Lithophane maker

A lithophane is a thin panel whose thickness changes with the brightness of a photo. Hold it up to a window or put a light behind it, and the thick parts block more light while the thin parts let it through. The picture appears out of what looks like a plain white plastic tile. They make great gifts, night lights and window decorations, and a 3D printer is the easiest way to make one.

This lithophane maker turns any photo into a printable STL. You choose the shape (flat panel, curved panel, full cylinder for a lamp, or a heart), the size and the thickness range, and the 3D preview shows the result straight away. Everything is computed on your device, so your family photos are never uploaded.

How to make a lithophane

1. Choose a photo. Tap the box and pick a JPG, PNG or WebP. Crop it on your phone first if you want a particular part of the picture.
2. Pick the shape. Flat panels are the easiest to print. Curved panels stand on their own. A cylinder makes a lampshade you can put over an LED tea light. The heart shape trims the picture to a heart outline.
3. Adjust if needed. Under More options set the width, the thickest and thinnest points, the detail level and the frame width. The preview updates after each change.
4. Download the STL and slice it with the settings below.

How thickness becomes a picture

Every pixel of the photo becomes a column on the panel. A black pixel gets the full thickness you set under Thickest (3 mm by default) and a white pixel gets the minimum under Thinnest (0.8 mm). Everything in between is spread evenly. With white PLA, 3 mm blocks almost all light from a normal lamp and 0.8 mm lets most of it through, which gives a good range of greys.

If your lithophane looks washed out, increase the thickest value to 3.2 or 3.5 mm. If the dark areas look like solid black blobs with no detail, lower it to 2.4 mm. The thinnest value should stay at or above 0.6 mm, or the thin areas become fragile and may show holes.

Invert flips the rule so dark areas become thin. That is rarely what you want for a lithophane, but it is useful for relief carvings lit from the front.

Detail level and file size

The Detail setting is the number of pixels per millimetre. At the default of 4, every pixel is 0.25 mm wide, which matches what a 0.4 mm nozzle can show when the panel is printed upright. Going higher makes the STL much bigger but rarely improves a printed lithophane; going lower (2 or 3) gives a faster print with a slightly softer picture.

A 100 mm wide panel at detail 4 has about 120,000 pixels, which becomes roughly half a million triangles. That is a 20 to 25 MB STL, completely normal for lithophanes, and every slicer handles it. The maker caps very large pictures so the file never gets out of hand on a phone.

Choosing a shape

Print settings for a great lithophane

Orientation matters more than anything else. Stand the panel upright on its bottom edge so the nozzle draws the picture in the X and Y directions, where printers are most accurate. Printed flat, the thickness changes come out as visible layer steps and the picture looks blocky.

• Filament: white or natural PLA. Coloured filament works but cuts the contrast.
• Infill: 100%. Any infill pattern shows up as a shadow grid in the light.
• Layer height: 0.12 mm or less. 0.08 mm gives the finest detail.
• Speed: slow the outer wall down to reduce ringing, which shows as faint stripes.
• Brim: add a 5 to 8 mm brim for flat panels taller than about 80 mm.

Fixing common lithophane problems

The picture is too dark even with light behind it

The panel is too thick. Lower Thickest to 2.6 mm and keep Thinnest at 0.8 mm, or use a brighter light source.

There are holes in the bright areas

The thinnest areas are below what your printer can close. Raise Thinnest to 0.9 or 1.0 mm.

The picture is back to front

Some people view their panels from the back. Tick Mirror the picture under More options so text and faces read the right way from the side you look at.

Updated November 2026 · How these tools work