Split image into puzzle pieces

Pieces with tabs, not squares

Cutting a picture into a grid gives rectangles; a jigsaw needs every shared edge to carry a tab on one side and the matching blank on the other. This page draws those edges. Each internal edge is a short chain of curves with a rounded head and a narrow neck, sticking out to one side or the other at random, with its position and size varied slightly so the pieces do not all look stamped from one die. Edges on the outside of the picture stay straight, as they do in a boxed puzzle.

What you get is two things. The first is one PNG per piece: the picture inside the piece’s outline, everything outside it fully transparent, in a file just large enough to hold the tabs. That is the form a digital puzzle, a game, a slide animation or a social post wants. The second is a cut sheet: the whole picture with every cut line on top, as an SVG that a cutting machine or a vector editor can read and as a one-page PDF ready to print.

A worked example

Built with the default settings when this page was generated: a 1200 × 800 picture asked for 24 pieces becomes 6 × 4 = 24 pieces, each cell 200 × 200 pixels, with tabs at 22 % of an edge and seed 2026. The piece in row 2, column 2 owns a 200 × 200 cell and its file is 297 × 248 once its tabs are included; the largest file in this set is piece 15 at 255 × 306.

The cut lines of the worked example; the dashed box is piece 8’s file, tabs included.

Choosing a count and a tab size

Type any count from 4 to 300. Pieces sit in rows and columns, so the board picks the grid whose count is nearest yours while keeping each piece close to square for this picture’s shape, and it prints the count it will really cut. Tab size runs from 10 to 30 % of an edge: small tabs read as a gentle puzzle and are easier to cut by hand, large tabs lock together more firmly and look more like a commercial jigsaw.

The seed decides which way each tab points and how each is varied. Keep it and the puzzle is reproducible — handy when one piece file goes missing, or when a set of puzzles from the same picture must match. Press New shapes for a different arrangement with everything else unchanged.

Printing the cut sheet

The PDF puts the picture on one sheet of A4, A3 or Letter with a 10 mm margin, landscape for a wide picture, and draws each cut line as a black line over a thin white one so it shows on dark and light areas alike. A one-line note on the sheet records the piece count and the seed. Print at actual size; the board shows the printed piece width before you save, so a 100-piece puzzle on A4 does not surprise you with fingernail-sized pieces.

A home-printed sheet is a cut guide, not a die-cut puzzle: the pieces are only as good as the knife and the card behind the print. Very small pieces and very large tabs are hard to cut cleanly by hand.

How to do it here

Open the picture. Drop it, browse for it, or paste it; the cut lines are drawn over it straight away.
Choose the piece count. Pick 12, 24, 48 or 100, or type any count; the grid actually cut is printed beside it.
Shape the tabs. Set the tab size and keep the seed, or press New shapes for a different set.
Save. Save one ZIP with a PNG per piece, pieces.json, and the SVG and PDF cut sheet.

Questions that come up

Why is each piece file bigger than its share of the picture?

Because the tabs stick out. A piece owns one cell of the grid, but its tabs reach into the neighbouring cells, so its file is the bounding box of the whole shape — cell plus tabs — with everything outside the piece left fully transparent. pieces.json records where each box sits on the picture, so the pieces can be placed back exactly.

I asked for 50 pieces and got 49.

Pieces sit in a grid, and the grid is chosen so that each piece stays close to square for your picture: on a square photo 50 becomes 7 × 7 = 49, on a 16:9 photo it becomes 10 × 5 = 50. The count actually cut is printed beside the field before anything is written.

Can I make the same puzzle again?

Yes. The shapes come from a seeded generator: the same picture size, piece count, tab size and seed always give exactly the same pieces. The seed is shown on the board, written on the cut sheet and in read-me.txt. Press New shapes for a different set.

Is the printed sheet a real jigsaw?

It is a cut guide, not a die-cut puzzle. The sheet prints the picture with every cut line on top; for a usable puzzle, mount the print on card and cut along the lines with a craft knife. A cutting machine can follow the SVG's cut path instead.

How big will the pieces be on paper?

The PDF places the picture on A4, A3 or Letter with a 10 mm margin, turned landscape when the picture is wide, and the board prints the resulting piece width in centimetres. Print it at 100 % / actual size; fit-to-page shrinks every piece.

Do two neighbouring pieces really fit?

Each shared edge is generated once and both neighbours use that same curve — one walking it forwards, the other backwards — so a tab and its blank are the identical line. Laid back at the positions in pieces.json, the pieces cover the picture with no gap and no overlap apart from the soft anti-aliased edge.

Is my photo uploaded?

No. The pieces, the SVG and the PDF are all drawn and packed inside this tab and saved straight to your downloads.

Split an image into puzzle piecesTurn a photo into a jigsaw.