Pixelator is a kind of anomaly in the pixel art maker game. You can make great pixel art with this one, if you’re on a budget and need some power. Take what we said about Photoshop, make it open source and free with a slightly steeper learning curve, and you have GIMP. You may not be making headers or cover images with it, but if you need to animate something or create individual elements, you really can’t go wrong with Piskel. And while that may seem awkward for folks on smaller phones or those with larger fingers, on a bigger screen or a device with a stylus (or Apple Pencil), Piskel is more than powerful enough to stand up as a top pixel art maker. The real kicker here is that because it’s totally online and browser-based, you can even do it in a mobile browser.

Totally free and totally online, you can do pretty much everything with Piskel. Price: $9.99 per month | More information 3. If you don’t mind the setup, you can make some stunning hi-bit art with Adobe Photoshop.

That said, though, the tools at your disposal with Photoshop mean that it may be worth the hassle.

You have to zoom in a lot, set a pencil tool or brush to 1px (or slightly larger, depending), and then deal with the quirks that come from scaling down program meant to make high-res pieces of art really pop. Adobe PhotoshopĪdmittedly, Photoshop isn’t necessarily the easiest program out there to edit art on the pixel level. There is a new version that is paid with a better interface and more features, but if you just need a barebones pixel art maker, Pyxel Edit should be at the top of your list to try out. With preset palettes to emulate retro gaming consoles, you can pretty much do anything you want with the software. Pyxel Edit is a simple and free-to-use pixel art tool that lets you import existing art in to either edit pixel by pixel, or you can create your own images at any dimension and resolution you need.

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