Pixelize Blog #

How to turn ordinary photos into pixel art that looks like it came off a Game Boy, an NES or a Commodore 64: which pixel size keeps a face recognizable, which palette suits your subject, when dithering helps, and how to export without the blur that ruins most attempts. The posts also cover where these constraints came from, since knowing why the NES showed so few colors makes it easier to imitate. It’s the companion blog to Pixelize, a free app for iPhone and Android with 25 hex-accurate palettes, five dithering modes, CRT scanlines and a sticker maker, all running on your phone with nothing uploaded.

Start here #

• How to turn a photo into pixel art: the four steps every converter runs, on phone and in GIMP.
• The best pixel size for pixel art portraits: how coarse you can go before a face stops being recognizable.
• Game Boy palette hex codes: the four greens, the popular alternatives, and why there’s no official set.
• What is dithering?: how a four-color palette fakes a gradient, and which algorithm to pick.
• PICO-8 color palette: all 16 hex codes, and why it converts photos better than most retro palettes.
• How to make a pixel art profile picture: cropping, sizing and keeping it sharp after upload.
• How to make pixel art stickers: background cut-out, die-cut borders and the Telegram size rules.
• How to upscale pixel art without blur: nearest-neighbor scaling, whole-number multiples and why JPEG ruins it.
• Best photo to pixel art apps: six apps compared on palettes, dithering, export size and price.