Pixen for PC

★ ★ ★ Pixen Overview

What is Pixen? Pixen is a professional pixel art editor designed for working with low-resolution raster art, such as those 8-bit sprites found in old-school video games. It offers a unique color palette system, patterns, layers, and high-zoom support, making it an intuitive, Mac-native interface. Pixen also makes creating frame-by-frame animations fun and easy.

Software Features and Description

1. With features like a unique color palette system, patterns, layers, and high-zoom support, Pixen packs all the tools pixel artists need in an intuitive, Mac-native interface.

2. Tools – Leverage Pixen's wide array of tools when composing pixel art: Pencil, Eraser, Brightness, Text, Eyedropper, Zoom, Rectangular Selection, Magic Wand, Lasso, Move, Fill, Line, Rectangle, and Ellipse.

3. Pixen can import animations from animated GIFs, animated PNGs, and even sprite sheets! It can also export animations as animated GIFs, animated PNGs, movies, and sprite sheets.

4. Pixen can even import and export color palettes in the Adobe Color Table, Microsoft Palette, JASC Palette, and GIMP Palette formats.

5. Pressure-sensitive Drawing – Pixen supports pressure-sensitive drawing tablets and Force Touch trackpads, mapping pressure to color opacity.

6. Pixen is a professional pixel art editor designed for working with low-resolution raster art, such as those 8-bit sprites found in old-school video games.

7. Patterns – Define custom patterns to use while drawing with the Pencil, Line, or Eraser tool (instead of a single pixel).

8. Pixen also makes creating frame-by-frame animations fun and easy.

9. You can even play back animations and tile small images when working on patterns.

10. Animations – Create and arrange image frames in the filmstrip view to piece together animations.

11. Dark Mode - Focus on your content with Dark Mode in Pixen.

12. Liked Pixen? here are 5 Graphics & Design apps like Canva: Design, Photo & Video; Adobe Express: Graphic Design; Themify - Widget & Icon Themes; Bazaart: Photo & Video Editor; Brass - Lock Screen Widget;

Download and install Pixen on your computer

GET Compatible PC App

App	Download	Rating	Maker
Pixen	Get App ↲	0 1	Matt Rajca

Or follow the guide below to use on PC:

Select Windows version:

Windows 10
Windows 11

Install Pixen app on your Windows in 4 steps below:

Download an Android emulator for PC:
Get either Bluestacks or the Nox App >> . We recommend Bluestacks because you can easily find solutions online if you run into problems while using it. Download Bluestacks PC software Here >> .

Install the emulator:
On your computer, goto the Downloads folder » click to install Bluestacks.exe or Nox.exe » Accept the License Agreements » Follow the on-screen prompts to complete installation.

Using Pixen on PC [Windows 10/ 11]:

Open the Emulator app you installed » goto its search bar and search "Pixen"
The search will reveal the Pixen app icon. Open, then click "Install".
Once Pixen is downloaded inside the emulator, locate/click the "All apps" icon to access a page containing all your installed applications including Pixen.
Now enjoy Pixen on PC.

Download a Compatible APK for PC

Download	Developer	Rating	Current version
Get APK for PC →	Matt Rajca	1	5.4.7

Get Pixen on Apple macOS

Download	Developer	Reviews	Rating
Get $9.99 on Mac	Matt Rajca	0	1

Download on Android: Download Android

Pixen functions

- Create and arrange image frames in the filmstrip view to piece together animations

- Import animations from animated GIFs, animated PNGs, and even sprite sheets

- Export animations as animated GIFs, animated PNGs, movies, and sprite sheets

- Wide array of tools when composing pixel art: Pencil, Eraser, Brightness, Text, Eyedropper, Zoom, Rectangular Selection, Magic Wand, Lasso, Move, Fill, Line, Rectangle, and Ellipse

- Take advantage of the flexibility layers provide when working with complex pixel art

- Add and organize commonly-used colors into palettes

- Define custom patterns to use while drawing with the Pencil, Line, or Eraser tool

