Pixel art is the friendliest source for a first bead chart. It already lives on a grid, the colors are already few, and you mostly want RetroBeads to keep what is there instead of inventing something new. This guide is for small sprites, sprite sheets, upscaled pixel art, and simple imported drawings or line art. If you are starting from a photo or a painting, you want a different workflow.
If you have not made a pattern yet, read the foundation guide first: Create your first RetroBeads pattern covers Upload image, Paste from clipboard, Start blank, and the shared controls in the import wizard. This guide builds on that and goes deeper into pixel sources and the Advanced conversion settings that matter for them.
Is this pixel art?
Before you pick a route, decide which kind of source you have. The wizard exposes three image types: Pixel art, Upscaled pixel art, and Photo. RetroBeads product RetroBeads import wizard image types The current wizard exposes Pixel art, Upscaled pixel art, and Photo modes with different control groups for each mode. Pixel sources usually fall into one of these:
- Native pixel art is a sprite where every visible pixel is meant as one pixel. A 32 by 32 PNG of a character is a typical example. One source pixel should become one bead.
- Upscaled pixel art is the same idea, but the file has been exported or screenshotted larger. Each “pixel” you see is actually a square block of identical source pixels. A 256 by 256 export of a 32 by 32 sprite is upscaled by a factor of 8.
- Sprite sheets are one image with several frames packed together. The whole sheet is one file, but you usually want one frame as one pattern.
- Simple imported drawings or line art are flat, mostly two-tone shapes that read like icons or stickers. They are not pixel art, but they convert cleanly because they use very few colors and have hard edges.
If the source is photographic, painterly, or has soft gradients and shadows, use the Photo route instead. Pixel settings are meant to preserve hard edges, not interpret soft detail.
Source prep before you import
A few quick file checks save a lot of cleanup later.
- Prefer PNG. PNG keeps every pixel exactly as drawn and supports a true transparent background. JPEG compresses pixel edges into soft halos that turn into stray beads.
- Avoid JPEG when you can. If a JPEG sprite is all you have, save it once as PNG and use the wizard selection tools to trim unneeded edges; do not export it to JPEG again. Each save adds more compression noise.
- Screenshots can scale and compress. Some browsers and operating systems resize on copy or take Retina screenshots at twice the logical size. The result often looks like upscaled pixel art at a non-integer factor, which is harder to convert cleanly.
- Sprite sheets are fine. RetroBeads can crop one frame from a sheet inside the wizard. You do not need to slice the sheet in another tool first. Just plan to import one frame at a time.
- Transparent backgrounds help. A PNG with a real transparent background tells RetroBeads which cells should be empty. If your sprite sits on a solid color, you can use Background cleanup instead.
Route A. Native sprite, one pixel per bead
Use this route when the source is already at its real pixel size and each pixel should become one bead. Most clean rips, exported sprites, and small icon PNGs belong here.
- Load the source with Upload image or Paste from clipboard.
- Open Image type and confirm Pixel art. If the wizard detected something else with low confidence, switch it manually.
- Pick a Palette that matches the bead brand and bead size you actually have. Palette choice changes color matching, so picking your real palette before judging the preview is more useful than tweaking later.
- Leave Auto crop on. It trims empty edges so the pattern starts at the real subject, not at transparent margins.
- Open Background cleanup only if the sprite sits on a solid color that should become empty cells. With a true transparent PNG, leave it off; transparency already does the right thing. If the background is a solid color you want to remove, enable it and use Pick background to sample the exact color from the source.
- Read the preview. If the silhouette and colors match your source, press Create pattern and skip Advanced for the first pass.
For native pixel art, Advanced conversion rarely needs touching. The wizard does not need a downscaling decision because every source pixel is already one bead, and dithering is normally off because pixel art is meant to be exact.
Route B. One frame from a sprite sheet
A sprite sheet is one image file packed with several frames or poses. The wizard converts one frame at a time. RetroBeads product RetroBeads source viewport tools The current source tools include Rectangular select, Magic select, and Pick background.
