A lithophane is a thin plastic relief that shows a photo when light passes through it — thick where the picture is dark, thin where it is bright. This free tool turns a photo into one in your browser (nothing is uploaded), as a flat panel, a curved panel, a tea-light night light, a 360° cylinder or shaped lamp (vase, bell, pumpkin, sphere), a four-sided box, a hanging light catcher for a window, tree or keyring, a layered 3D lithophane split by depth into 2–4 panels, an animated lithophane from a GIF, a hidden-message tile that stays blank until lit, or a projection lamp that throws the photo onto the walls — and cuts the base for the light you will actually use: an LED tea light, a USB puck, a 12 V LED strip, an E26 or E12 lamp socket, a AA/AAA battery pack or a plug-in night-light base. The preview shows the lithophane back-lit before you print it.
What changed — 7 November 2026: 3.3 — photo ornaments: bauble, tree and bell outlines for the light catcher (with the hanging loop). 3.2.1 — every shape now starts from its own size and thickness (height from the photo) and nothing is remembered between visits, so a size typed once can't come back later. 3.2 — gobo discs for LED logo projectors in standard sizes, from a photo or a word. Evening: 3.1 — colour lithophanes: tinted on any printer (filaments and swap layers chosen for the photo) or full colour for multi-colour printers. Earlier: 3.0 — four new shapes: layered 3D (depth estimated in your browser, panels that add up to the photo, a shadow-box mode with guaranteed attachment), animation (GIF frames behind a sliding comb or a spinning slit sleeve), hidden message (a sealed picture inside a blank tile) and the projector lamp (halftone or silhouette, with a room preview); glue links for multi-part builds; no more display ads. Earlier the same day: 2.1 — new light catcher shape (seven outlines, hanging loop, suction-cup / ornament / keyring / ball-chain accessories), lamp profiles for the cylinder (vase, bell, modern lamp, pumpkin, sphere), bevelled and chamfered bases, lids, posts and frames, and settings memory. 5 November: first public version (2.0): five shapes, eight hardware presets with cut pockets, lit preview, multi-photo cylinders and boxes, STL/3MF zip with parts list. Written by Ned Walsch; the same author's STL splitter handles models too big for the bed.
The step-by-step guide, with Cura and Bambu Studio and the usual fixes: How to make a lithophane.
| Setting | Panels (the lithophane) | Base, lid, stand |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Standing up, as exported — the long edge on the bed. Lying flat gives stair-stepped tones and a glossy back that smears the image. | Flat, as exported |
| Layer height | 0.10–0.12 mm (0.16 mm is acceptable on a fast printer) | 0.2 mm |
| Infill | 100 %, or 4+ perimeters so the thin areas are solid | 15–20 % |
| Filament | White or natural PLA. Grey or coloured PLA dims the image; PETG works but is more translucent at the same thickness, so raise the thickest value to 3.5 mm. | Anything |
| Speed | Outer walls 25–40 mm/s; the tones are only as clean as the wall extrusion | Normal |
| Supports | None (the frame is vertical). A brim helps tall panels. | None |
| Cooling | 100 % fan after the first layers | Normal |
A lithophane is only as good as the light behind it: it needs to be even, warm and close. The presets cover the things you can buy anywhere; each one is cut into the base with its real size plus clearance, and the sizes are editable in case your unit differs.
| Preset | What it is | Pocket cut | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| LED tea light | The flameless 38 mm candle, 12-packs for a few dollars, batteries last weeks | Ø39.5 × 12 mm | Night lights, small curved panels, gifts |
| USB LED puck | A USB disc sold as a "lithophane lamp base" or under-cabinet light, ~80 mm | Ø81 × 11 mm + cable slot | Cylinder lamps, boxes, large flat panels on a stand |
| LED strip | 10 mm SMD strip, 12 V with adapter or 5 V from USB | 11 × 3.5 mm channel + exit | Boxes and cylinders — the most even light |
| E12 / E26 socket | A lamp cord kit with a socket and switch; LED bulb only | Ø10.5 nipple hole, body recess, cord channel underneath | Proper table lamps; the cylinder with a lid vent |
| 2×AA / 3×AAA pack | Battery holder with switch, wired to LEDs or a 5 V strip | Rectangular pocket + switch notch | Portable pieces, no cord |
| Plug-in night-light base | A wall night light whose cover unclips; the lithophane becomes the cover | Measured pocket | The classic wall night light |
Warm white (2700–3000 K) flatters skin tones; cool white makes a lithophane look like an X-ray. Keep LEDs — an incandescent bulb heats PLA past its glass temperature (about 60 °C) and the panel sags.
