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Pixel Art Grid Generator

Professional-grade pixel art suite. Features 50+ retro palettes, layer management, smart dithering, scanline flood fill, and optimized CSS/JSON export.

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Category Graphic Generators
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v2.0 Enterprise
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About

This is not just a drawing board; it is a precision engineering environment for low-resolution raster graphics. In the domain of pixel art, a single coordinate shift changes the user's perception of a character's emotion or an icon's function. This tool eliminates the cognitive load of manual grid calculation, employing a Visual Coordinate System that maps user input to a strict integer array.

We address the critical needs of three distinct sectors. Frontend Developers utilize our optimized box-shadow algorithm to generate CSS-only assets that reduce HTTP requests. Game Designers rely on the strict palette quantization (e.g., mapping colors to the NES or CGA limitations) to ensure period-accurate aesthetics. Hobbyists (cross-stitch, bead art) utilize the high-contrast grid overlay to generate exact counting patterns. The engine runs on a custom state-management system ensuring zero data loss via local storage synchronization.

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Formulas

The core logic of pixel painting relies on integer coordinate mapping. When a pointer interacts with the canvas, the floating-point browser coordinates P must be floored to the nearest grid cell index.

Given a pointer at x, y and a cell size s:

col = floor(xs), row = floor(ys)

Color Distance & Quantization: When importing an image, we calculate the Euclidean distance d between a source pixel color (Rs, Gs, Bs) and a palette color (Rp, Gp, Bp) to find the nearest match:

d = √(Rs-Rp)2 + (Gs-Gp)2 + (Bs-Bp)2

Scanline Flood Fill: Unlike recursive fills which cause stack overflows on large grids, we utilize a Stack-based Scanline algorithm. It processes the grid row by row, pushing seed spans onto a LIFO stack:

{
Push (x, y) if color matches targetScan Left/Right until color mismatchAdd adjacent vertical spans to Stack

Reference Data

Standard / ConsoleResolution (px)Palette LimitPixel RatioTypical Use Case
Favicon (Modern)32 × 32RGBA (Unlimited)1:1Browser Tabs, Bookmarks
Apple Icon (Small)180 × 180RGBA (Unlimited)1:1iOS Home Screen
NES (NTSC)256 × 24054 Colors1.2:18-Bit Game Assets
GameBoy (DMG)160 × 1444 Shades (Green)1:1Monochrome Sprites
Commodore 64320 × 20016 Colors1.6:1Retro Demoscene Art
Minecraft Skin64 × 64RGBA (Unlimited)1:1Player Textures
RPG Maker MV48 × 48256 Colors1:1Tilemaps & Walking Sets
Twitch Emote 128 × 28RGBA (Unlimited)1:1Chat Icons (Small)
Twitch Emote 256 × 56RGBA (Unlimited)1:1Chat Icons (Medium)
Pico-8128 × 12816 Colors1:1Fantasy Console Dev
VGA Mode 13h320 × 200256 Colors1.2:1DOS Gaming Nostalgia

Frequently Asked Questions

When you import a standard photo, it likely contains thousands of color variations. Smart Quantization analyzes every pixel and forces it to the nearest color available in your currently selected Palette (e.g., the GameBoy's 4 greens). This instantly creates an authentic retro look without manual recoloring.
A naive CSS export writes a shadow for every single pixel. Our engine uses an optimization algorithm that groups adjacent pixels of the same color into larger shadow offsets (if supported) or simply omits transparent pixels entirely, significantly reducing the character count of the generated code.
Yes. The application runs a "State Persister" in the background. Every modification is serialized and saved to your browser's LocalStorage. When you return, the tool reconstructs your grid, palette selection, and settings exactly as you left them.
We implement Bresenham's Line Algorithm. This is an integer-arithmetic algorithm that determines which points in an n-dimensional raster should be selected in order to form a close approximation to a straight line between two points. It ensures connected, jagged-free lines suitable for pixel art.
Technically, HTML5 Canvas supports up to roughly 16,384px. However, for pixel art usability, we soft-cap the UI at 128x128px. Beyond this size, "pixel art" becomes "low-res painting", and browser performance for the grid overlay mesh calculation begins to degrade on mobile devices.