Pixen

pixel art and animation editor for macOS

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. Pixen packs all the tools pixel artists need in an intuitive, native interface including support for high zoom levels, animation editing, color palettes, and a lot more.

Layers and Filters

Take advantage of the flexibility layers provide when working with complex pixel art. Change opacities, blend modes, and more to compose creative effects.

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

Pixen Layers

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. You can even assign a different tool to the left and right mouse button. For example: pencil on the left; eraser on the right.

Color Palettes

With Pixen, you can add and organize commonly-used colors into palettes. Pixen can also import and export color palettes in the Adobe Color Table, Microsoft Palette, JASC Palette, and GIMP Palette formats. You can even perform palette operations such as sorting colors, removing duplicate colors, and more, directly in the app.

Pixen Color Palettes

Animations

Pixen Animations

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

Pixen Animations

Grid and Alignment Crosshair

Take advantage of Pixen's grid tools to guide you in placing pixels just where you want them.

Pixen Grid

Patterns

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

Pixen Patterns

Preview

While editing at high zoom levels, use the Preview feature to view the canvas scaled out. You can even play back animations and tile small images when working on patterns.

Pixen Prevew

Custom Backgrounds

Pick a flat, striped, or checkered background to be drawn beneath the canvas. You can even set a reference image as a background.

Pixen Backgrounds

And a lot more...

iCloud Synccloud

Sync documents with Pixen for iOS over iCloud and resume your work right where you left off.

Sidecar Supporttablet_mac

Pixen works great with Sidecar and Apple Pencil. You can even customize the double tap gesture.

Dark Modedark_mode

Focus on your content with Dark Mode in Pixen.

Full Screenscreenshot_monitor

Work with all your favorite tools in full screen mode.

Hotkeyskeyboard

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

Wide Format Supportcontent_copy

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

Sharingios_share

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

15+ Year Historyschedule

Pixen has been around for over 15 years as a native Mac app and we'd like to keep it that way.

Native Mac Approcket_launch

Pixen is carefully designed for the Mac and built with native technologies such as Core Animation, Core Image, AppKit, AppleScript, Auto Save, and Versions to take full advantage of what macOS has to offer.

Universalspoke

Pixen is compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

★★★★★
Amazing for a new artist, deserves your attention

I just recently got into pixel art. As a software developer I've always wanted to make games but felt lost when it came to creating assets. Pixen takes that fear away. It provides a great workflow when switching between the mobile and desktop versions, and all of the tools you need are just right there.

- App Store review


We hope you enjoy using Pixen on the Mac! Be sure to also check out Pixen for iOS.