Add a Grid to a Photo

The Fastest Way to Put a Grid on a Photo

1. Drop your photo into the tool: JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 20 MB. Phone snapshots work; the file picker on iPhone and Android offers the camera roll directly.
2. Set the grid: cell size in centimeters or inches, line color that stays visible on your photo, and drag the grid into position if a line crosses something important.
3. Download. PNG for screens and for apps like Procreate, where the gridded photo becomes a layer you draw on, which is the workflow on grid overlays for digital artists. PDF prints at exact size, so settle before you print whether the file has the pixels for the paper you have in mind: how to check the real print size of a reference.

Why Put a Grid on a Photo at All?

Almost always: to draw from it. The grid turns a photo into a measured reference: you copy one cell at a time and the proportions come out right. How that technique works is on our grid for drawing page. Teachers also grid photos for classroom exercises and print the matching blank sheets from the grid worksheet maker. Embroiderers and mural painters use gridded photos as counted patterns and scaling templates; for a wall, the poster print grid tiles the picture across as many sheets as the size needs.

What to Use It With

This page is the short route, and three neighbors take it further. When the lines vanish into a dark photo, the grid generator lets you set style, thickness, color and opacity until they read. When the cells have to match a sheet you already own, the grid maker for drawing works backwards from the paper size instead. And when you want to say that the corner of the mouth sits in D5 rather than point at it, the image grid maker puts letters across the top and numbers down the side.