- Pick a flat, striped, or checkered background to be drawn beneath the canvas

- Use filters to adjust colors, create effects, and post-process your artwork

- Let the grid and the alignment crosshair guide you in placing pixels just where you want them

- Preview feature to view the canvas scaled out

- Assign a different tool to the left and right mouse button

- Pixen supports pressure-sensitive drawing tablets and Force Touch trackpads

- Customize tool hotkeys to ease the transition from other image editors

- Export your artwork in PNG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, BMP, TIFF, SVG, and PSD file formats

- Dark Mode

- Share your creations quickly and easily via AirDrop, Messages, email, and more

- Work with all your favorite tools in full screen mode

- Available for iPad and syncs documents over iCloud

✔ Pros:

- Capable of creating 8-bit pixel art

- Allows for layering and editing of different parts

- Accomplished feeling after creating art

- Developers are actively working on improving the app

☹ Cons:

- Bugs related to selection, saving, and layers

- Difficulty opening and resizing specific PNG images

- Priced at $9.99, which may seem high for an app with bugs

Top Pcmac Reviews

Like it, but struggle to make it work

By Reviewer 2384728934 (Pcmac user)

There are too many bugs related to selection, saving, and layers for me to use this for anything serious. I just end up being super frustrated.
Buggy

By aprondust (Pcmac user)

UPDATE: I installed and compiled the version from github, and it works properly without bugs. I hope the profit from this app is distributed fairly, but I have no regrets now. When I first started using this app, it wouldn’t open a few specific PNG images. Worse still, it resized them, erased the colors, and saved them automatically on exiting (turn off autosave!) I contacted customer support, I’ll update if I get help. I’ve been working around that bug by pasting the images into this app and saving them in the this app format. As I used it, more irritating bugs started to appear. The color selector is very thorough; it has many methods of selecting colors. The active tool color is only changed about 1/3 of the time by the selector though! Altering a color is a game of luck. The document palette that contains all the colors in the document re-shuffles the color swatches every time you click. This is no good for pixel art, and I’ve resorted to making a palette right on the document as I would in simpler programs. Tools seem to occasionally hang up or stop working correctly. This has only happened a few times in the three days I’ve used it. I’m compiling the open source version in hopes that it works better... The concept, tools, and interface are all very nice. If only they functioned as they were supposed to! I’m not sure why this app has so many positive reviews, but be aware that it might be problematic.
GREAT

By Elcrest (Pcmac user)

This application is GREAT. I've never worked with 8-bit pixel art like this except for Microsoft Paint, which is far less capable. I just spent about an hour and a half transposing a picture of my girlfriend and I -- it looks great! Very very accomplished feeling. One thing I wish you could do is rename your layers. The way I drew it was a basic drawing with grey, then I began to edit the different parts on a different layer for each: hair, clothes, skin, etc.. It started to get a tad confusing when I had more than 4 layers and simply renaming them would've been great for at-a-glance. But it's not a big deal since next to each layer, there is a kind-of preview of the layer in a thumbnail that updates itself in real-time. I've even made my first animated .gif with this program. Very simple to do -- great GUI. I highly recommend it. What a great app! VERY powerful if you use it to it's full potential. As far as I'm concerned, this was totally worth the purchase. I will update this review if anything should happen or if there's anything else worth mentioning. In the meantime, get it!
Pixen keeps getting better

By deoreXT (Pcmac user)

I've been using this app now for quite a while. I have to admit when I first saw the $9.99 price I balked. Because to be totally honest this app is still very buggy. But on rethinking I decided to purchase this app and help support its development. Clearly the devs are behind the project and it does keep getting better with each new release. this app is the best choice for pixel editing on OSX. It has most features you'd expect, and the workflow is pretty smooth. I've recently started using the animation feature and I really like it a lot. I do wish I could pick the order the animations go into the exported sprite sheet (hint hint). But make no doubt about it, this app still has issues. It often loses focus and so sometimes even though you have a tool and image selected, nothing happens when you begin editing. It doesn't crash as often as it used to but it still does on occassion. It also has a few lingering retina display issues.