Dilan Rona Posted October 22 Report Posted October 22 As the topic says, whats the favourite pixel editors for png files here?
MKMoose Posted October 22 Report Posted October 22 (edited) 54 minutes ago, Dilan Rona said: As the topic says, whats the favourite pixel editors for png files here? For proper pixel art: Aseprite ($20, though open source so you can compile it for free) - the gold standard for pixel art. LibreSprite - closest completely free alternative to Aseprite. Piskel - web-based as well as desktop, not particularly great but very accessible if you just need to doodle something quickly. For general use, not dedicated to pixel art but still sufficiently suited to it for many purposes: GIMP - image manipulation program - my personal favorite for most purposes, though it can be quite unintuitive. Krita - drawing app. All of the above besides Aseprite are free and open source. A quick web search will allow you to find a whole lot of other options if you're looking for something more specific. Edited October 22 by MKMoose 3
Dilan Rona Posted October 22 Author Report Posted October 22 I just went with Pixel Smith. May not be the best, but does what I need. Wonder what the rest uses though
Demoncyborg Posted October 22 Report Posted October 22 Aseprite is a high recommendation, it's very clean to work in and I use it for sprites specifically If you're doing a slightly bigger scale or if you need really smooth pixel lines, i'd recommend paint tool SAI. it is a $50 one-time-purchase license but it's made by one person and genuinely has the best pixel tool i've ever used, as well as running extremely fast and light. (totally shilling since it's my main art program but, i love it.)
Dilan Rona Posted October 22 Author Report Posted October 22 That is what mine looks like. for the most part, it covers everything i need the most. 1
Dilan Rona Posted October 22 Author Report Posted October 22 i'm still working on mine, will be uploading it in due course, and its cross platform.
HalfAxd Posted October 22 Report Posted October 22 5 hours ago, MKMoose said: Aseprite ($20, though open source so you can compile it for free) - the gold standard for pixel art. +1 for this... It goes on Steam sale occasionally too...
Hanril Posted October 22 Report Posted October 22 I'm curious what are the extra functions of pixel art specific programs. I dabbled in pixels a bit years ago for RPG Maker, but MS Paint XP version seemed good enough for me. I saw it's useful for animations and overlays, but how much better is it just for static doodling around?
Dilan Rona Posted October 23 Author Report Posted October 23 Same reason I'm using Pixel Smith really. For what I need to do for VS textures and content mods, it's enough.
VANTABlack2000 Posted October 23 Report Posted October 23 18 hours ago, Dilan Rona said: I just went with Pixel Smith. May not be the best, but does what I need. Wonder what the rest uses though Now I am curious about Pixel Smith. When i try to find it though I find A website whose domain has expired A pixel artist looking for commissions Worst of all. An AI Image Generator advertising Pop Art and Comic Art.
Dilan Rona Posted October 23 Author Report Posted October 23 (edited) thats cause it doesnt exist on the web yet. will be uploading it here, as I made it for what i needed. just finished version 1.2 today. I just dont know where to put it as its not a mod, but a standalone application. And this discussion is not fitting for posting the zips as its a general discussion about preferred pixel editors Edited October 23 by Dilan Rona
Dilan Rona Posted October 23 Author Report Posted October 23 (edited) Ok, its on GitHub now. Once I am happy with the code, I'll upload it. for now I got linux and windows versions uploaded, the MacOS versions are available, but I lack the machine to test them. https://github.com/DilanRona/PixelSmith Make sure dotnet 10 is installed. Edited October 23 by Dilan Rona
ifoz Posted October 23 Report Posted October 23 Mostly I swap between Aseprite and Paint.net, depending on what features I need at a given moment. Aseprite is awesome for tiling textures due to having an inbuilt tiling mode, but I find Paint.net's layers easier to use. Paint.net also has a built-in noise function which is really nice for VS-styled pixel art, since the base game loves making its textures at least somewhat noisy. I'm unsure if Aseprite has built-in noise, but Paint.net's has always been so serviceable that I've never really felt the need to investigate. Aseprite is also really good for animated sprites/textures, which aren't really natively supported in Paint.net. 2
Dilan Rona Posted October 23 Author Report Posted October 23 Aseprite looks like it will run on fedora after compiling. but i can say outright that Paint.net will not be considered if its windows only. Besides, I made my project with multi texture support (cube layout for example), so you can edit multiple textures at once, and swap the position around to get the alignment right.
DeanF Posted Sunday at 04:16 PM Report Posted Sunday at 04:16 PM (edited) You mean an image editor? GIMP, because fuck Adobe. Those new ArtCraft clones give me a chuckle, too, but I'm not as familiar with them. Edited Sunday at 04:18 PM by DeanF
Dilan Rona Posted Monday at 04:19 AM Author Report Posted Monday at 04:19 AM yea, i looked at Gimp, and I left after a while. Not particularly intuitive if one doesnt know what one is doing or how it works.
Demoncyborg Posted Monday at 11:40 AM Report Posted Monday at 11:40 AM its genuinely so surprising to see someone's still using gimp in 2026
Zaph42nd Posted Tuesday at 04:20 PM Report Posted Tuesday at 04:20 PM On 10/25/2026 at 11:19 PM, Dilan Rona said: yea, i looked at Gimp, and I left after a while. Not particularly intuitive if one doesnt know what one is doing or how it works. Yep it's pretty clunky but well-established and not impossible to work with. Another one I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned is Inkscape, though it's more for vector-based drawing (which means not great for editing but good for initial sketches) and doesn't do well for editing
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