- Pixelmash 2026.2 is out now! - 20 August 2026
Pixelmash 2026.2 has been released! This update transforms how you light your pixel art with a massively upgraded Auto Shade effect, expands your output options with image sequence exports, and adds several highly-requested workflow improvements like layer nudging and expanded undo history.For this release we've completely rebuilt the Auto Shade layer effect, which now feels magical in its ability to light a 2D sprite as if it were an actual 3D object. We've upgraded the core algorithms and introduced a brand-new cylindrical shading mode to give your art immediate volume and depth. You now also have total control over how the lighting interacts with your artwork thanks to new blend mode support and an adjustable amount slider, making it easier than ever to dial in the perfect atmosphere. To keep your creative process smooth and precise, we’ve packed in several handy workflow updates. Yo…
- Introducing Pixelmash 2026.1 - 21 April 2026
Pixelmash 2026.1 is officially here!This release introduces a powerful new 9-Slice layer effect for accurate non-destructive asset resizing, a more intuitive transform tool for precision scaling, smarter numerical fields, and more!The star of the show is the 9-Slice layer effect. This allows you to dynamically resize objects like walls, UI boxes, or platforms without any of the ugly stretching or loss of pixel accuracy. By dividing your art into a grid, Pixelmash can now repeat, stretch, or extend the center sections while keeping your edges and corners perfectly crisp. It’s a massive time-saver for generating multiple versions of an asset from a single drawing. We’ve also overhauled scaling in the transform tool. It now behaves much more like traditional graphics apps, scaling from the opposite corner or edge rather than just the center. You also now have the freedom of unconstrained s…
- Pixelmash 2026.0 is here! - 29 October 2025
We’re excited to announce that Pixelmash 2026.0 is now available! This release supercharges your creative process with new customizable layer effects presets, the ability to work on multiple files at once, and adds far more powerful ways to turn any image into gorgeous pixel art in seconds.The brand-new Effects Presets menu lets you instantly load pre-made layer FX setups or save your own, making it faster than ever to experiment with different lighting, shading, and color styles. You can now also open multiple Pixelmash windows at the same time with the New Window command in the File menu, perfect for juggling several related assets.Meanwhile, the improved Auto Palette effect (formerly Auto Limit Colors) has been rebuilt to deliver cleaner, more beautiful results when converting photos or artwork into pixel art. You can even lock in certain colors and fine-tune a smoothing effect for c…
- Pixelmash 2025.2 is here – animate your layer effects! - 18 August 2025
We’re thrilled to announce that Pixelmash 2025.2 has arrived, and it brings one of the biggest additions yet to your animation toolkit: layer effects are now fully animatable using keyframes!This opens the door to all kinds of dynamic possibilities for your pixel art. Imagine a lightning bolt whose glow pulses and fades over time, a character whose clothes shift color as they power up, or a shifting ground shadow that adds depth to a moving scene. Now, effects like Glow, Colorize, Drop Shadow, and more can change over time — seamlessly integrated into Pixelmash’s animation timeline alongside layer transforms and vector shape tweening. The result? Complex animated effects made far easier than in traditional pixel art editors. We’ve also made the Auto Limit Colors effect much more reliable, making it even better for converting photos or illustrations into authentic pixel art palettes. Plu…
- Pixelmash 2025.1 is here with powerful expanded layer FX! - 8 May 2025
We’re excited to share that Pixelmash 2025.1 is now available! This update brings some powerful new enhancements to help streamline your workflow and expand your creative possibilities. The Dither effect now includes both blend modes and an amount slider, offering more nuanced control over your dithering results. You can now also copy and paste individual effects using a new right-click menu in the effects panel, making it easier to reuse and experiment with your favorite setups. We’ve also added blend mode support to the Colorize effect, giving you greatly expanded control over layer recoloring. Alongside these creative tools, this release includes various bug fixes and performance improvements to keep everything running smoothly. We hope you enjoy the new version and can't wait to see what you create! Feature List: Added right-click menu to effects panel to copy/paste individual effec…
- Pixelmash 2025.0 released! - 3 December 2024
We’re pleased to announce that Pixelmash 2025.0 has been released, including an enhanced copy/paste workflow that allows working across multiple apps seamlessly, plus bug fixes and UI improvements! The previous release of Pixelmash introduced our new area select tools, and our copy/paste improvements in this release build and expand on that. You can now easily copy and paste pixel selections rather than just whole layers (including copying pixels as rendered from vector layers), and you can also now copy and paste to and from the system clipboard to seamlessly work across different graphics applications. Other improvements in this release include bug fixes and UI improvements, including a new grid alpha setting in the View menu (under Grid Appearance). Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
