About

The 2048 puzzle board is a 4×4 grid where each cell carries a power-of-two value from 2 to 131072. This tool splits any uploaded photograph into that grid structure, crops each cell from the source image, and overlays the characteristic tile coloring and numeric label. The result is a composite PNG that resembles an in-progress 2048 game constructed from your image. A naive center-crop loses critical subject matter. This converter calculates the optimal crop region by fitting the largest square (or rectangle matching your chosen grid aspect ratio) from the image center, then applies high-quality bicubic resampling via the Canvas API with imageSmoothingQuality set to high. Tile values are assigned in descending order from top-left, following standard game progression, though you can randomize or customize the mapping.

Getting the overlay opacity wrong produces either invisible labels or a washed-out image. The default blend uses an alpha of 0.55 on the tile color layer, calibrated against the original 2048 palette so that the number remains legible at output sizes from 200px to 2000px. The font size scales proportionally to tile dimensions. Limitations: this tool processes entirely client-side. There is no server upload. Extremely large images (above 50MB) may cause memory pressure on mobile devices. Pro tip: square source images produce the best results since no cropping is needed. For rectangular photos, reposition the crop region using the offset controls before generating.

Formulas

Each tile's source rectangle is computed from the image dimensions and grid configuration. For a grid of R rows and C columns on an image of size W × H:

tileW = WC tileH = HR

The source crop origin for tile at row r, column c:

sx = c ⋅ tileW + offsetX sy = r ⋅ tileH + offsetY

For square crop from a rectangular image, the crop size S:

S = min(W, H)

The overlay alpha blending follows the standard compositing formula:

C_out = C_tile ⋅ α + C_img ⋅ (1 − α)

Where α = 0.55 (default overlay opacity), C_tile is the 2048 palette color, and C_img is the source pixel color.

Font size per tile scales with output dimensions:

fontSize = tileSize3 ⋅ 1max(1, floor(log₁₀(value)) − 1)

Where W = image width, H = image height, R = grid rows, C = grid columns, offsetX/offsetY = user crop offset, α = overlay opacity, value = tile number (power of 2).

Reference Data

Tile Value	Background Color	Text Color	Hex Code	Power of 2
2	Cream	Dark	#eee4da	2¹
4	Light Tan	Dark	#ede0c8	2²
8	Orange	White	#f2b179	2³
16	Dark Orange	White	#f59563	2⁴
32	Red-Orange	White	#f67c5f	2⁵
64	Red	White	#f65e3b	2⁶
128	Yellow	White	#edcf72	2⁷
256	Bright Yellow	White	#edcc61	2⁸
512	Gold	White	#edc850	2⁹
1024	Deep Gold	White	#edc53f	2¹⁰
2048	Brilliant Gold	White	#edc22e	2¹¹
4096	Deep Red	White	#ed702e	2¹²
8192	Crimson	White	#ed4d2e	2¹³
16384	Deep Crimson	White	#ed302e	2¹⁴
32768	Dark Blue	White	#6d8cc0	2¹⁵
65536	Navy	White	#5b6fa4	2¹⁶
131072	Deep Navy	White	#3c3a6e	2¹⁷

Frequently Asked Questions

The converter fits the largest possible region matching the grid's aspect ratio from your source image. A 4×4 grid requires a square region. If your image is a wide panorama (e.g., 3000×1000), roughly two-thirds of the horizontal content is cropped. Use the crop offset sliders to reposition which portion of the image is used, or pre-crop your image to a square before uploading.

The default alpha of 0.55 blends the 2048 palette color over your image. At α = 0, you see pure image with no color tint. At α = 1.0, the tile is a solid color block identical to the original 2048 game. Values between 0.3 and 0.6 typically produce the best balance where the image is recognizable and the tile color is distinct. Darker source images may need a lower alpha (0.35-0.45) to remain visible.

Yes. The default assignment places the highest value (2048) at the top-left and descends by powers of two. You can switch to randomized assignment, ascending order, or a uniform value across all tiles. The shuffle option uses a Fisher-Yates algorithm to distribute 16 values randomly across the grid, which produces more visually interesting boards.

For Instagram posts, use 1080×1080 px. For Twitter/X, 1200×1200 px works well. The default 800×800 px is a good general-purpose size. Higher resolutions (1600+) are suitable for printing. The tool renders at your chosen size using the Canvas API with high-quality bicubic interpolation, so upscaling a small source image beyond 2× its native resolution will show blur.

No. All processing occurs entirely in your browser using the HTML5 Canvas API. The image never leaves your device. The File API reads the image into local memory, Canvas operations crop and composite the tiles, and the Blob API generates the downloadable PNG. No network requests are made at any point during conversion.

With a 64-tile grid on an 800px output, each tile is only 100px wide. The font size scales inversely with the number of digits. Values like 131072 (6 digits) at 100px tile size produce text around 18px, which approaches legibility limits. Increase the output resolution to 1600px or higher when using grids larger than 5×5, or enable the "hide numbers" option to use color-only tiles.