Pixel art is a form of digital artwork created by arranging individual pixels, often using a deliberately limited colour palette. It has its roots in early computer and video game graphics but remains popular with artists, designers and independent game developers.
Dedicated pixel art editors provide tools that make this type of work easier than using a general-purpose image editor. These include pixel-perfect drawing, indexed colour palettes, grid controls, dithering and precise selection tools.
Many applications also support animated sprites, with timelines, layers, onion skinning and sprite-sheet export. Others concentrate on tilesets, seamless textures or retro-style artwork inspired by classic 8-bit and 16-bit computers.
We’ve selected editors covering a range of approaches, from lightweight drawing tools to more advanced applications for animation and game asset creation.
Let’s explore the pixel art editors in detail. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, screenshots, together with links to relevant resources.
| Pixel Art Editors | |
|---|---|
| Pixelorama | 2D sprite editor, made with the Godot Engine |
| PixiEditor | Create beautiful sprites for your games, animations, edit images, create logos |
| Piskel | Simple web-based tool for spriting and pixel art |
| LibreSprite | Create 2D animations for videogames |
| rx | Modern and extensible pixel editor implemented in Rust |
| GrafX2 | Billed as the ultimate 256-color bitmap paint program |
| mtPaint | Painting program to create pixel art and manipulate digital photos |
| PyDPainter | Usable pixel art program. |
| Slate | Qt-based pixel art editor |
| PikoPixel | Draw and edit pixel art images |
| Fizzy | Pixel art editor and animation editor |
| voidsprite | Pixel art editor in an early stage of development |
| csprite | Tiny pixel art tool |
| Tilf | Simple yet powerful pixel art editor |
| PixelPen | Pixel art editor with layers, animation and Godot integration |
| Pixcil | Pixel art editor with an almost infinite canvas and animation |
| PixlPunkt | Modern, cross-platform pixel art editor |
| Pixed | Pixel art editor |
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What about PIX cli pixel art editor?
Thanks for your suggestion. We removed the URL in line with our Comment FAQ.
We’ll investigate the program when we can.
Looks too alpha to be included at this stage. Luke is watching the project for future releases.
We don’t like the name of the project, it clashes with an existing, well established open source project.