The whole conversion chain, not a mosaic filter: true downsampling, hardware palettes, dithering, and outlines, live on images and video.
How to use it
- Open the editor from this page — it loads demo media with the effect already set up — then drop in your own image or video.
- Set the resolution, then pick a palette: Game Boy, PICO-8, NES, CGA, 1-Bit, or up to eight colors of your own.
- Dial in the dithering, outlines, contrast, and saturation, then export a PNG, JPG, or MP4.
What the pixel art converter actually does
The resolution control is the main creative decision: it sets the height of the virtual screen your media is redrawn on, and the width follows your frame. Everything downstream runs the way the classic converters work, not the way a mosaic filter does. Each cell is averaged from the source rather than point-sampled, tone is adjusted before any color is thrown away, and the snap to the palette is measured in a perceptual color space, so the chosen color is the one your eye would call closest. Ordered dithering is applied per cell of the virtual screen, locked to the pixel grid, and the outline pass traces the boundaries between color regions to pull shapes off the background.
The palettes are the real ones: the Game Boy’s four greens, PICO-8’s sixteen colors, the NES palette, CGA’s four, plain black and white, or your own set of up to eight colors. On video the conversion recomputes every frame, so footage plays back like a capture from the hardware itself, something the image-only converters cannot do. The same Pixel Art effect ships in the Modulate editor, where the resolution and every other control can be keyframed, and it stacks with CRT and dither for a complete retro-hardware setup.
Common questions
Is the pixel art converter free?
Yes. This page opens the full Modulate editor, free with no signup, with the effect already set up. Anonymous exports run up to 5 seconds at 1080px with a small watermark; a free account exports watermark-free at higher caps, and Pro raises them further.
Can I turn a video into pixel art?
Yes, and it is what sets this tool apart: most pixel art converters online are image-only. Drop in an MP4, WebM, or MOV and every frame is converted on the same grid with the same palette, then export the result as an MP4.
What resolution should I pick?
It depends on what the result is for. Low values give a chunky sprite portrait where every pixel is a visible decision; a couple of hundred reads as a full console frame, footage that could pass for gameplay capture. Faces need more resolution than landscapes to stay recognizable, and a touch of extra contrast helps features survive the shrink.
Can I use my own colors?
Yes. Switch the palette to Custom and set two to eight colors; every cell then snaps to the nearest of your set, with dithering blending between them. It is the way to match a game’s existing palette, a brand color set, or a palette you found on a site like Lospec.
Are my files uploaded anywhere?
No. The conversion runs in your browser on your GPU. Your media never leaves your computer.
Go deeper
Pixel art effect
The pixel art effect redraws an image or video at a tiny resolution with a limited color palette, so it reads as a hand-made sprite rather than a shrunken photograph. A convincing conversion is a chain: downsample to a virtual screen, snap every color to a palette like Game Boy or NES, dither the gradients, and outline the shapes. Skipping any of those steps is why plain pixelation never quite looks like pixel art.
Dither effect
Dithering renders an image with fewer colors than it really has by arranging the available ones in fine patterns the eye averages back into smooth tone. Where a limited palette would otherwise collapse gradients into ugly bands, dithering trades them for texture: the speckled, crosshatched grain of early computer graphics, GIFs, and one-bit displays. As an effect, it puts that machine-made texture on anything.
Pixelate effect
The pixelate effect rebuilds an image as a grid of solid single-color blocks, each block standing in for everything underneath it. It is the mosaic of censored television and the texture of early graphics, and it looks deceptively simple: the entire character of the result hangs on one decision, how each block picks its color from the pixels it replaces.
CRT effect
The CRT effect makes an image look like it is being displayed on a cathode-ray tube: the glowing phosphor stripes or dot triads of the mask, slight color fringing where the beams misconverge, and the darkened corners of a curved glass face. It is the look of every screen made before the 2000s, and it reads instantly as arcade cabinets, control rooms, and late-night TV.
There's more where this came from
The full editor lets you use every effect together, over video, text, 3D, and shapes. Free, no signup, nothing to install — it opens with this effect already set up.
Open the editor