Custom Minecraft painting maker: turn any picture into a Java Edition painting
Turn a photo into a custom painting for Java Edition: pick its size in blocks, crop it, and download a data pack, a resource pack and the /give command.
Since Java Edition 1.21, a world can have paintings of its own: a data pack tells the game a painting exists and how many blocks it covers, and a resource pack holds its picture. This maker writes both from any photo or drawing, at any size from 1 × 1 up to 16 × 16 blocks, and gives you the command to get it in your hand. Everything happens in this page: your picture is never uploaded.
How to make a painting
- Choose a picture, drop it on the box, or paste it. Until you do, a sample picture shows how the result looks.
- Pick the size in blocks with a preset, or type the width and height. A 4 × 3 painting covers twelve blocks of wall.
- Drag the preview to choose which part of the picture shows, and zoom in with the wheel, a pinch or the slider.
- Choose the pixels per block. 16 looks like the game's own paintings; 32 and 64 keep faces and text sharper. For a pixel-art look, choose fewer colors.
- Give the painting a title and, if you like, an author. They show in the tooltip when you hold the painting. The id is made from the title.
- Download the data pack and the resource pack. You need both.
Installing it in a single-player world
- Put the data pack zip, as it is, in the world's datapacks folder. From the world list, select the world, choose Edit, then Open World Folder. For a new world, add the zip under Data Packs on the Create New World screen.
- Put the resource pack zip in the resourcepacks folder: Options, Resource Packs, Open Pack Folder. Then move the pack to the Selected side.
- If the world was open, leave it and open it again. New paintings are read when the world loads; /reload is not enough.
- With cheats on, run the /give command shown by the tool. In Creative mode, you can also find the painting with the other paintings in the creative inventory.
Installing it on a server
- Copy the data pack zip into the datapacks folder inside the server's world folder (the folder named by level-name in server.properties, world by default).
- Restart the server, so it loads the new painting.
- Give players the picture. Each player can put the resource pack in their own resourcepacks folder, or you can upload the zip to a place with a direct download link and add resource-pack and resource-pack-sha1 to server.properties. The tool shows both lines after you download the resource pack; require-resource-pack=true makes it required.
- As an operator, run the /give command, or let players find the painting at random.
Choosing a size and a resolution
- Match the size to the picture: wide photos suit 2 × 1 or 4 × 2, portraits 1 × 2, and screenshots look right at 16 × 9.
- The picture is always cropped to the painting's shape, so nothing is stretched. Move the crop to keep what matters in view.
- Pixels per block sets the picture's sharpness. At 16, a 4 × 3 painting is 64 × 48 pixels, close to the game's style. At 64 it is 256 × 192, enough for faces and small text.
- Turn on the block lines to see where each block of the wall falls, which helps when a face or a word sits on an edge.
- Fewer colors flatten a photo into bands of color, the way hand-drawn pixel art looks.
Questions
Will my painting appear when I place a plain painting?
Yes, if the box for it is checked: the data pack adds it to the list the game picks from. The game chooses among the biggest paintings that fit the empty wall, so a large one appears only when there is room for it, and it shares chances with the game's own paintings. To hang it exactly where you want, use the /give command.
Why do I see a black and purple pattern?
That means the game knows the painting but has no picture for it: the resource pack is missing or not selected. On a server, every player needs it, either installed by hand or sent by the server.
The game says the pack was made for an older version. Does it still work?
Usually, yes. The packs declare the versions they were checked with, from 1.21 to the newest at the time of writing. When a newer version comes out, the game may show that note; the painting format has stayed the same since title and author were added in 1.21.2.
Can I make several paintings?
Yes. Make each one with a different title, so each gets its own id, and install each pair of packs. Using the same namespace for all of them keeps your paintings together.
Does it work on Bedrock Edition?
No. Bedrock Edition does not read painting variants from packs. Its resource packs can only repaint the paintings the game already has, which replaces one of them for everyone in the world; this maker's files are for Java Edition.
For other picture projects, the pixel art generator turns a picture into blocks, and the banner designer makes banner patterns. If you are writing your own packs, the pack format page lists the numbers for each version. See all tools and the guides.