Pixel Art
A pixel-precise sprite and icon editor inside the graph: draw on a stack of pixel layers in RGBA or Indexed color, with a document palette, selections, symmetry, and edge wrapping.
You draw directly in the Preview with the tool row on its toolbar. Pixel Art stores what each cell is, so an authored pixel is exact and permanent; Paint instead records strokes. The output wires into Palette Remap, Sprite Sheet, Export Batch, or any other node and stays editable in place. Everything you paint is saved with the project.
The optional Background input supplies a live bottom layer and the canvas size. Without it, Width and Height set the size, and a Preset combo offers the common squares (16 to 256). Once the node holds a document, Canvas Size… changes its size.
Color modes
Section titled “Color modes”Color Mode stores a full RGBA value per cell or, in Indexed, one palette index per cell (index 0 is the pinned transparent entry). An Indexed cell’s color is always looked up through the palette, so recoloring an entry recolors every cell that uses it.
Changing the mode, or clicking Convert to Indexed / Convert to RGBA, opens a dialog that states the cost first: how many colors the artwork has, how many palette entries it will use, and how many pixels change.
A document that already carries a palette converts back to Indexed with Use existing palette by default, or Derive from artwork. Either way it is one undo step.
Layers
Section titled “Layers”The Layers section lists every authored layer, topmost first, each with a drag grip, visibility and lock toggles, and a name. Click a row to make it active (also selectable from a combo on the Preview toolbar), double-click the name to rename, and drag the grip to reorder; the connected Background is pinned beneath.
New Layer lands directly above the active layer; Duplicate, Merge Down, Delete, and the Opacity slider act on the active layer. Blending between layers is Normal only. A locked or hidden layer takes no edits. A document holds at most 128 layers.
Rasterize Background to New Pixel Layer copies the connected Background in once as a new bottom layer. It is a copy, not a link, and the live background keeps flowing underneath; if it has translucent pixels and Output Mode is Composited, it now shows twice, so switch to Pixel Layers Only if that is not what you want.
Drawing tools
Section titled “Drawing tools”| Tool | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Pencil | B | Draws single cells or a freehand stroke |
| Eraser | E | Clears cells to transparent |
| Line | L | A straight line between two cells |
| Rectangle | U | An outline, or a solid shape with Filled on |
| Ellipse | Shift+U | An outline, or a solid shape with Filled on |
| Fill | G | Floods matching cells, contiguous or across the whole layer |
| Replace Color | Shift+G | Replaces every matching cell with the foreground color |
| Eyedropper | I | Picks the foreground color (in Indexed mode, the palette index) from the topmost visible layer with a pixel there |
| Marquee | M | Selects, moves, and edits a rectangular region |
| Lasso Select | Q | Selects, moves, and edits a freehand region |
| Magic Wand | W | Click to select every matching cell on the active layer |
| Move Layer | V | Moves the active layer’s whole content, or only the selected pixels when a selection stands (the marching ants move with them) |
Hold Alt with a drawing tool armed for a quick-pick eyedropper; X swaps the foreground and background colors. On the Rectangle and Ellipse, an Alt+click still picks a color, but an Alt+drag draws the shape from its center, around the pixel you pressed. Pressing or releasing Alt mid-drag switches between the two, and Shift with Alt makes the centered shape a square or circle. A centered shape is always an odd number of pixels across.
An options strip beside the tool row shows only what the armed tool uses:
- Size (Pencil, Eraser, Line) sets the footprint, 1 to 64 cells, Square or Round;
[and]step it by one. Pixel-Perfect removes the doubled corner a freehand stroke leaves when it turns, so a curve stays one cell wide (Size 1 only). - Filled and Outline Width (1 to 64 cells) shape the Rectangle and Ellipse.
- Contiguous and Tolerance govern Fill and the Magic Wand; an Indexed document always matches the exact index.
- Symmetry X and Symmetry Y mirror what you paint across an axis, drawn as a magenta line. Each axis starts at the canvas center. Drag the magenta handle at either end of its line to move it in half-pixel steps: on a pixel boundary, the two sides mirror each other; through a pixel’s center, that pixel is its own mirror, for a one-pixel center column or row. Double-click a handle to recenter the axis. A mirrored stroke that would land off the canvas is dropped, or wraps to the opposite edge with Wrap Edits on. The axis position belongs to the session, not the document, and moving it is not an undo step.
- Wrap Edits continues an edit that leaves one edge on the opposite edge, so you can author a seamless tile in place; a contiguous Fill wraps too. Press
Tfor the Preview’s Tile Preview to see the repeat while you work. - Shading (Pencil, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse) steps a cell through a ramp of colors instead of painting flat: a drag steps toward the first color in the ramp, and holding Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) steps toward the last. Each cell moves one step per stroke. In an Indexed document the ramp is the palette entries selected in its Palette section (two or more). In an RGBA document it is the colors selected in the Swatches panel, in the panel’s order, and only cells whose color exactly matches one of them change.
Readout and pixel grid
Section titled “Readout and pixel grid”While you drag a Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Marquee, or Lasso, the Preview’s pixel readout shows its size in pixels next to the cursor position (for example 8×3). Moving a selection, its border, or a layer shows the offset instead, and with nothing being dragged the readout shows the size of the current selection. The readout follows the Preview’s Info toggle.
The transparency checkerboard behind the canvas is measured in art pixels: at working zooms each square is one pixel of the canvas, so it lines up with the art, and the squares double in size as you zoom out. The pixel grid outlines each pixel with a light top and left edge and a dark bottom and right edge, fading in between 400% and 1600% zoom. It draws under tool handles and guides.
