Photos become pixel art

A stamped photo is resampled into the face’s pixel grid. The Paint canvas fineness sets how many pixels of the photo are kept.

The fineness picker

Tap the Standard ▾ dropdown in Paint’s header before stamping and select a fineness:

ChunkyStandardFineUltra fine

• Chunky: 4 pixels per grid block. Big pixels.
• Standard: 8 pixels per grid block.
• Fine: 16 pixels per grid block. Small pixels.
• Ultra fine: 64 pixels per grid block. Tiny pixels, and bigger files.

Each face sizes its own grid from its real size, so a big face gets more pixels than a small one at the same setting. A face holds up to 256 pixels across.

One pixel size per fig

A fig keeps one pixel size. When a fig opens on Chunky, Standard or Fine, every painted face is brought to that setting, so a pattern or a picture that arrived finer is dialed back to match the rest of the fig. This is on purpose: a low-resolution fig stays low-resolution on every face.

Ultra fine is the exception. On Ultra fine nothing is dialed back when the fig opens: a pattern or a picture keeps the detail it arrived with, and faces you paint store at 64 pixels per block. Use it for a poster, a sign, a label, or any flat sheet that needs a lot of detail. Changing the setting to a lower one brings the whole fig down to it.

A fig with a great many faces cannot use Ultra fine; its row reads this fig has too many faces. It suits a small fig or a flat sheet.

Stamped pixels

Stamped photo pixels are ordinary paint pixels. They export crisp with no blur, they play on a skin’s animated pages , you can draw over them with the pen, and erased spots become see-through as with any other pixel.

The dither works with the fineness: the dither sets the colors, the fineness sets the pixel size.