- Load the sprite sheet, then keep Image type on Pixel art if the sheet itself is native pixel art, or Upscaled pixel art if each pixel in the sheet is a block of repeated pixels.
- In the source viewport, choose Rectangular select when the sheet is laid out on a clean grid. Drag a rectangle around the single frame you want.
- Choose Magic select when one sprite stands clear of the rest on a uniform background. Click inside the sprite and the wizard expands the selection to the connected pixels.
- Leave Auto crop on so any leftover background outside the selection does not pad the pattern.
- Press Create pattern. To convert another frame, open the wizard again and re-select.
The wizard is a frame chooser, not a sprite-sheet manager. There is no batch export of every frame in one pass, no pose preview, and no animation timeline. If you need ten poses as ten patterns, expect ten import passes. That is fine for a first project; plan for it.
Route C. Upscaled pixel art and the grid factor
If the source looks like pixel art but the file is much bigger than the on-screen art suggests, it is probably upscaled. Each “pixel” on screen is actually a block of several real image pixels. If you import this as native pixel art, the pattern becomes the upscale factor times wider and taller than you wanted. A 32 by 32 sprite at 8x upscale would become a 256 by 256 pattern, which is far too many beads for a small icon.
- Load the source and open Image type. Choose Upscaled pixel art if the wizard did not already pick it.
- Open the Upscale factor card. The grid factor is the number of source pixels that make up one original pixel. A clean 2x export uses a factor of 2; an 8x export uses a factor of 8.
- If a detected grid is shown, try Use detected first. The wizard reads the source for repeating block sizes and proposes the value it finds.
- If no grid is detected, or the proposed value collapses the preview into something doubled or smudged, step the value up or down by one. You are looking for the integer where each block in the source becomes exactly one bead.
- If you are unsure whether the source is even upscaled, Auto detect runs the same heuristic the wizard uses on first load.
- Once the factor is right, Background cleanup behaves the same as the native route. Use Pick background for a solid color, leave it off for true transparency.
The most common slip is treating an upscaled sprite as native pixel art. The pattern blows up in size, and the bead count turns a small icon into a wall piece. The next most common slip is picking a non-integer factor; if the source was scaled by 1.5x or by a browser zoom, no integer factor lands cleanly. Use the wizard selection tools, screenshot at 100 percent, or re-export the source from its original tool if you can.
For upscaled sources, Advanced conversion does have one decision worth making: the Downscaling method. See the Advanced section below.
Route D. Imported simple drawings and line art
Some sources are not pixel art but still convert cleanly. A flat icon, a two-tone logo, a simple cartoon, or a line-art sketch with solid fills can route through this guide.
- Load the source and open Image type. Try Pixel art first if the source has hard edges and very few colors. If the result looks ragged, switch to Upscaled pixel art and let the grid factor smooth it out.
- If the drawing has anti-aliased edges (soft pixels along contours), expect a halo of in-between colors after import. Keep reading; the Advanced section covers cleanup.
- For pure line art on a white background, Background cleanup with Pick background sampled from the white area usually clears the page color. Verify the lines themselves did not get treated as background.
If the drawing is photographic, painterly, or detailed enough to need real downscaling, treat it as a photo source instead. Blank-canvas drawing in the editor is a separate workflow.
Advanced settings for pixel sources
Open the Advanced conversion card only when the preview shows a real problem. The wizard’s auto defaults are tuned for the active image type, so most pixel art needs no changes. When you do open Advanced, change one setting at a time and watch the preview update before changing the next.
Color matching algorithms
Color matching decides how every source color is mapped to the closest bead in the chosen palette. The label is Color matching and the options are: Auto, Best match (OKLab), Chroma weighted, Accurate (CIEDE2000), Textile tuned (CMC), Fast weighted, and Simple RGB. RetroBeads product RetroBeads color matching options The current Advanced conversion panel lists these Color matching options.
