin. Leave it off for icons, avatars and flat graphics.

**Is the photo to pixel art tool free?

** Yes. It's free with sign-in, no credits needed.