Click or drag on the canvas to hand-edit cells —
Upload a picture. Watch it resolve into a grid.
Rasterwork is a free converter that turns any image into a craft chart. A photo is sampled down to a grid of cells, and each cell is rendered either as a pixel or as a cross-stitch worked in the nearest thread from a floss palette. Where the other tools in this series set typed words, Rasterwork sets pictures — the same grid logic, pointed at a raster image instead of a letterform.
It is part of a series by Abby Merz exploring where craft and digital design share a skeleton: the grid. Its siblings work from typed text — Meshwork into filet crochet, Dotwork into rhinestones, Stitchwork into counted cross-stitch. Its ancestor is Gridlace, a lace-inspired pixel serif font family.
Drop in an image, or start from the one loaded by default. Set the resolution and cell spacing, correct the brightness, contrast, and saturation, and in pixel mode reduce the palette to a fixed number of steps. Cross-stitch mode maps every cell to its nearest floss and can render as a symbol chart with a legend, the way a counted pattern is read. Paint, erase, or pick individual cells by hand. Transparent PNGs are respected — transparent areas stay empty in every mode. Export gives you a print-quality PNG.
The cross-stitch output is a genuine counted chart: one cell is one stitch, the symbol view distinguishes colors for working in thread, and the legend tallies each floss so you can estimate what to buy. The same grid reads just as well for pixel art, perler beads, or needlepoint.
Rasterwork is free. Exports are yours for personal and creative projects — a credit or link back is always appreciated. Images you load stay on your device and are never uploaded anywhere.
Made by Abby Merz — portfolio · posters at MERZ Print Co · Meshwork · Dotwork · Stitchwork