For pixel art, the practical short list is:
- Auto. Defaults to Best match (OKLab) behavior. Good first pass for almost every pixel source.
- Best match (OKLab). Maps each source color to the perceptually closest bead. This is the everyday default and what you want when the pattern reads “right” without further thought.
- Chroma weighted. A variant of OKLab that weights colorful (high-chroma) pixels more strongly. Try it when bright accent colors get washed into a duller bead and you want the wizard to bias toward keeping those accents.
- Accurate (CIEDE2000). A slower, more precise color-difference algorithm. Worth trying when two similar palette beads keep being chosen interchangeably for the same source color and you want a more consistent pick.
The remaining options (Textile tuned (CMC), Fast weighted, Simple RGB) are comparison choices, not good starting points for this guide. If a change does not make the preview visibly clearer, return to Auto and fix the source, palette, or grid factor instead.
Downscaling methods
The label is Downscaling and the options are: Auto, Dominant color, Median, Average, Lanczos, and Nearest neighbor. RetroBeads product RetroBeads downscaling and dithering options The current Advanced conversion panel lists these Downscaling and Dithering options.
Downscaling only matters when the source has more pixels than the bead grid. For native pixel art at the right size, no downscaling happens and the choice does not affect the result.
- Auto. Picks Dominant color for sprite-like sources and Average for photo-like sources. Leave it on Auto unless you have a specific reason.
- Dominant color. For each bead cell, the most common source color wins. Best for upscaled pixel art with a clean grid factor: it preserves hard edges and the original palette.
- Median. Picks the middle source color in each cell. A reasonable middle ground when Dominant color introduces speckle and Average makes edges muddy.
- Average. Blends source colors arithmetically, then maps the blend to the palette. Useful for photo-style sources; for pixel art it tends to invent in-between colors that were not in the original.
- Lanczos. A high-quality smoothing filter from photo work. Avoid for native pixel art; use sparingly for upscaled sources where the grid factor was non-integer and edges already look interpolated.
- Nearest neighbor. Samples one source pixel per bead with no blending. The hardest, most pixelated result. Useful when Dominant color keeps producing the wrong winner because the upscale factor is slightly off.
Dithering
The label is Dithering and the options are: Auto, None, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, and Ordered Bayer.
For pixel sources, leave Dithering on Auto (which resolves to None for pixel-style processing) or set None explicitly. The source already chose its colors deliberately; scattering them reads as bead noise.
If a pixel-style source has a deliberate gradient or imitates an old screen palette and you want to experiment, see Choose a dithering mode for your bead pattern for the rare exceptions. Most pixel charts are done at None.
Confetti and noise cleanup
For pixel sources, Confetti cleanup is the Advanced cleanup toggle that stays available without switching to Photo mode:
- Confetti cleanup is on by default. It removes very small isolated regions, which are usually screenshot or compression noise. Turn it off only if your sprite genuinely has one-pixel highlights you want to keep.
Majority filter, Region merge, and Edge outline live in the Photo cleanup group. If a line-art source needs those filters to read well, it is probably behaving more like a smooth illustration than pixel art; switch to the Photo route instead of forcing it through this guide.
Which Advanced settings actually matter for pixel sources
A short cheat sheet:
- Native pixel art: Color matching usually fine on Auto. Downscaling and Dithering do not affect a one-to-one source. Confetti cleanup on.
- Upscaled pixel art: Get the grid factor right first. Color matching on Auto or Best match (OKLab). Downscaling on Dominant color (Auto). Dithering off. Confetti cleanup on.
- Sprite-sheet frame: Same as native or upscaled depending on the sheet itself.
- Simple imported drawing or line art: Color matching on Auto. Downscaling on Dominant color or Median. Dithering off. Background cleanup if the drawing sits on a page color.
Anti-aliasing, halos, and other edge problems
Anti-aliasing is the soft ring of in-between colors browsers and editors add around shapes to make them look smoother on screen. It is helpful on a monitor and a problem on a bead chart, where every cell is one bead in one color.
