How to Turn a Photo into a Diamond Painting Chart (Free)

That photo you love — your dog, your grandparents’ wedding portrait, the lake at sunset — can be a diamond painting you made yourself. Here is how photo-to-chart conversion works, what actually matters for a good result, and how to get a chart with real DMC drill codes you can shop for.

Why custom charts beat pre-made kits

Pre-made kits are someone else’s picture. The whole appeal of diamond painting your own photo is that the hours you spend placing drills produce something personal. The catch: custom-kit sellers charge real money and you wait weeks for shipping. Converting the photo yourself gets you the chart in minutes — and because drills use DMC numbering, buying the diamonds separately is straightforward.

Step by step: photo to chart

1. Upload your photo

Open the diamond painting chart maker and upload any image. Crop tightly around your subject: at drill resolution, background clutter turns into visual noise. Faces want to fill most of the frame.

2. Choose your canvas size

This decides how much detail survives. Full-coverage square drills sit on a fixed 2.5 mm grid — four drills per centimeter — so canvas size and drill count are the same choice (round drills are 2.8 mm, so the same count runs slightly larger). As a rule of thumb: 20 x 20 cm (80 x 80 drills) suits bold, simple motifs; 30 x 40 cm (120 x 160 drills) is a sensible minimum for a portrait; 40 x 50 cm gives photos room to breathe. The size calculator converts between centimeters and drill counts if you want to plan first.

3. Pick square or round drills

Square drills (2.5 mm) snap edge to edge for complete coverage — the finished piece reads like a glittering mosaic, and the community is genuinely split on the satisfying alignment ‘snap’. Round drills (2.8 mm) leave micro-gaps but are faster and more forgiving to place, which is why beginners are usually pointed at round. The converter renders a realistic preview in your chosen shape, so you see the finished texture before you commit.

4. Let the converter match DMC drill colors

Every cell is matched to the closest real DMC color using perceptual color matching — the same math used for thread matching, which keeps skin tones natural instead of drifting orange. Fewer colors is usually better: 15 to 25 DMC colors covers most photos, and every extra color is another bag of drills to buy and another tray to manage.

5. Print the chart and Drill Key

The PDF export gives you the symbol chart plus a Drill Key: every DMC code with its color name and the exact number of drills it needs. That count is your shopping list — compare it against your stash before ordering refills. Loose refills are sold in 1,000 or 2,000-count bags or by the gram (about 210-230 square drills per gram); pad each color by 10-30% like the kit makers do. One caveat worth knowing: DMC numbers are an industry guideline for drills, and exact shades vary a little between manufacturers and dye lots.

Tips from the conversion trenches

• Contrast wins. Photos with a clear light-dark structure convert dramatically better than flat, evenly-lit shots.
• Crop ruthlessly. A face at 120 drills wide beats a full-body shot at the same size every time.
• Trust the preview. The realistic preview shows the actual drill mosaic — if you cannot recognize the subject there, add canvas size or simplify the crop, because the drills will not improve on it.
• Edit before you print. The chart opens in a full editor, so you can clean up stray single drills, simplify backgrounds, or recolor areas before exporting.

Your first chart — including the PDF export — is free: try it with your own photo.