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Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

Similar in concept but for different reasons; does anybody know of a way to convert images into a '8bit pixel map'?

My wife likes to take images and crochet them into tapestry/blankets/cozies.

It seems to me that if we could get a grid overlay onto an image she could then make whatever she wanted. (One color per 'pixel')

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If you're going to crochet the result, I don't think you really want 256 colors. A 16 color pallete is probably acheivable if annoying.

Seems like if you print the image, then print a grid on a transparency sheet, you could mark up the sheet with colors until it looks good.

Maybe tracing paper (can you print a grid on tracing paper? Do you want to hand mark a grid on tracing paper?)

I don't use art tools, but you should be able to do something in software too, layer the grid on top, leave it transparent to the image until you pick a color for each square.

Drawing grids over an image is easy. Choosing which colour to drop in is impossibly hard and where the art is. Nearest Neighbour and Average of N Points are some algorithms than can be used but don’t take the overall style of the image into account. For example, one pixel could cover a part of the nose and a part of the eye and averaging them makes a blurry mess.

Problem is that like vector fonts without hinting, naive automatic "pixelation" of images does a poor job. You have to work with the limitations of the medium, and sometimes it entails drawing something in a very different shape than if you had more resolution and color. There are image gen models that do an okay job at pixel art these days though.

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