●
3DAI
Free · runs in your browser · no signup

Convert JPG to STL: Photo to 3D Relief

A JPG has no transparency, so this tool reads brightness instead. Relief turns the photo into a raised plaque where light parts stand taller. Extrude cuts out everything darker than a threshold, which suits scanned drawings, signatures and black-on-white logos.

Loading the tool...

How to use it

  1. 1

    Drop a JPG

    Photos, scans and drawings. JPEG, PNG and WEBP all work.

  2. 2

    Pick relief or extrude

    Relief for photos, Extrude for dark shapes on a light background.

  3. 3

    Tune it

    Set width, base and relief depth. Keep smoothing on to hide JPEG blocks.

  4. 4

    Download

    Save the STL and print it flat, face up.

Getting a clean result from a JPG

JPEG noiseCompression adds small blocks and speckles that become bumps. "Smooth out JPEG noise" blurs them slightly before building.
ThresholdFor Extrude, raise it to include greys, lower it to keep only the darkest lines.
ContrastFlat, grey photos make flat reliefs. Boost contrast in any photo editor first for more depth.
Light high or dark highLight-high suits most photos. Dark-high works for line drawings, where the lines should stand out.

Printing a photo relief

Print reliefs flat and face up with a small layer height (0.12 mm or less) so the slopes look smooth. A relief depth of 2 to 4 mm on a 1.5 mm base is a good start for a 100 mm plaque. Painting the raised parts or using a dark filament with a light top brings out the detail.

Good to know

  • This makes a flat relief, not a full 3D object. For that, use the AI Image to STL generator.
  • Faces in relief can look odd because brightness is not real depth. For portraits a lithophane often reads better.
  • Detail is capped at 800 sample points on the longest side.

Want a full 3D model instead?

This page makes flat, layered prints from an image or text. For a real 3D object (a figure, a vase, a toy) our AI generators build one from a photo, a sketch or a sentence, with an STL download. They use credits; this tool does not.

Image to STL →A full 3D object from one photo.Sketch to STL →Draw it, get a printable model.Text to STL →Describe it in a sentence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Drop the JPG above, choose Relief (brightness to height) or Extrude (dark shapes become solid), set the size in mm, and download. It all happens in your browser.
PNG can carry transparency, which gives a clean cut-out. JPG cannot, so the shape comes from brightness or a darkness threshold, and smoothing helps remove compression noise.
It becomes a relief: a plaque whose height follows the photo's brightness. It does not know the real depth of the scene. For a full object, our AI Image to STL builds one from a single photo.
Yes, with the free Lithophane Generator, which is tuned for thin backlit panels.
Any slicer that reads STL, including Cura, PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer and Simplify3D.
No. The page reads your file and builds the model inside your browser with the open-source three.js library. Nothing is sent to our servers, there is no account and no credits are used. Closing the tab discards everything.