How to Create a Pixelated Effect in Illustrator

Adobe's Illustrator graphic design program is known for its ability to allow users to create ornate and highly customized digital artwork from scratch. The program enables you to design logos, posters and other artwork starting with rudimentary shapes that you can morph into elaborate paths and objects. The program is also adept at making digital artwork out of rasterized images such as photographs, giving you the ability to turn a photo into a stylized graphic. Create a custom pixelated version of your raster images in just a few minutes.

Things You'll Need

• Raster image

Instructions

1. Place your raster image on your Illustrator artboard by selecting "File," selecting "Place" from the control menu atop your screen, then locating the image in the file directory. Resize by clicking and dragging on the image's corner anchor points and reposition as necessary by clicking and dragging inside the borders of the image using the "Selection Tool" from the "Tools" panel at the left of the application.

2. Select "Object," then "Create Object Mosaic" from the control menu. Set the "Tile Spacing" and "Number of Tiles" fields according to the size of your image and how pixelated you want it to appear, with a smaller number of tiles resulting in a more pixelated image. Choose your color preference in the "Options" section below and click "OK." Your image will take on a pixelated effect.

3. Choose "File"-->"Save As" from the control menu to save your pixelated Illustrator image.

References

• Illustrator Support: Place (import) files
• Illustrator Support: Create a mosaic