Usually, designers try to reduce pixelation in their images, and keep designs crisp and clean. The Pixelated look can actually add a flare of personality to a design however. In this tutorial, I’ll show you a quick and easy way to pixelate your graphics.
Pixelation
I recently had someone express interest in creating Pixelated images. If you’re not familiar with the term, Pixelation is the result of stretching raster graphics or bitmaps. When stretching image data beyond it’s maximum size, the individual pixels which make up an image can be easily seen as they are also increased in size.
Example of Pixelation:
Typically, Pixelation is a bad thing to have in practice. Designers and Photographers usually want ther images crisp and smooth as shown in the upper left frame.
However, Pixelation can also be used as a technique which enhances compositions, and has become a style of it’s own.
How To Pixelate a Graphic
There are a few ways to go about pixelating images. The easiest way is probably by putting the Mosaic Filter to good use (especially when you want to work with individual layers).
Open up a graphic you’d like to work with:
Select the layer you’d like to Pixelate. Apply the Mosaic Filter onto this layer (Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic). A Mosaic Settings Box will pop up. Move the slider to adjust the size of the pixels.
That’s really all it takes to pixelate a graphic in Adobe Photoshop!
Saving Images for the Web
3D Pixel Stretch Effects
Photoshop’s Filters
Drawing and Type Tools
Thanks David, I don’t know if this was directed towards me, but i did express intrest. This is really what I was looking for and I have been experimenting with it. Thanks alot for the tut one more time.
Great tutorial, pixelation is also good if you want to censor something. =P
Wow, I’ve read a couple of your tutorials and they’re a great help. I never knew that you could do so much in photoshop.
hahaha wow… man i thought it would be much harder to pixelate than just click Filter-Pixelate-Mosaic. tyvm. i probably wouldve done something of my own to pixelate -_-
Wow, Really Great Effect!! thanks a lot
you might get a sharper pixelation that resembles old 8-bit video games by scaling down your image, zooming in and taking a big screencap. the mosaic effect gives those fuzzy edges that i hate. alternatively you could just go the pixel art route and do it square by square.
1step = 1awsome tutorial thank’s alot