Pixen for PC and Mac

Software Reviews and Criticism

• By Elcrest

  GREAT

  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!

  
  
• By rchrd_grace

  Hot garbage

  I've used at least half a dozen different bitmap editing programs over the years, including Photoshop. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone at present. Where this really falls down is text handling. Its font rendering is terrible and makes Pixen a waste of time for technical image editing. Avoid.

  
  
• By Mpaoulos

  missing features in update

  lost ability to add images to background in update, worthless now

  
  
• By iMinichrispy

  Very well done

  Beautifully done, fits in seamlessly with the Yosemite UI. Very easy to get the hang of and the shortcuts are the same as what you'll find throughout OS X and other photo editing apps. Just a minor thing when starting a new image, it would be nice if things like showing the grid and alignment crosshairs carried over instead of having to enable them manually again. It would also be nice if there was finer control over rotating an image, although I understand the reason it's not included as pixel art tends to get messed up when you do it. Still, it's easier to fix what gets messed up than having to redraw something. Despite this, it's definitely the best pixel art image editor for Windows by far.

  
  
• By TheWildDeadHero

  It's okay, just not for me.

  This program has a large amount of nifty features, but quite a few things bog it down for me, unfortunately. For one, I'm generally not a fan of the multi-window design pattern that Windows OS applications have, but I can deal with it. The problem with the multi-window design here is none of the windows snap/lock on to each other. Either getting the windows to snap together or creating a single window mode would greatly improve this aspect of the application. Two, the right-click tool can be pretty nifty for certain things, like setting the eraser tool while the left-click tool is the pencil. But in others, such as when the left-click tool is the selection tool, I would much rather have a right-click menu . Additionally, it eliminates one of my favorite hidden features of Microsoft Paint, the recolor tool. Three, it's pretty buggy. I've attempted to use the selection tool to copy a few bits of graphics to modify, and it would only copy the first row of pixels. Everything else was blank. There have been a few spritesheets I've also been unable to open for whatever reason. Four, they are selling dark mode for $5. I already paid $10 for this application, I'm not shelling out another $5 just so I can darken my screen. Basically, the workflow doesn't work for me, it's buggy, and they are trying to charge for dark mode. Would not recommend.

  
  

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