Creative Accounting? Excel Doubles as a Pixel Art Editor

Believe it or not, Microsoft Excel—best known for its number crunching and data organization capabilities—can also be used to create pixel art. Whether you’re a fan of retro graphics or just looking to explore a new creative outlet, Excel provides a surprisingly powerful canvas for pixel-based design. Let’s dive into how you can use Excel to create your very own pixel art, from basic designs to importing full images with the help of an add-in.

While there are several ways to make pixel art in Excel, let’s start with the most basic. We will cover automatic methods a little later. Note that Excel keyboard shortcuts help with just about every step of the setup process.

Transforming a Workbook into a Canvas

If you want to transform Microsoft Excel into a canvas for pixel art, you’ll need to make a few adjustments to the default settings. The canvas is made up of cells, each of which act as a single pixel in your artwork.

1. Select the Entire Worksheet: Click the button at the top left corner of the worksheet to highlight all the cells.
2. Resize the Cells: To make each cell a square (essentially turning each one into a pixel), adjust the row height and column width so they match. A good starting point is setting the row height and column width to 20. To do this:

• Right-click the column label, choose “Column Width,” and set it to 20.
• Similarly, right-click the row label, select “Row Height,” and set it to 20.

Now, your worksheet is set up to represent a pixel art canvas. Every cell is now a tiny square, ready to be filled with color. This initial setup allows you to click and drag to fill cells and, if you’re a spreadsheet nerd like us, use formulas to do the work for you. Excel power users can even use macros for this.

Filling the Pixel Cells

Once the canvas is set, it’s time to start drawing.

Select the Fill Color: Choose the fill color button from the Excel toolbar. Pick a color from the palette, such as red, and start filling in the individual cells to create your design. You can zoom in on the cells by holding Ctrl and scrolling your mouse wheel for a finer level of control.

For example, you can create simple shapes like squares, circles, or other basic pixel designs.

Using Conditional Formatting for Pixel Art

Excel offers another method for creating pixel art: using Conditional Formatting. This approach uses numbers to represent different colors, and then a rule to automatically fill those cells with the desired color. Here’s how you do it:

1. Create a New Tab: Add a new sheet in your workbook (e.g., “Pixel 2”).
2. Set Up Your Canvas: Resize the cells in the new sheet to the size you want (for example, 10×10), just like in Step 1.
3. Enter Numbers: Instead of directly coloring the cells, type numbers into the cells. For instance, you could type 1 to indicate a colored pixel.
4. Apply Conditional Formatting:

• Select all the cells in the worksheet.
• Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule.
• Choose “Format only cells that contain” and set it to “equal to 1”.
• Pick a color (like red) for the cells with a 1 in them, and click OK.

Now, you’ll see that the cells with a 1 will be colored in red, while others remain empty. To hide the numbers (such as the 1), you can format the text color to match the background color (e.g., white). This method lets you create pixel art using numbers as the “brush strokes.”

Note that you can add more complexity to your instructions. In Google Sheets, for example, you can adjust conditional formatting based on the contents of another cell. That means that cells in column B can change color based on the values in column A. Neat!

Importing Pixel Art with an Add-In

Here’s the automated technique I mentioned earlier. It takes a little more time for setup, and it requires external add-ons. Once you’ve got it set up, the Excel add-on automatically generates pixelated versions of your images. . . right in the spreadsheet. Here’s how to do it:

1. Install the Pixel Art Add-In: Visit the Microsoft App Store, search for “pixel art,” and install the relevant add-in for Excel. After installation, you’ll find a new icon in your Excel toolbar.
2. Import an Image: Find an image on the internet or from your files. For instance, you can search for a picture of a 1969 Corvette.
3. Upload the Image: Right-click the image, choose “Save As,” and save it to your computer. Then, go back to Excel and use the Pixel Art Add-In to upload the file.

When the image is uploaded, Excel will automatically adjust the cell sizes and convert the image into a pixelated version. For example, the picture of the Corvette will be broken down into pixel-sized blocks, each representing a single “pixel” of the original image.

Once your image is imported as pixel art, you can zoom in to see the individual pixels more clearly. You can also use Excel’s Fill Color feature to inspect or modify colors by checking the RGB or Hex values. To do this, simply right-click a cell, select “Format Cells,” and go to the “Fill” tab. Then, click “More Colors” to see the exact color codes for each pixel.

Summary

Creating pixel art in Excel may seem unconventional at first, but it’s a surprisingly effective way to make digital artwork. Whether you’re creating simple designs with colored cells or transforming full images into pixelated masterpieces with an add-in, Excel offers a range of tools for pixel art enthusiasts.