Photo Lithophane Generator

What a lithophane actually is

A lithophane is a thin printed panel whose thickness varies with the brightness of your photo. Where the picture is bright the panel is thin and light passes through; where it is dark the panel is thick and blocks the light. Lit from the front it looks like a blank white tile. Put a light behind it and the photograph appears.

That is the whole trick, and it is also the whole constraint: a lithophane only works backlit. Everything below follows from that.

How to make one

1. Upload a photo. JPG, PNG or WebP. It is converted on your device, so the image never leaves your browser.
2. Set the width in real millimetres. The height follows your photo's aspect ratio.
3. Choose the detail level. Higher resolution captures finer tonal steps and makes a heavier mesh.
4. Check it in the Backlit view, which previews the lit result rather than the raw relief.
5. Download the STL or 3MF and print it standing vertically.

Picking a photo that works

This matters more than any setting. A lithophane has a narrow thickness range to express the entire tonal range of an image, so it compresses contrast hard.

Works well	Works badly
High contrast, clear subject	Flat, evenly lit, low contrast
Simple or plain background	Busy background competing with the subject
Faces and pets, cropped tight	Wide landscapes with small detail
Silhouettes and strong shapes	Very dark photos, which go uniformly thick

Crop before you upload. A face filling the frame reads far better than the same face at a quarter of the frame, because every millimetre of panel is then spent on detail you care about.

Recommended print settings

Setting	Use	Why
Orientation	Vertical, standing up	Layer lines run across the image instead of along it, and no supports are needed
Layer height	0.1 to 0.12 mm	Layer height is your tonal resolution here, not just surface finish
Infill	100%	Any gap scatters light and shows as a grey haze
Line width	0.4 mm	Keeps the thin bright areas solid
Material	White or natural PLA	Diffuses evenly. Avoid silk and sparkle filaments, which scatter unpredictably
Speed	Slower than usual	Thin walls printed fast under-extrude, which shows up as banding

What people make with them

• Night lights and lamp panels, the classic use, since there is already a light source.
• Photo gifts mounted in a frame with an LED panel behind.
• Keyrings and bag tags, small enough to hold up to a window.
• Candle holders, where the flame is the backlight.
• Window hangers, using daylight instead of an LED.

Common problems

It looks flat and washed out

Almost always infill below 100%, or too small a thickness range so the darks never get properly dark. Print solid and widen the range. If the print is right, try a brighter backlight before reprinting: a dim light flattens even a good lithophane.

I can see banding or stripes across the image

Under-extrusion on the thin sections, usually from printing too fast. Slow down and check the flow rate. Because a lithophane is nearly all thin wall, it exposes extrusion problems a normal print would hide.

The detail is mushy

Either the source photo was too small or too low contrast, or the layer height is too coarse. Layer height is the tonal resolution: at 0.2 mm you have half the tonal steps you would have at 0.1 mm.

It warped or curled off the bed

A tall thin panel has a small footprint and a lot of leverage. Use a brim, keep the door shut and draughts away, and if it keeps happening add a small printed foot or print it in a frame.

Can I print it lying flat instead?

You can, but it will look worse. Flat printing runs the layer lines along the image and needs the detail to be expressed in Z, where you have far fewer steps to work with. Vertical is the right default.

Related tools

A lithophane is one way to turn a picture into a physical object. These are the others here: