Cartoon Yourself — Photo to Cartoon

Cartoon yourself in seconds

Want a fun avatar or a comic-style version of a holiday photo? This photo to cartoon tool turns a selfie, a group shot or a pet picture into a cartoon with flat color areas and dark ink outlines. The preview updates as you move the sliders, so you can go from a subtle comic look to a bold poster style without any design skills.

Unlike many cartoon apps, nothing is uploaded and there is no signup or watermark. The effect runs on a canvas in your browser, so your face never ends up on someone else's server. JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF and BMP photos all work.

How the cartoon effect works

First the photo is smoothed to remove skin texture and noise. Then every color channel is reduced to a few levels — that posterization creates the flat color bands typical of comics and animation. Finally a Sobel edge detector finds strong contours and draws them as black lines on top. Colors per channel controls how many shades remain, smoothing controls how flat the areas are, outline amount decides how many edges become ink lines, and line thickness makes them bolder.

Ideas and tips

Use a well-lit photo with a plain background for the cleanest result. For a profile picture, crop the cartoon with the circle crop tool; to remove the background first, use the background remover. Fewer colors and thicker lines look great on stickers and T-shirts, while more colors and thin lines keep faces recognizable. Prefer a hand-drawn look? Switch the style to a pencil sketch, or open the photo to sketch page.