How Emoji Art Works
Turning a photo into a mosaic of emojis happens entirely in your browser. Here’s the magic behind the scenes:
Upload & Scale
You pick an image from your device. The tool resizes it so that each “pixel” becomes one emoji. You control the detail with the Columns slider – more columns mean more emojis and finer detail.
Average Colour per Cell
The resized image is divided into a grid of tiny squares. For each square, we calculate the average colour by averaging all the red, green and blue values of the pixels inside it. This gives us a single colour that represents that whole cell.
Emoji Colour Palette
We have a large library of emojis (hearts, fruit, faces, shapes, etc.). Each emoji is drawn on a hidden canvas and its own average colour is measured – exactly the same way as the image cells. This creates a palette of emoji “inks” with known colours.
Perceptual Colour Matching
For each cell, we find the emoji whose colour is closest to the cell’s average. We don’t just compare simple RGB numbers – we use a colour space called CIE Lab, which matches human vision better. The distance between two colours is calculated with a formula called Delta‑E 94. The emoji with the smallest perceptual difference is chosen.
Drawing the Mosaic
Once every cell has an assigned emoji, we draw them onto a large canvas. You can choose to fill the background with the exact cell colour or leave it transparent. The result is a mosaic that, from a distance, looks just like your original photo – but up close, you see hundreds of tiny emojis.
Privacy & Output
Everything runs in your browser. Your image is never uploaded to any server. You can download the mosaic as a PNG image, or copy the raw text emoji art to paste anywhere you like.