Free Golden Spiral Grid Generator
Place the golden spiral where your subject actually is instantly with our 100% free grid generator. Upload any photo, set the eye in any corner, show or hide the subdivision rectangles, then export SVG or 600 DPI in seconds. No signup, no downloads needed. Trusted by 60,000+ artists worldwide.
Quarter arcs through nested squares
A golden rectangle divided into a square and a smaller golden rectangle, repeatedly, with a quarter circle drawn in each square. The arcs join into the spiral. It is built from squares, which is why it can be placed exactly rather than sketched.
1 control, not a fixed picture
Toggle subdivision rectangles. Every one is live on the canvas.
Stacks with composition & photography
Overlays combine, each carrying its own transform, so this one can sit under or over rule of thirds, golden spiral and armature (14-line), and 15 more in the same set.
Arcs as paths
SVG export keeps the quarter circles as true arcs, which matters because a spiral shows raster stepping sooner than straight lines do. PNG, JPG and PDF up to 600 DPI as well.
| Ctrl + Z | Undo |
| Ctrl + Y | Redo |
| Esc | Deselect overlay |
| Alt + drag | Free positioning (no snap) |
| Ctrl + scroll | Zoom canvas |
| Ctrl + P | |
| ? | Show this help |
Seven quarter-arcs across a golden-rectangle subdivision, with the eye placeable in any of the four corners — because a spiral that only ever winds into the bottom left is a decoration, not a composition tool.
The fibonacci spiral generator draws one of the 82 composition overlays in Grid Maker Pro, and the rest stack on the same image.
- 7 arcs
- 4 eye positions
- SVG + 600 DPI export
- Nothing uploaded
What is a golden spiral?
The Fibonacci spiral generator is a free browser tool that draws the golden-rectangle spiral over a photograph or blank canvas. It subdivides the frame by 1/φ — 0.618 — seven times, and lays a quarter-arc across each of the seven rectangles so they join into a continuous curve winding into one corner. That corner is yours to choose: a single control flips the whole construction horizontally, vertically or both, putting the spiral's eye in any of the four corners. The subdivision rectangles can be shown under the arcs, and export is SVG or raster to 600 DPI.
How to use the Fibonacci spiral
The subdivision rectangles first, then the arc that runs through them, fitted to your own photograph rather than to a stock frame. Flip it to whichever corner the subject wants.
Load the frame
The golden spiral needs something to sit on: drop in the photograph you are cropping or judging, or start on the blank canvas at your paper size if you are composing something before it exists.
JPG · PNG · GIF · WEBP
Put the eye in the right corner
Pick which corner the spiral winds into so that its tightest turn lands on your subject. This is the whole technique — a spiral fixed to one corner will agree with a quarter of your photographs and mislead you about the rest.
Subdivision rectangles
Show the rectangles if you need them, then export
Turn the subdivision rectangles on to see the tiling the curve comes from, which makes the relationship between the spiral and the frame's proportions legible. Export SVG for vector, or a raster up to 600 DPI.
PNG · JPG · PDF · SVG · up to 600 DPI
Three steps, about a minute. No signup, no upload.
What the Fibonacci Spiral Generator does
Built from 1/φ, not traced
The subdivision is computed from 0.6180339887 at every step, so each rectangle is exactly φ times the next. A traced spiral image drifts a percent or two per turn, and the drift is invisible until you scale it to print.
Four corners, one control
The eye goes wherever your subject is. Most spiral overlays are a fixed image winding into one corner, which means three quarters of the time you are mentally flipping it — and mentally flipping a curve is exactly the thing eyes are bad at.
The tiling, visible
Turn the subdivision rectangles on and the spiral stops being a mysterious curve laid on a photograph. You can see it is seven nested golden rectangles, each with one quarter-arc in it, which is what makes the construction teachable.
Over your own frame
The spiral is drawn on the canvas your photograph is on, with its own transform. You can scale and rotate it to test a crop rather than comparing your picture against a diagram in another tab.
Readable over a busy photograph
Per-overlay colour and opacity, and an eyedropper that samples the image, so the curve reads over a dark corner without being an opaque white line across the subject.
Vector out
SVG export gives real curves rather than a resampled bitmap, which matters for a shape that is nothing but curvature. Raster export is sized from your paper format and DPI, up to 600.