A light catcher is a lithophane that hangs rather than sits — in a window, it is lit by daylight all day, which no LED matches. The tool cuts the panel to an outline, frames it with a chamfered band and adds a loop with a 6.5 mm hole (editable). The same print becomes a window hanger, a tree ornament or a keychain depending on what you clip through the loop:
| Accessory | What to buy | Loop hole | Suggested size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Window suction cup | 30–45 mm clear suction cups with a metal hook; 10-packs | 6.5 mm | 80–150 mm panels, 0.8–3 mm; print standing, as exported flat for small ones |
| Ornament hook / ribbon | Wire ornament hooks or 3 mm ribbon | 5–6.5 mm | 60–90 mm; a circle, star or heart outline |
| Keyring | 25–30 mm split rings, or lobster-clasp keychain blanks | 6.5 mm | 40–60 mm, 2.5 mm thickest; the rounded or teardrop outline |
| Ball chain | 2.4 mm ball chain with connectors (the "dog tag" chain) | 4 mm | Any; hangs straight, turns in the light |
| No loop | — | — | A shaped tile for a stand, a magnet on the back or a coaster-style display |
Light catchers print either standing (best tones, the loop needs no support) or lying flat on the bed when they are under about 80 mm — flat printing is faster and the loop is strongest that way, but tones are a little coarser. The zip's README states which way the file was exported.
Pick Layered 3D and the tool estimates depth from the photo on your own device — the Depth Anything V2 model (small, about 27 MB, downloaded once and cached; the photo is never uploaded) — and sorts the picture into 2, 3 or 4 bands from far to near. Each band becomes a panel; the panels stand 4–40 mm apart in a stand with one slot per panel and the light behind.
Depth can also come from brightness (bright = near, or dark = near) when you would rather not download the model, or when it cannot load. Portraits, pets and anything with a clear foreground work best.
This is the "scanimation" trick in lithophane form. The frames of a GIF — or 2–6 photos, one per frame — are cut into stripes (1 mm by default) and dealt out in turn across one lithophane: frame 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4… A black comb with one slit per group shows a single frame; move it by one stripe and the next frame appears.
Each frame uses 1/N of the panel, so it is dimmer and coarser than a still lithophane: 3–4 frames, bold silhouettes (a walking figure, a bouncing ball, a blinking face) and a bright light give the best result. The preview plays the animation. Print the comb or sleeve in black PLA.
A flat tile with flat faces front and back. Inside is a sealed air pocket shaped so that the plastic the light crosses is a normal lithophane — so the tile looks blank and white until it is lit from behind, then the picture appears. It prints standing like any lithophane (the slicer leaves the pocket empty); bright areas are at least 1.4 mm of plastic (two 0.6 mm skins), so a strong light helps. In the preview, PRINTED shows the blank tile and LIT shows what appears. A proposal, a pregnancy announcement or a "look closer" gift is the usual use.
A dark shade with holes around one small light: every hole throws a spot on the walls, and together they draw the picture. Halftone makes holes sized by brightness (2–8 mm spacing; holes under 1 mm are skipped, and at least 1 mm of plastic stays between holes) — good for faces and photos. Silhouette cuts the bright regions out as shapes — stars, names, logos; islands of plastic (the middle of an O) are held by 1.6 mm stencil bridges, and nothing thinner than 1.2 mm is left. The base has a pedestal that holds an LED tea light at the shade's mid-height, so the picture lands on the walls rather than the ceiling, and the picture is mirrored by default so it reads correctly on the wall. A single small light gives sharp spots; a wide puck or a strip blurs them. The preview puts the lamp in a dark room with real shadows.
