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Turn a picture into a pattern

A drawing, a photo, or a picture of a character you love: dotdot turns it into a pattern for fuse beads, cross stitch, a brick mosaic or a clay cane, in your browser, in about a minute.

Choose a pictureOr start from a sample

Pictures that work best

  • Simple shapes and clear outlines. A cartoon, an icon, a logo you made or a drawing comes out cleaner than a busy photo.
  • A plain background. Whatever is behind the subject becomes cells too.
  • Crop close. At 16 or 29 cells a face reads far better than a whole figure, so crop to the part that matters.
  • Any shape. The crop takes the shape of the pattern: square for a cane, any width and height for the other crafts, and Match the photo picks the height that keeps the whole picture. A knitting chart is cut taller than its rows, because a stitch is wider than it is tall.

Step by step

  1. Open Import a photo and choose or drop a PNG, JPEG or WebP image, or a HEIC photo in Safari, up to 20 MB.
  2. Crop it. Drag to move, zoom to crop tighter; the grid over the picture shows where the cells will fall.
  3. Choose what you are making. The craft decides the sizes on offer: beads 16, 29 or 58, bricks 16 to 96, cross stitch 32 to 100, diamond painting 50 to 200, knitting 24 to 160, canes 8 to 32. Width and height are picked apart for all but a cane, and a knitting chart takes your gauge.
  4. Choose how many colors, from 2 to 16. Fewer is easier to make; 6 is a good start for a character, 12 or more for a photo.
  5. Choose the detail. Sharp keeps thin outlines and suits drawings and characters; Smooth blends each cell and suits photos.
  6. Check the preview and press Use this pattern. In the editor, tidy stray cells with the pencil and eraser.
  7. Open Materials for how many of each color you need, and the nearest colors to buy from the Hama, Perler, LEGO or DMC catalogs.

Which size to choose

  • 16: an icon or a face. One small bead board, or a small brick plate.
  • 29: one standard bead board, enough for a whole small character.
  • 48: one standard brick baseplate, enough for a portrait.
  • 50 to 64: cross stitch with room for detail and shading.
  • 120 x 160: a 30 x 40 cm diamond painting, enough for a photo of a face or a pet.

Your picture stays with you

The picture is read and converted in your browser. It is never uploaded, and nobody else sees it. The privacy page lists everything the app keeps and how to remove it.

About characters you did not draw

Making a favorite character for yourself is part of the hobby. A character still belongs to whoever created it, so selling the finished piece or publishing the pattern may need their permission. The characters among the samples were drawn for dotdot, and they are yours to make, give away and share.