How to turn a photo into pixel art

Steps

1. Open the Pixel art maker and drop in your pictures.
2. Move the slider to set how many big pixels go across. Fewer is chunkier.
3. Optionally choose Retro or Very few colors for a game-console look.
4. Press Make pixel art and download the PNG.

Finding the right chunkiness

Faces work best at about 32 to 64 pixels across. Landscapes look good with more. Each big pixel is the average color of a square block of the photo.

The preview uses the same code as the saved file, so what you see is what you get.

Limiting the colors

Retro keeps six shades of each color and Very few keeps three, which gives a flat, game-like look. Keep the original colors if you want the pixels to still look like the photo.

The result is a PNG at the same size as your picture, because JPG would blur the hard edges of each big pixel.

Tips

Start with a simple, high-contrast photo. A face against a plain background survives chunky pixels much better than a busy street scene.

Try a few settings and compare. Going from 48 to 32 pixels across changes the look a lot, and Retro colors can turn a normal photo into something that looks like a game screen.