Creating pixel art is an art form of its own and is best done manually with appropriate graphics software.
Automated tools like this section of the fiddle are just that: tools. They may not give you the exact result you're looking for, but can be a helpful guide. The tools here allow you to take a picture, any picture, and adjust its size to the size you'd like to build on the canvas, and adjust its colors to match those of the pxls.space palette.

Step 1: Enter the URL of an image to pixelate, or drag&drop an image (from desktop or browser image), or paste an image here. Once provided, the image will be processed automatically.
If the image provided has a template style applied, it will be de-templatized first.

bypass CORS
⚠️️using proxy⚠️️ Further configuration options

Pixel art mask color when pasting
Use pixel color mask

Pixel art output filter color


De-pixelization
De-pixelize images that use up-scaled pixels. ( May give incorrect results. Disabling this option will still provide a hint about the possible scale factor. )
Embed Palette
Embed the active palette in the image ( Will increase image size. )

Templates on pxls.space help you to build intricate art on the canvas by letting you see which pixels should be which colors.
While originally the template could only show a solid color for a pixel, with some transparency, new template styles were designed that helped make it clearer what color is required even if the pixel is already another color. Template styles were even designed to help differentiate between colors that can appear similar on the canvas (such as black and dark grey).

Optional step: set the styles of templates that should be generated.
dotted symbols Bigdotted letters hearts & letters 6x6 graphics* large numbers^** custom style^***
*6x6 variant of default Custom pattern
^**11x11 cells - not recommended for large art!
^***customize patterns in the 'Further configuration options' sub-section

Step 1: Enter the URL of an image to templatize. Once entered, the image will be processed automatically.
If you just got here from the previous section, you can skip this step!
bypass CORS
⚠️️using proxy⚠️️

You can use this section to generate text to be drawn on the canvas. Included are two popular pixel bitmap fonts, but you can specify a custom font from your system or the Google Font repository as well. Text can be rendered using any text color (defaults to black) and any background color (defaults to the canvas background color).
The MicroText bitmap font is a very small (3x3px lowercase, 4x4px uppercase, with exceptions) and supports the basic ASCII code table (letters, numbers, basic symbols - unrecognized characters will insert a single pixel of spacing).
A classic 3x5 font popular on the canvas is included as a second bitmap font option.

Optional step: Choose a font and set the text and background color options.
MicroText 3by5 3 by 3 custom Text color: Background color:



Step 1: Write some text here. The rendered text will automatically be updated.
MicroText Output:

Step 3: Press the button when done. The rendered text will then be passed to the Turn an image into 'pixel art' section for further processing.
Process in 'pixel art' section

If you have multiple images to convert, they can be combined into a single input image for processing.
Typically you might use this if you manage multiple images for a faction or multiple factions, without having to use an image editor.
An image editor is still recommended as conflicts between layers cannot always be resolved without manual masking.

Each template must specify a template image at minimum. images not hosted on imgur.com will be loaded through the CORS proxy by default to speed up processing, as most images here are expected to come from e.g. Discord.

When done, simply press the combine layers button. Once combined, the resulting image can be set as the image for the Turn an image into 'pixel art' section.
The layer name will be displayed in the Zoom window when hovering over the image, if you need to quickly identify the source layer for a given pixel.

To make adding new layers easier, you can also paste a pxls.space template URL here. The image and its position will automatically be retrieved and the image added with the label given.

create layer from pxls.space link
ℹ️ Processing:
ℹ️ TIP: While editing, the values you enter will be checked on-the-fly. If you see a light red background, something is wrong with the value given (an image won't load, or a coordinate is not a whole number, etc.)
ℹ️ TIP: While editing, press and hold the shift key and press the up/down arrow keys to shift a layer up / down. Need to delete a layer? Just delete its name.
ℹ️ TIP: After combining layers, any layers that had loading issues will be highlighted in red in the list. Layers that did load can be highlighted in the combined image by hovering over the layer.
edit layers
clear all but my own layers clear all layers

combine layers
ℹ️ Processing:

Pixel canvas base URL:
(For pixel canvases directly compatible with pxls.space's URL handling.
Must lead to a valid-seeming [base URL]info resource. Typically your base URL should end with a slash, e.g. https://pxls.space/)

Build estimation settings Cooldown per untouched pixel
seconds
WIP For each pixeler in your group, enter the number of hours they're expected to work, separated by commas (leave blank for imaginary Pixel Perfect Pixel Person):
WIP Effective number of pixels/day:

2,880

Get pxls.space data (canvas size and palette colors) from /info

Canvas:
width (pixels):
height (pixels):

Palette:
You can quickly set up a specific palette below. This can be used to make faction-specific art, or to force matching a greyscale image with minor color artifacts to only use greyscale palette colors.
palette subset pxls.space default pxls.space greys pxls.space greens pxls.space blues pxls.space reds pxls.space pinks pxls.space yellow-browns canvas.place Include white Include darkGrey and black

Colors (RGB hex notation) and color names (text):
export The GIMP/Piskel palette file 💾 export Paint.NET palette file 💾 export Name,#Hex,R,G,B CSV file 💾
 import The GIMP/Piskel palette file

Background color: