Pixel Art Extractor

Description

A python script to extract the original pixel art from a PNG image, even if the pixel art has been scaled, translated, or rotated.

positional arguments:
  source_image          Filepath to the source image.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b, --border          Add a white border to the image.
  -s SCALE, --scale SCALE
                        Value to scale the final image up by.

Installation and Usage

1. Install Python 3
   • Make sure to add Python to PATH during installation
2. Install all the required packages using PIP
   • pip install opencv-python
   • pip install argparse
   • pip install numpy
   • pip install matplotlib
3. Download pixel_art_extractor.py to a new folder
4. Open a terminal in the folder you have downloaded pixel_art_extractor.py to
   • In Windows, you can do this by opening file explorer and shift-right-clicking on the new folder you have just created, then clicking 'Open in Powershell'
5. In the command window, type python pixel_art_extractor.py -h and press enter to check everything is working
   • You should see a few lines of help text
6. Enter python pixel_art_extractor.py followed by a space and then the file path of the PNG source image
   • For example:
     • python pixel_art_extractor.py C:\Path\To\File\picture.png
   • If you have spaces in the filepath, you will need to add single quotes to the filepath argument:
     • python pixel_art_extractor.py 'C:\Folder With Spaces\picture.png'
7. A window of the source image will pop up, and you will be prompted to enter a pixel width value into the command line.
8. Some more windows will then pop up, showing you a debug view of the image, as well as the final pixelised image.
9. A new file should now be created called pixel_art.png in the same folder as pixel_art_extractor.py
   • WARNING: every time you run the script, it will overwrite pixel_art.png. If you want to keep the output, rename it and/or move it somewhere else
10. You can also use any combination of the following optional parameters:
    • python pixel_art_extractor.py -b C:\Path\To\File\picture.png if you would like the output to have a 1px wide border
    • python pixel_art_extractor.py -s 5 C:\Path\To\File\picture.png if you would like the output to be scaled up by a factor of 5 (this works for any positive integer)

Example

Source image:

Hough line detection and pixel detection:

Output image (transparent, and with nice 1px border, then scaled up):