App: Pixen
Developer: Furnace Creek Software LLC
Genres: Graphics & Design, Photo & Video

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

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.

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.

Layers – Take advantage of the flexibility layers provide when working with complex pixel art. Change opacity, blending modes, and more to compose creative effects.

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.

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

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.

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

Grid + Alignment Crosshair – Let the grid and the alignment crosshair guide you in placing pixels just where you want them.

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.

Left and Right Tools – Assign a different tool to the left and right mouse button. For example: pencil on the left; eraser on the right.

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

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

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

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

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

Full Screen – Work with all your favorite tools in full screen mode.

Pixen is also available for iPad and syncs documents over iCloud!

Release notes:
- Pressing the Option key no longer affects the Tools palette of background document windows
- Fixed issues around pressing the Escape key to close the About window