Selecting and moving pixels
Section titled “Selecting and moving pixels”The Marquee and the Lasso differ only in the shape they draw, and both move pixels. Drag on empty canvas to select; a plain click deselects.
- Drag inside the selection to move its pixels, hold Ctrl (Cmd) to move a copy, or drag the selection’s border to move only the boundary. Shift locks a move to one axis.
- Arrow keys nudge the selected pixels one cell (eight with Shift); Alt+arrows nudge the boundary. Escape cancels and Enter finalizes.
- Shift adds to a selection, Alt+Shift subtracts, and Ctrl+Shift intersects. Ctrl+A selects all, Ctrl+D deselects, Ctrl+Shift+D restores the last selection, and Ctrl+Shift+I inverts it.
- Undo and redo move the marching ants along with the pixels.
The Magic Wand (W) clicks instead of dragging: it selects the cells on the active layer that match the clicked one, using Fill’s Tolerance and Contiguous options and the same modifiers. It never samples a layer below or the Background. Clicking a transparent cell selects the transparent run, which pairs well with Invert.
Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete work on the selection. Pasting between Indexed documents with different palettes resolves colors through the copied palette, not the raw index.
Flip Horizontal (Shift+H), Flip Vertical (Shift+V), and Rotate 90 (Shift+R, Ctrl+Shift+R) act on the selection, or the whole layer when nothing is selected. Crop to Selection shrinks the canvas to the selection. Canvas Size… offers Resize canvas (with a nine-position anchor) and Scale image (nearest-neighbor, with 2x, 3x, and 4x buttons); picking a size preset over existing artwork opens this dialog prefilled instead of resizing at once.
Palette
Section titled “Palette”In Indexed mode the Palette section shows a grid of up to 256 color tiles. Click a tile to make it the foreground and select only that entry, Alt+click for the background, and double-click to edit its color and name. Shift+click extends the selection, Ctrl+click toggles one entry, and arrow keys move a focus ring. An accent outline marks selected entries, FG / BG chips mark the foreground and background, and hovering shows a tile’s name, color, and pixel count.
Right-click a tile for Set as Background, Edit…, Rename…, Duplicate, Remap Index To… (move every cell on this index to another), Remap to Transparent, and Delete. Deleting an entry still in use asks for a replacement index, so no cell can point at a missing color.
Drag a tile to reorder at the insertion line (cells are renumbered, so the picture stays identical); hold Alt to duplicate instead. Drop a Swatches tile on an entry to replace its color, or on the + tile to append it; a multi-swatch drag inserts every color at the line as one undo step.
The … menu beside the entry count holds whole-palette operations, acting on the selection when two or more entries are selected and on the whole palette otherwise: Sort by hue, saturation, value, luminance, or any single channel, Reverse, Ramp (blend new colors between the first and last selected entries), Remove Unused Colors, Merge Duplicates, Clean Up Palette, and Derive from Artwork. Sort, Reverse, and Merge Duplicates keep the picture byte-identical; the others recolor pixels and say so.
Send Palette to Swatches… saves the palette to the Swatches panel. Update from Swatches… replaces it through a review dialog that reports how many indices move and pixels recolor (Apply is disabled when nothing would change):
- Remap to Nearest keeps the picture as close as the new palette allows.
- Replace by Index puts the new colors at the same positions, so every pixel shows whatever now sits there (the palette-swap workflow).
- Append / Merge adds the colors not already present without touching the canvas.
An RGBA document that was once Indexed keeps its palette in a read-only Carried Palette section, ready to send to Swatches or reuse when converting back.
Import, workspace, and output
Section titled “Import, workspace, and output”Import as New Layer… adds an 8-bit image as a new layer above the active one, growing the canvas to fit; Replace Document… discards the palette, color mode, and every layer and starts over from the image. A 16-bit or float image is refused rather than silently narrowed, and an animated GIF or WebP imports its first frame. Importing into an Indexed document snaps colors to its palette and reports how many changed.
Switch to Pixel Art Workspace at the top of the Parameters panel applies a layout for pixel art: a narrow Node Graph, a dominant Preview, and Swatches above Parameters, without the brush panels. Your other workspaces are untouched.
With a Background connected, Output Mode chooses whether the output includes it. The output is always a straight (non-premultiplied) RGBA image from the same flattening the Preview and export use, so they never disagree, and an opaque authored pixel reaches the output with its bytes unchanged.
Parameters
Section titled “Parameters”Pins
Canvas
Canvas width in pixels. Used only when no background image is connected.
Once this node has a document, the document owns its size: this value mirrors it, and Canvas Size is what changes it.
Canvas height in pixels. Used only when no background image is connected.
Once this node has a document, the document owns its size: this value mirrors it, and Canvas Size is what changes it.
How this document stores its pixels.
This always matches the document on the canvas. Changing it asks to convert the artwork, which is previewed first and can be undone.
Output
Usage Tips
Section titled “Usage Tips”- Author in Indexed mode when the sprite is headed for Palette Remap: Send Palette to Swatches gives you the exact source palette, and every cell already carries an index.
- Use Symmetry X for a front-facing character and draw only one half.
- Connect a reference image to Background and paint over it with Output Mode on Pixel Layers Only; the reference guides you but never reaches the output.
- Pixel Art is a static editor: one canvas, no frames or timeline. Build one sprite here and use Collect and Sprite Sheet for a set.
- The palette grid, layer list, and every tool have named actions you can bind under Settings > Keyboard.