Both are printed flat with the light side down, so the colour sits in the layers the light passes through.
Light colour lithophanes with a white, even light: an LED light pad (the A4 tracing kind) or a light-box frame. A warm bulb turns blue to green and white to yellow. The same colour engine powers the filament painting tool, which makes front-lit colour pictures on one nozzle.
A gobo is the small disc in a logo or gobo projector that shapes the light: the projector shines through its cut-outs and the lens focuses them, sharp, on a wall, a floor or a ceiling — a name at a party, a logo at a shop door, a monogram on a wedding dance floor. Metal and glass gobos are made to order; with Gobo disc you print one in minutes.
| Size | Disc Ø | Image Ø | Typical projector |
|---|---|---|---|
| E | 37.5 mm | 28 mm | Small LED logo and gobo projectors, battery handhelds |
| D | 53.3 mm | 40 mm | Mid-size stage fixtures |
| M | 66 mm | 48 mm | Profile spots |
| B | 86 mm | 64 mm | Theatre ellipsoidals |
| A | 100 mm | 75 mm | Large profile spots |
| Custom | measure | measure | Anything else — some battery projectors use their own size |
The tool takes a photo (the bright parts let light through, or the dark ones) or a word, cleans it so the printer can make it — no hole under 0.6 mm, no bar under 0.8 mm — and holds every island (the middle of an O, a pupil) with a 0.8 mm bridge, as stencils do. The picture is turned 180° on the disc because a single projector lens turns it back; a notch marks the top. If your projector shows it upside down or mirrored, turn or flip the disc. Print it flat in black PETG or ASA (opaque, and more heat-tolerant than PLA), 100 % infill, with little first-layer squish so small holes stay open, and check that the gobo clip takes the thickness (1 mm default; many take up to 3 mm). Detail is limited by the nozzle: on an E-size gobo, bold silhouettes, logos and names of up to about eight letters project best.
Light through PLA falls off roughly exponentially with thickness, so a 0.8 mm area glows and a 3 mm area is nearly black. The tool maps the photo's brightness to that range — the brightest pixel gets the thinnest value, the darkest the thickest — which is the opposite of a relief you would look at front-lit. If you want the front-lit version (a coin-like relief), switch to Front-lit relief. Keep the thinnest value at or above 0.6 mm so a 0.4 mm nozzle lays at least one solid wall; raise the thickest value to 3.5–4 mm for very bright lights or translucent filament. Gamma below 1 opens up the shadows; above 1 deepens them.
No. The photo is read by your browser and turned into a mesh by JavaScript in this tab. Nothing is sent to a server; you can load the page and then switch off the network. Analytics records that a lithophane was generated and which shape and light preset were used — not the picture.
A flat panel: it prints in an hour or two and shows whether the photo has enough contrast. The night light is the next step — a 70 × 90 mm curved panel on a base cut for a 38 mm LED tea light, the most common lithophane gift. Cylinders and boxes are longer prints (four to six panels' worth of walls) and need an LED strip or a puck for even light.
As big as your printer prints standing up: the panel's height is its print height. Up to 250 mm is routine. The tool caps the mesh at 2.6 million vertices and raises the sample pitch when a size would exceed it; at 0.15 mm pitch that is about 300 × 200 mm. For something bigger, split the photo across the four sides of a box or the panels of a cylinder, or print two panels and join them in a frame.
At the standard 0.15 mm pitch a 100 mm wide panel uses 667 samples across, so any photo over about 1,000 px wide is more than enough; phone photos are downscaled to 2,400 px on load. The limit is the printer, not the photo — a 0.4 mm nozzle cannot resolve detail finer than roughly 0.3 mm anyway, which is why Fine (0.10 mm) only helps on a 0.2 mm nozzle.
Usually the photo: a picture that is mostly mid-tones gives a mid-thickness panel with little range. Raise contrast, pull gamma below 1 to open the shadows, and crop to the subject. The second cause is the light — a dim or cool LED far behind the panel. A tea light touching the base, or a strip inside a box, fixes most "muddy" prints.
