Pick to Pixel: Photo-Pixel Art
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About this app
Turn any photo into editable pixel art — then refine it with a real pixel-by-pixel editor. Pick to Pixel takes the photo you tap, extracts a smart color palette, and converts it into a clean pixel-art canvas you can keep tweaking.
PHOTO TO PIXEL ART, INSTANTLY
• Pick a photo from your gallery, choose a canvas size from 8×8 up to 256×256, and Pick to Pixel renders pixel-perfect art on the spot.
• Smart palette extraction lets you tune the color count (8–64) with a slider — the app finds the dominant tones and quantizes the photo to match.
• Remove background on device before extracting — isolate the subject so the palette comes from what matters, not the wall behind it.
• Pick one of two looks: a PixelOE-inspired smoothing pass for clean flat regions and crisp edges, or Floyd-Steinberg / Atkinson / blue-noise dithering for a softer retro grain (one or the other, not stacked).
• Outline tool with three modes — Fast for quick results, Sharp (contrast-aware resampling) for crisp edges on large canvases, and Lines (XDoG) for line-art — bake into the canvas or keep as an editable layer.
A REAL PIXEL EDITOR, NOT JUST A FILTER
• Pencil, eraser, eyedropper, magic wand (flood select), bucket fill, and color replace.
• Reference photo overlay so you can keep tracing or fine-tuning while the original photo floats above the canvas at adjustable opacity.
• Multi-frame timeline for animations — duplicate frames, drag to reorder, onion-skin between them.
• Selection tools — rectangular or magic-wand select, then move, duplicate, flip, fill, or delete the region.
WORKS ON PHONES AND TABLETS
• Universal app — same projects, palettes, and editor whether you start on a phone or tablet.
• Portrait and landscape on tablets both supported; works great on large screens.
PALETTES, YOUR WAY
• Custom palettes with named colors. Save your favorite color sets and reuse them across projects.
• Per-project palettes that travel with the file.
• Add, edit, replace, and reorder colors in seconds.
EXPORT EVERYTHING
• Export PNG with optional transparency and pixel-perfect scale-up (1×, 4×, 16×).
• Export GIF for animations, with frame timing controls.
• Export the canvas as a JSON color grid (a 2D array of hex codes) — handy for cross-stitch and perler-bead pattern tools, web games and homemade sprite scripts, or any code that needs the raw pixel data. Find it in your device's file manager under Pick to Pixel.
PROJECTS THAT STAY YOURS
• Project library with thumbnail grid: rename, duplicate, delete, organize into folders.
• Save with a tap — reopen the canvas right where you saved it.
• Atomic writes mean a crash never corrupts your work.
PRIVACY-FIRST, FULLY OFFLINE
• No account. No sign-up. No tracking. No analytics.
• Your photos never leave your device — no upload, no cloud, no AI service in the loop.
• Works in airplane mode.
11 LANGUAGES
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese — automatic from your device language.
WHO IT'S FOR
• Game developers and pixel-artists who want a real photo importer with palette control.
• Hobbyists turning portraits, pets, or landscapes into 8-bit / 16-bit art.
• Cross-stitch and perler-bead crafters who need quantized palettes from photos.
Built by a solo indie developer. Feedback welcome — tap "Send feedback" in Settings - About to email me directly.
PHOTO TO PIXEL ART, INSTANTLY
• Pick a photo from your gallery, choose a canvas size from 8×8 up to 256×256, and Pick to Pixel renders pixel-perfect art on the spot.
• Smart palette extraction lets you tune the color count (8–64) with a slider — the app finds the dominant tones and quantizes the photo to match.
• Remove background on device before extracting — isolate the subject so the palette comes from what matters, not the wall behind it.
• Pick one of two looks: a PixelOE-inspired smoothing pass for clean flat regions and crisp edges, or Floyd-Steinberg / Atkinson / blue-noise dithering for a softer retro grain (one or the other, not stacked).
• Outline tool with three modes — Fast for quick results, Sharp (contrast-aware resampling) for crisp edges on large canvases, and Lines (XDoG) for line-art — bake into the canvas or keep as an editable layer.
A REAL PIXEL EDITOR, NOT JUST A FILTER
• Pencil, eraser, eyedropper, magic wand (flood select), bucket fill, and color replace.
• Reference photo overlay so you can keep tracing or fine-tuning while the original photo floats above the canvas at adjustable opacity.
• Multi-frame timeline for animations — duplicate frames, drag to reorder, onion-skin between them.
• Selection tools — rectangular or magic-wand select, then move, duplicate, flip, fill, or delete the region.
WORKS ON PHONES AND TABLETS
• Universal app — same projects, palettes, and editor whether you start on a phone or tablet.
• Portrait and landscape on tablets both supported; works great on large screens.
PALETTES, YOUR WAY
• Custom palettes with named colors. Save your favorite color sets and reuse them across projects.
• Per-project palettes that travel with the file.
• Add, edit, replace, and reorder colors in seconds.
EXPORT EVERYTHING
• Export PNG with optional transparency and pixel-perfect scale-up (1×, 4×, 16×).
• Export GIF for animations, with frame timing controls.
• Export the canvas as a JSON color grid (a 2D array of hex codes) — handy for cross-stitch and perler-bead pattern tools, web games and homemade sprite scripts, or any code that needs the raw pixel data. Find it in your device's file manager under Pick to Pixel.
PROJECTS THAT STAY YOURS
• Project library with thumbnail grid: rename, duplicate, delete, organize into folders.
• Save with a tap — reopen the canvas right where you saved it.
• Atomic writes mean a crash never corrupts your work.
PRIVACY-FIRST, FULLY OFFLINE
• No account. No sign-up. No tracking. No analytics.
• Your photos never leave your device — no upload, no cloud, no AI service in the loop.
• Works in airplane mode.
11 LANGUAGES
English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese — automatic from your device language.
WHO IT'S FOR
• Game developers and pixel-artists who want a real photo importer with palette control.
• Hobbyists turning portraits, pets, or landscapes into 8-bit / 16-bit art.
• Cross-stitch and perler-bead crafters who need quantized palettes from photos.
Built by a solo indie developer. Feedback welcome — tap "Send feedback" in Settings - About to email me directly.
Pixel Art Maker, Smart Palette
Updated on
Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Data privacy and security practices may vary based on your use, region, and age. The developer provided this information and may update it over time.
- No data shared with third partiesLearn more about how developers declare sharing
- No data collectedLearn more about how developers declare collection
What’s new
• Background removal on Android: tap "Remove background" on the palette screen to lift the subject out of a photo. It runs entirely on your device — nothing is uploaded.
• Onion skin arrives — tap the layers button in the frame strip to see the previous frame in blue and the next in orange while you draw. Long-press it to set the ghost opacity.
• Choosing the brush, eraser or fill now clears the current selection instead of leaving the marquee on the canvas.
• Onion skin arrives — tap the layers button in the frame strip to see the previous frame in blue and the next in orange while you draw. Long-press it to set the ghost opacity.
• Choosing the brush, eraser or fill now clears the current selection instead of leaving the marquee on the canvas.