Golden spiral examples: four ways the spiral reads
Golden spiral vs a downloaded spiral PNG vs a raw developer's built-in guide
| Option | Constructed from φ | Eye in any corner | Vector export | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grid Maker Prothis tool | Yes1/φ at every step | All four, one control | SVG + raster to 600 DPI | Free |
| A downloaded spiral PNG | Unknown provenance | Only by flipping in an editor | No | Free |
| A raw developer's built-in guide | Yes | Usually | Only within that program | Free or paid |
| Drawing it with a compass | Yesif the subdivision is exact | Yes | No | Time |
Who a golden spiral is for: frames with a direction in them
How a golden spiral works — Seven arcs, one irrational number, and the difference between a golden spiral and this one
The Fibonacci spiral is the most reproduced and least understood of the 82 composition overlays. Most of what circulates is a stock PNG of unknown provenance. Here is what this one is actually built from, how it differs from the true golden spiral, and the one honest thing it is good for.
Start with a rectangle and cut it at 0.618 of its width. You are left with a square-ish piece and a smaller rectangle whose proportions are the same as the original. Do it again to the smaller one. Then again. The overlay does this seven times, producing seven nested rectangles, each exactly φ times larger than the next.
Then lay one quarter-arc across each rectangle, corner to corner, choosing the corner so that each arc's end meets the next arc's start. Seven arcs join into one continuous curve that winds tighter and tighter into the smallest rectangle. That corner — the point the curve is heading for and never reaches — is called the eye.
The spiral is not a rule about where to put things. It is a picture of how a frame subdivides itself, and the curve is just the shortest way to draw the sequence.
This is not, strictly, a golden spiral
A true golden spiral is a logarithmic curve, r = aebθ, whose radius grows by exactly φ every quarter turn. It is smooth everywhere, it has no corners, and it never repeats. What almost every overlay draws — including this one — is the quarter-arc approximation: seven circular arcs stitched together, each one tangent to the next at the join.
The difference is real but small, and it is worth naming rather than glossing over. The arc version deviates from the true logarithmic curve by a fraction of a percent across a frame, and it has curvature discontinuities at the joins that a mathematician would object to and a photograph will never reveal. It is drawn this way because it is the version that is constructible from the rectangles, which is the version that has been reproduced since the seventeenth century.
The golden spiral overlay page sets out the construction in full, and the composition grid overlays place it among its neighbours. This construction follows the same subdivision that darktable, the open-source raw developer, uses for its own golden-spiral guide — worth knowing because it means the overlay agrees with a widely used photographic tool rather than with a decorative PNG someone made in a drawing program.
Why the eye must move
A spiral is directional in a way a grid is not. The rule of thirds generator gives four symmetrical intersections and does not care which way your subject faces; a spiral has a single tight end and a single open sweep, and the whole reading depends on which corner the tight end is in.
So a fixed spiral overlay is wrong three times out of four. That is why the orientation is a single control here — two bits, one for a horizontal flip and one for a vertical one, giving all four corners. Put the eye on the subject and let the open sweep run out through the empty part of the frame, and the overlay tells you something. Leave it in the corner it happened to start in and you are just decorating.
What it is actually good for, and what it is not
It is good for judging a crop. Load a wide frame, put the eye on the subject, and drag the spiral's own transform around: where the curve sits comfortably along an existing line in the photograph — a coastline, a staircase, an arm — the composition has a path through it. Where you have to force it, it does not, and that is useful information about the picture rather than about the spiral.
It is good for placement. The eye is a strong position, and it is not one of the four thirds intersections, so the spiral gives you a defensible off-centre placement that a thirds grid does not offer. It also gives you a direction of travel for a second element, along the sweep.
It is not evidence about anything. The claim that classical painters composed on golden spirals is almost entirely retrospective: the curve is flexible enough, and scalable and flippable enough, that it can be laid over most paintings and made to touch something. If you can move an overlay freely until it agrees, its agreement is not a measurement. Use the spiral because it produces compositions you like, which is a perfectly good reason, and do not use it as an argument.
The subdivision rectangles are the teaching aid
Turn them on and the mystery evaporates. Seven rectangles, each φ times the next, each carrying one quarter-arc — that is the whole thing, and it takes about ten seconds to understand once you can see it. This is also the presentation used in the standard reference diagram of the Fibonacci spiral, so a student who has seen one will recognise the other.
It is also the honest way to show what the curve is doing to your photograph. The arcs pass through the rectangles' corners, and those corners are the actual structural points; the curve between them is interpolation. If a subject sits on a rectangle corner it is sitting on the construction. If it merely sits near the curve halfway along an arc, it is sitting near a line you drew.
Where a golden spiral gets used
Cropping. I shoot loose and decide later, and being able to put the eye in any corner means I can test all four readings of the same frame in about twenty seconds.
