Turn any photo, logo, drawing or avatar into clean pixel art — right in your browser, free and instant. You control how detailed the grid is and how many colors it uses. And because pixel art is really just a grid of colored squares, you can take it one step further and turn it into a real bead pattern (Perler / Hama) with the exact number of beads of each color.
▶ Open the converter — it's freePixel art rebuilds a picture out of a grid of solid-colored squares — like the graphics in classic 8-bit and 16-bit games. Converting an image means two things happen: the picture is downsampled onto a grid (each cell becomes one flat color), and the palette is reduced to a limited set of colors. Get those two settings right and almost any image becomes crisp, readable pixel art.
This tool does both automatically and lets you tune them live. It runs entirely in your browser, so it's fast and your image never leaves your device.
The same converter gives very different results depending on the source image. Pixel art is a "few colors, big blocks" medium, so:
Here's what most pixel-art tools can't do: turn your grid into something you can hold. Perler beads (also called fuse beads, melty beads or Hama beads) are physical pixels — little plastic beads you place on a pegboard and iron together. A pixel-art grid is a bead pattern.
This tool bridges the two. Alongside the pixel-art image, it exports a bead chart: every cell labeled with a color code, plus a legend listing exactly how many beads of each color you need. Follow it and your on-screen pixel art becomes a keychain, a coaster or a framed piece. See the full walkthrough in our how-to-make-bead-art guide.
Yes — converting an image into pixel art and exporting it is completely free and unlimited. Everything runs locally in your browser, so your image is never uploaded to a server.
A higher width gives sharper, more detailed pixel art but a busier grid; a lower width gives a cleaner retro look. For icons and avatars 32–64 pixels wide works well; detailed portraits often need 80–150.
Yes — the max-colors control limits the palette. Fewer colors give a classic 8-bit look and are easier to reproduce physically; more colors keep subtle gradients.
Yes, and that's the fun part. The same tool exports a color-coded bead chart plus the exact number of beads of each color, so you can build your pixel art in real life with Perler or Hama beads.