ImgScale's creative studio — pixel art converter, GIF speed changer, ASCII art, color palette extractor, and photo border. All running in your browser. Nothing uploaded.
The Tools
Five creative tools, zero uploads
Part of ImgScale's suite of free browser-based image tools. Everything runs on your device.
Pixel Art Converter
Turn any photo or animated GIF into authentic, high-resolution pixel art. Uses a proper pipeline: progressive area-average downscaling → median-cut color quantization → optional dithering → nearest-neighbor upscaling. Six built-in retro palettes: Game Boy, PICO-8, NES, CGA, 1-bit, and Auto.
Animated GIF support — every frame pixelated with a unified palette
Adjust any animated GIF's speed with a live preview that updates instantly. Drop frames (½, ⅓, ¼) to cut file size while keeping total duration identical — dropped frame timing is redistributed to surrounding frames. Reverse the entire animation with one toggle.
Convert any photo into text art using brightness-to-character mapping. Classic terminal aesthetic or colored ASCII where each character takes its source pixel's color. 4 character sets plus custom ramp input. Exports as text, .txt, or PNG with dark/light/transparent background.
4 character sets: Classic, Detailed (67 levels), Blocks ░▒▓█, Mono10
Custom ramp input — type any characters dark-to-light
Colored ASCII mode — full color in canvas output
Width 40–220 columns, brightness invert, live preview
Extract dominant colors from any image using median-cut quantization. Each color's percentage is a real pixel-count measurement, not an estimate. Export to HEX, CSS custom properties, SCSS, JSON, or Tailwind config. Download a labeled palette strip PNG for mood boards.
Extract 3–16 dominant colors with real % measurements
Add a professional frame to any photo in seconds. Four styles: solid color, two-color gradient, polaroid with optional caption, or soft drop shadow on colored or transparent background. Size and roundness are percentage-based so they scale correctly at any resolution.
4 styles: Solid, Gradient, Polaroid, Drop Shadow
Percentage-based size and roundness — scales at any resolution
Like all ImgScale tools, PixelLab processes everything in your browser. Your images never leave your device. Open DevTools → Network to verify: it stays empty.
Instant results
No server queue. No upload time. Your own CPU and GPU do the work the moment you drop an image — results in milliseconds to a few seconds.
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Completely free
No watermarks, no usage limits, no account. All five tools are fully featured and free. That's it.
Actually high quality
Real algorithms: median-cut quantization, Floyd–Steinberg dithering, area-average downscaling, perceptual color distance. Not just CSS filters.
Also on ImgScale
More free tools at imgscale.net
PixelLab is part of ImgScale's full suite of browser-based image tools.