Common edge symptoms and what to try:
- Halo of off-color beads around a sprite. The source has anti-aliased edges. Tighten the wizard crop or selection, enable Background cleanup with Pick background sampled from the page color, or paint the halo cells out after import.
- Stray single beads inside flat areas. Compression noise from JPEG or screenshot scaling. Re-export from the original tool as PNG; if not possible, leave Confetti cleanup on and clean the remaining cells by hand after import.
- Too many colors in the chart. Lower Max colors in the Colors panel after import, switch to a smaller bead palette, or simplify the source first.
- A faint background fills the empty cells. The sprite has no real transparency. Enable Background cleanup and pick the background color, or save the source as a PNG with a transparent background before re-importing.
- Doubled rows or columns. The upscale factor is one off. Step it up or down by one and watch the preview snap back to clean blocks.
- Muddy edges that no setting fixes. The source was scaled by a non-integer factor (often a browser zoom or Retina screenshot). Re-export at 100 percent or try Nearest neighbor downscaling for the cleanest hard edges.
Color count and palette mapping
Every bead in the chart is a real bead from the chosen palette. Two related decisions control how many colors the chart uses:
- Palette chooses the bead brand and bead size. Different brands have different ranges; a sprite that looks great in one brand may collapse to fewer distinct beads in another. Pick the palette you actually own before judging the preview.
- Max colors in the Colors panel caps how many distinct beads the chart uses after import. For a small sprite, leaving it at the palette count lets the app match all source colors. For larger pieces, capping at a number you can actually buy and keep organized prevents a chart that needs forty similar shades.
If the chart uses too many near-duplicate beads, lower Max colors before chasing filters. The app will pick the most representative beads first, which is usually closer to what you wanted than scattering speckles of every option.
Post-import cleanup in the editor
Some pixel-art problems are easier to fix by hand than by re-running the wizard. After Create pattern, the editor’s drawing tools give you precise control. RetroBeads product RetroBeads editor tools The current editor tool labels include Paint, Erase, Fill, and Pick color.
- Paint places one bead at a time. Use it to repair a single off-color cell or to add a missing highlight pixel.
- Erase clears a cell back to empty. Use it to remove halo beads around a sprite or stray background cells the wizard kept.
- Fill flood-fills connected cells of the same color. Use it to swap a whole solid region from one bead to another.
- Pick color samples a bead from the chart so the next paint stroke uses it. Useful for matching an existing color without scrolling the palette.
Use the wizard for the big decisions (image type, palette, crop, grid factor, Advanced settings) and use the editor for the few cells you can clean up faster by eye than by changing a setting. This guide is not a full drawing-from-scratch tutorial.
Final check before you build
Before you commit to beads, do a quick pass through the chart with pixel sources in mind:
- Step back from the screen. The silhouette should still read at arm’s length. If it does not, the source is too detailed for the bead size or the palette is mapping too many colors into one tone.
- Compare the chart to the source side by side. Pixel art conversion should preserve the original palette and silhouette; if the chart has invented colors or shifted the silhouette by a row, recheck the grid factor and Advanced settings.
- Look for halos and stray cells around edges and inside flat areas. Erase the obvious ones now, before the bead count is locked in.
- Open the Colors panel and count distinct beads. If the chart uses more colors than your kit, lower Max colors, switch palette, or plan substitutions.
- Open the Boards panel and confirm the layout fits how you want to build: one board, linked boards, screen reference, or printable chart.
What to do next
If the chart looks right, build from the screen or export a PDF for paper and tablet reference. When you are ready to fuse the piece, read Ironing styles and troubleshooting for finishes, methods, and the troubleshooting clues that keep heat from ruining a good chart.
If you have a foundation question instead, head back to Create your first RetroBeads pattern and pick the route that matches your image. If your source is smooth, shaded, or photographic, use the Photo route instead of forcing it through the pixel settings.