Yes — pick Gobo disc, choose your projector's gobo size (E = 37.5 mm for most small LED logo projectors; D, M, B, A or a custom diameter), then a photo silhouette or a word. Holes stay at least 0.6 mm, bars 0.8 mm, islands are bridged, and the picture is turned 180° for the lens. Print it flat in black PETG or ASA at 100 % infill; if the projection is upside down or mirrored, turn or flip the disc.
A tinted one, yes: pick Colour lithophane → Tinted. The tool chooses 2–4 filaments and the layers to swap them, and gives you a 3MF with the colour changes and a swap list; you pause and change the spool at each. It reproduces photos whose colours run along one ladder (sunsets, sepia, blue-gold) — not every hue at once. Full colour needs a multi-colour printer: Colour lithophane → Full colour makes cyan, magenta and yellow layers under a white lithophane, one part per filament.
Any photo works. A classic lithophane converts it to brightness and prints in one colour, white, so the picture shows in the colour of the light. For colour, choose Colour lithophane: Tinted uses 2–4 filaments with pauses to swap them on any printer, and Full colour stacks cyan, magenta and yellow layers under a white lithophane on a multi-colour printer.
Each preset is a pocket of the part's size plus clearance: Ø39.5 × 12 mm for a 38 mm tea light, Ø81 × 11 mm plus a 7 mm cable slot for a USB puck, an 11 × 3.5 mm channel for a 10 mm LED strip, a Ø10.5 mm hole with a body recess and an underside cord channel for E12/E26 lamp kits, and rectangular pockets for AA/AAA holders and plug-in night-light bases. All the numbers are editable in step 3 before you generate, and the README in the zip repeats them.
Yes — the Layered 3D shape. Depth is estimated from the photo on your device (Depth Anything V2, no upload) and the picture is split into 2–4 panels that stand one behind the other. In the default "thin backing" mode every panel is one solid sheet and their thicknesses add up to the photo; in "shadow box" mode the panels are cut out and every piece is bridged to the frame with at least a 2.5 × 1.2 mm join, and the tool reports the weakest join.
Yes. Drop a GIF and the tool switches to Animation: it picks 2–6 frames, interlaces them in thin stripes on one lithophane and makes a black slit comb (slide it across a flat panel) or a slit sleeve (turn it around a cylinder) that shows one frame at a time. Bold, high-contrast animations work best; the preview plays it.
The tile has flat faces; the picture is a sealed air pocket inside, shaped so that the plastic in the light's path is a normal lithophane. Unlit it looks like a plain white tile; lit from behind, the picture appears. Print it standing at 100 % infill — the slicer leaves the pocket empty.
Yes — the Projector lamp. The shade is printed in dark PLA with holes sized by brightness (halftone) or with the bright shapes cut out (silhouette); a pedestal in the base holds an LED tea light at mid-height so the picture lands on the walls. Use one small light in a dark room, 0.5–2 m from a wall.
Yes — the light catcher shape. It cuts the panel to a rounded, rectangular, circular, heart, hexagon, star or teardrop outline — or, for a photo Christmas ornament, a bauble, tree or bell — adds a loop on top and exports one part. Hang it from a window suction cup with a hook, an ornament hook, a keyring or a ball chain; untick the loop for a plain shaped tile. Daylight through a window is the most even light a lithophane can get.
Yes. The cylinder shape has six profiles: straight, vase, bell, modern lamp (tapered), pumpkin (lobed) and sphere. The photo's relief is built along the profile's surface normal, so the picture reads correctly on the curve, and the base and lid are cut to the bottom and top diameters. The vase and bell lean outward only gently; the sphere's lowest ring leans about 55° from vertical, so print it with a brim and slow outer walls, or stop the profile at the modern-lamp taper if your printer dislikes overhangs.
No. Panels sit in 3 mm grooves (0.25 mm clearance per side) in the base and the lid, and the box's corner posts hold the four sides. A drop of clear CA gel in the groove — Gorilla Super Glue Gel or 3D Gloop! PLA — makes it permanent; without it, the lid lifts off to change the battery or the tea light. Keep CA accelerator away from the panels: its fumes frost the plastic. More in the glue guide.