Clean up stray pixels
Clean up stray pixels removes lonely odd beads so blocks look cleaner and are easier to place. Keep it on for low-contrast, noisy, or busy-background photos.
Turn it off only when you want speckled texture on purpose. If Materials suddenly lists many 1–2 bead colors, speckles are consuming the palette — re-enable cleanup or lower Max colors.
Smooth gradients (dithering)
Smooth gradients (dithering) mixes colors to fake skies, skin, and highlights, reducing banding. For hand-placed beads, that mix means a checker/noise pattern that is slower and easier to mis-place.
Default advice: leave dither off for most Perler charts; enable only when banding is harsh and you accept a noisier build. If it looks too busy, lower colors or disable dither before adding more colors.
With Max colors
- Lower Max colors;
- Keep cleanup on;
- Leave dither off initially;
- Only then nudge colors up or briefly test dither.
Clean the subject with Remove background first if needed. Brands: brand palettes.
Hand-edit afterward
Use Edit (paint, fill, erase, Replace all) or the designer. Recheck the materials list before print.