Pixelate an image

Retro blocky pixel look for photos.

Pixelate image

Blocks across
Format

Runs in your browser. Nothing uploaded.

How to pixelate an image

  1. Drop in your images, choose them from your device, or paste one.
  2. Set Blocks across. Fewer blocks give bigger, chunkier pixels. To pixelate only a face or a name, drag a box over it on the preview; add as many boxes as you need.
  3. Download the pixelated picture, or every image as a zip.

Getting a good pixel art look

Simple subjects with strong shapes work best: a single person, a pet, a logo or a building against a plain sky. Busy scenes turn into noise once the detail is gone. Crop tight around the subject with crop image before pixelating, so every block counts.

Some settings to try:

  • 8 to 24 blocks: abstract, almost like a mosaic tile pattern.
  • 32 to 64 blocks: the classic retro game look, where faces are still recognizable.
  • 100 blocks or more: a subtle low-resolution effect.

A little extra saturation with brightness and contrast makes the colors look more like an old game.

Pixelate, 8-bit and blur compared

This tool averages the colors inside each block. It doesn’t reduce the picture to a small fixed palette the way real 8-bit graphics did, so the result has many shades rather than a handful of colors.

If you want softness without the grid, blur the image instead. Neither is a safe way to hide private details such as names, addresses or numbers. A solid box is.