Knitting charts
One can make knitting charts for colorwork at one pixel per stitch. To see them more clearly, I have made a Knitgraph Python plug-in for GIMP, under the Images tab. The Knitgraph program brings up a dialog, asking how big to make each stitch in the blown up image - make it square if that's how your stitch gauge runs, or rectangular for knitting in intarsia. The program draws a black line around each stitch, so black stitches are hard to see.
A simple two-color example is shown here in gimp, zoomed in so you can see your pixels:
The blown up version:
A more complex example is shown here small, zoomed in showing the pixel size:
Note that the shape of the hat includes decreases where the grey areas are non-stitches. The blown up version is shown here:
The final hat can be seen here: Mushroom hat
along with some of the inspirational images behind the pattern.
I have made some squares (and hope to make more) for an afghan done in intarsia. An example chart is shown here in the small:
Note that it is taller than it is wide, but still knits up to be square. Here it is blown up, looking square:
The final square is here:
and the project can be seen on Ravelry: Star Trek afghan
Note that I sketched the squares on paper then scanned them in or photographed them. Then I brought them into gimp for the colorfill and the scaling to the required number of pixels (90x124).