For layout I use it to set the sweep of a diagonal element — a photograph cut on an angle, or a run of type. The rectangles matter more to me than the curve.
Teaching it with the rectangles visible is the only way that works. Show the curve alone and students think it is magic; show the subdivision and they can build one on paper by the end of the hour.
Golden spiral: frequently asked questions
The geometry
Is this a real golden spiral?
It is the quarter-arc approximation, which is what practically every overlay draws. A true golden spiral is a logarithmic curve whose radius grows by φ every quarter turn and which is smooth everywhere; this is seven circular arcs stitched together at tangent joins. The deviation is a fraction of a percent across a frame and invisible on a photograph, but it is worth knowing which one you are using.
Did the Old Masters compose on golden spirals?
Very largely no. A curve that can be scaled, flipped and moved freely can be laid over most paintings until it touches something, and an overlay that always agrees is not measuring anything. Use it because the compositions it suggests work, not as an argument about art history.
Can I show the rectangles without the curve?
The rectangles are a toggle on top of the arcs rather than an alternative to them. If you want the subdivision alone, the phi rectangle generator draws the golden rectangle with its reciprocals and eyes and no spiral at all.
Does it work on any aspect ratio?
Yes. The subdivision is computed from the canvas you are on, so the seven rectangles fit whatever frame you give them. A very wide or very tall frame produces a visibly stretched spiral, which is honest — the construction is following the shape you actually have.
Using it
Why can I move the eye to any corner?
Because a spiral is directional and a grid is not. It has one tight end and one open sweep, so the whole reading depends on which corner the tight end is in. A fixed overlay is wrong three times out of four; one control flips the construction horizontally, vertically or both.
How many rectangles are in the subdivision?
Seven, each one φ times the size of the next, and each carrying exactly one quarter-arc. You can show them under the curve, which is the fastest way to understand what the spiral actually is.
How do I get the spiral to follow something in the photograph?
Move the eye to the corner nearest your subject's tightest curve, then scale and rotate the overlay until the arc runs along it. A spiral only ever fits one way round on one corner — if none of the four settles on the picture, the subject is not organised spirally.
The curve is lost against a detailed photograph. What helps?
Turn the subdivision rectangles off and drop the opacity. Seven rectangles plus the arc is a lot of line for what is really a single curve, and the rectangles are the construction rather than the compositional device.
Export and print
Can I export it as an SVG?
Yes, and it is the export that matters most for this overlay. A spiral is nothing but curvature, and vector export keeps the curves as curves rather than resampling them. Raster export goes to 600 DPI, sized from the paper format you picked.
Can I print it as a compositional overlay?
Export the curve alone to a transparent PNG at your print proportion, or straight to acetate. It is one of the more useful overlays to have physically, because judging whether a picture follows a spiral is much easier when you can slide the curve over a print.
Does the spiral export as a true curve?
In SVG it exports as the seven quarter-arcs it is built from, which is what it actually is — the figure is a chain of circular quarters, not a single logarithmic curve. That is the honest geometry, and it is what a plotter or cutter will follow.
Choosing a grid
What is the difference between a Fibonacci spiral and a golden spiral?
The golden spiral is the exact logarithmic curve. The Fibonacci spiral is the arc-by-arc construction drawn across a set of rectangles, which converges on it. In practice the two names are used interchangeably for the drawn version, which is the one here.
Is the spiral better than the rule of thirds?
Different, not better. Thirds gives four symmetrical points and no direction; the spiral gives one strong off-centre point plus a direction of travel for everything else. Frames with movement in them tend to answer better to the spiral, and static symmetrical subjects to thirds.
Is a raw developer's built-in spiral guide the same?
Close, and less controllable. Most raw developers offer the spiral fixed to the frame with a corner flip; here you can move, scale and rotate it independently of the picture, which is what lets you test whether the curve fits a subject rather than the frame.
Practical matters
Does my photo get uploaded?
No. The image is drawn to a canvas in your own browser and never sent anywhere. There is no account and no upload step.
Did the Old Masters really compose on spirals?
There is very little evidence that any of them did. The spiral overlays circulated online are applied to finished paintings after the fact, and a curve with that much freedom of placement can be made to touch something in almost any picture. Use it as a way of seeing, not as a claim about history.
Open the tool Fibonacci spiral generator
Seven arcs, and the eye where you need it
The golden spiral works from its tight end: put that on your subject, let the sweep run out through the empty part of the frame, and export vector or 600 DPI. No signup, nothing uploaded.
Back to the generator →