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What is on the GTA San Andreas cover: every panel explained

Design · Updated 21 July 2026 · About 6 min read

The San Andreas cover packs a whole state into nine tiles: a police helicopter top left, a bandana and a street sign across the top strip, a BMX rider top right, a blonde in profile above a stack of casino chips down the left, a tram through the middle, a pair of eyes cropped to a band on the right, CJ in the bottom right and a drive by filling the bottom left. It is the loudest cover in the series, and it is built in a way none of the others are.

Panels

Nine tiles that cover the whole canvas and share their borders.

Gutters

13 base pixels, drawn as one stroke along the shared seams.

Outer margin

28 base pixels.

Most complex panel

The tram, with eleven corners wrapping three neighbours.

Build your own

San Andreas cover maker, free, exports at 1666 by 1920 pixels.

What is in each panel?

1. 1. Police helicopter, top left.
2. 2. Bandana and street sign, across the top strip.
3. 3. BMX rider, top right.
4. 4. Blonde in profile, down the left.
5. 5. The tram, through the middle.
6. 6. A pair of eyes, cropped to a band on the right.
7. 7. Casino chips, under the blonde.
8. 8. CJ, bottom right.
9. 9. The drive by, bottom left.

The palette is sun faded rather than glossy, nearer a photograph left on a dashboard all summer than fresh print. It is the most character led cover in the series, which is why faces do more work than scenery when you rebuild it.

Why is the San Andreas grid built differently?

San Andreas is put together the opposite way to GTA V and GTA IV. Its nine tiles cover the whole canvas and share their borders, so the 13 pixel lines are one stroke run along the seams instead of gaps left between separate pieces. That is why the weight never varies: a gap based trace makes every line the difference between two separately traced edges, so it fattens and tapers wherever those two edges disagree about the angle.

It also changes what the colour controls do. On the GTA V grid there is no stroke at all, so a single colour repaints everything. Here the Inner colour paints the 13 pixel seams and the Outer colour paints the 28 pixel margin around the outside, and the two can genuinely differ.

Which panel is the hardest to fill?

The tram. Panel 5 has eleven corners, wrapping three of its neighbours as it runs from the top strip down to two thirds of the height, and it is the most complicated shape on this site. Eleven corners will cut a landscape into confetti, so it wants one clear subject with space around it, not a wide vista.

Underneath it, the long divider below the wordmark leans as it falls. It sits on x = 575 minus 0.061 times y, so it drifts about 25 pixels to the left by the time it reaches the bottom edge. It used to be traced as two lines meeting at a bend, which is exactly the kind of small error that makes a rebuilt grid look almost right and not quite.

How do you make your own San Andreas cover?

Open the San Andreas cover maker, click each panel to drop in a photo, drag and zoom inside it to frame the subject, set the Inner and Outer colours, then download. It exports at 1666 by 1920 pixels as PNG, JPEG or WebP, free, with no watermark and no account, and every photo is drawn in your own browser rather than uploaded.

Which photos suit this grid?

• Give the tram panel a subject, not a scene. One clear subject with space around it survives eleven corners. A wide vista does not.
• Skip the strong horizons. Every panel is tilted against the one next to it, so a level sea or skyline advertises the tilt. Faces, cars and objects on plain backgrounds absorb it.
• Faded beats punchy. The original is warm and slightly washed. Heavily contrasted, sharpened photos sit on top of this grid rather than in it.
• Zoom a touch further than feels natural. Tilted panels cut corners at an angle, so anything important near an edge disappears first.

Make your San Andreas cover now