Tips for turning photos into great pixel art
Converting a photo to pixel art takes just a few clicks. But if you run it as is, most results look like a messy mosaic. To make it look like hand-placed pixel art, there are a few things to take care of before and after converting. Here they are, ordered by how much difference they made in our own tests.
1. Simplify the background first
The silhouette matters most in pixel art. If the background is full of trees, signs and people, everything turns to mush at low resolution and your subject gets lost. Removing the background or replacing it with a solid color before converting makes a visible difference.
2. Go smaller than you think
A larger width in pixels looks closer to the photo, and a smaller one looks more like pixel art. For a single character, 32 to 64px looks good. For a landscape, try 96 to 160px. Start at 64px and shrink until the key features of the face or object are about to disappear. That point is usually the most pixel-art-like size.
3. Fewer colors look more like a drawing
A photo contains tens of thousands of colors. It only starts to look like a drawing once you group them into 8 to 16 colors.
- Auto palette: picks the main colors from your photo and keeps its original mood. 6 to 12 colors usually works well.
- Fixed palette: using preset colors such as retro 16 colors or green 4 shades gives the unified look of an old game screen. Making several images with the same palette helps them fit together like in-game assets.
4. Use dithering selectively
Dithering mixes dots of two colors to suggest an in-between color. In photos with lots of smooth gradients, like skies, sunsets or skin, it removes stair-step banding. On the other hand, in images with clear flat areas, like characters or icons, it just looks like grainy noise. Compare the results with it on and off side by side before you choose.
5. Bump up the contrast a little
Most photos are full of mid tones, so reducing colors can easily leave a dull gray blob. Raising the contrast slightly before converting separates the light and dark areas and sharpens the shapes. Turning on outlines adds dark lines along the edges so your character stands out from the background.
6. Export for the purpose
For game assets, save at 1x and scale up in the engine. Set the engine's texture filter to nearest neighbor (Point or Nearest) so the pixels stay crisp. For social media or a blog, save at 8x or 16x. If you upload a tiny image, the platform will smooth it while scaling and blur the pixels.
7. Final touch-ups
Automatic conversion is a starting point. Small parts like eyes, mouths and hands can change expression with a single pixel, so fixing just a few cells in a pixel editor makes a big difference. If you made several frames, packing them into one sheet makes them easier to handle in your engine.
Finally, results made from someone else's photos or characters still carry the original copyright. For games or anything you sell, it is safest to start from your own photos or artwork you have the rights to.