- Pixelmash 2024.3 Released - 23 August 2024
We’re excited to announce that Pixelmash 2024.3 has been released, and includes multiple user-requested features that will make a huge difference in your day-to-day workflow: area selection tools and animation frame duplication/reordering! Pixelmash’s new area select tool works on both standard pixel layers and dynamic-resolution layers, letting you drag out selection rectangles or create pixel selections by color. Double click for magic-wand style selection of neighboring pixels of the same color, or right-click to select all document or layer pixels of the same color as the chosen pixel. Changing the color chooser color while an area selection is active lets you quickly tweak document colors. The animation timeline recently added to Pixelmash has also seen some useful upgrades. Now instead of having to copy and paste individual keyframes when you make a new animation frame, you can si…
- Pixelmash 2024.2 - 13 June 2024
Pixelmash 2024.2 is out now, including a new feature that lets you easily record your pixel art creation process as a time-lapse video to share! It’s perfect for creating media to promote your work on social media or YouTube. Also in this release are a bunch of handy workflow improvements, including being able to set custom grid line spacing, being able to use up and down keyboard arrow keys to increment/decrement input field values, and more! New in 2024.2: Built-in time-lapse screen recording Open recent file menu Pressing up and down on your keyboard will now increment/decrement values in most numerical input fields Custom grid line spacing setting in View menu You can now pan in the preview window Various bug fixes
- Pixelmash 2024.1 Released! Now with keyboard shortcut editing. - 28 February 2024
For this release, we've added a much-requested new feature for Pixelmash: the ability to edit keyboard shortcuts. To get started, go to "Edit > Edit Keyboard Shortcuts..." to open the editor. You can then select any command and press the shortcut you wish to assign. You can also clear shortcuts or reset them to default. We've also fixed an issue with pasting layer effects, and separated the Paste Layer Effects command into two commands, which will let you specify whether to add the pasted effects to any effects already applied, or to replace them.
- Pixelmash 2024.0 Released with Powerful New Animation Timeline! - 15 November 2023
We’re excited to announce that Pixelmash 2024.0 has been released with a powerful new Animation Timeline feature, and is ready for you to download now! Check out the release video to see how the new timeline works: The new Animation Timeline has long been requested by users, and replaces the old hacked-in animation window that has been with Pixelmash from the beginning. This timeline is much more standard and powerful for easily making animated pixel art, letting you see all your layers, frames, keyframes and animation settings in one intuitive panel that lives at the bottom of the interface. It can be hidden and shown from the View menu when you’re not creating animations. Use the right-click menu on frames and cells to access handy animation features like copying and pasting animation frames or setting and removing keyframes. Combined with Pixelmash’s unique ability to animate with la…
- Pixelmash 2023.5 Released! - 3 October 2023
We’re happy to announce the release of Pixelmash 2023.5, which includes a powerful new Ground Shadow layer effect, improvements to the Gradient and Repeat layer effects, and several bug fixes. The new Ground Shadow effect is a powerful way to get perfect shadows beneath characters and other assets in your pixel art projects. The shadow will automatically update to the width of the pixels in any given frame (with sliders to adjust relative width and height, among other controls), so it moves perfectly with animations. Apply the effect in the master layer of a file, with different character animations in sub-layers, to get an automatic, beautiful, consistent shadow across multiple animations. Pixelmash’s Gradient layer effect has also been expanded with support for multiple blend modes, in addition to new Blend Amount and Bias sliders. These extra controls bring tons of powerful new ways…
- Pixelmash 2023.4 Is Now Available, Featuring Animate Transform! - 19 July 2023
Pixelmash 2023.4 is here! This release features the new Animate Transform layer effect! This handy effect lets you animate a layer's rotation, scale, and position simply by entering values. For example: if you'd like a wheel to rotate at 20 degrees per second, simply enter 20 in the rotation field. Many of these animations would be time consuming to do via keyframes and are very straightforward with the new tool. You can also set an independent duration and loop type (such as Boomerang for moving back and forth), and since it's a layer effect you can even apply multiple animations to the same layer if you like!
- Pixelmash 2023.3 is Here! - 8 June 2023
This update adds the much-requested ability to import animations from sprite sheets. It's a very handy way to get animations into Pixelmash, edit existing game animations, and much more. To use it, just choose Import Sprite Sheet from the File menu, choose an image, and enter your import settings. It supports simple horizontal, vertical, or grid-aligned sprite sheets, and also includes more advanced settings such as padding and the ability to only import from a certain area of an image (for when a single sprite sheet contains more than one animation). Give it a shot, and let us know what you think!
- Pixelmash 2023.2 Released - 29 March 2023
We’re pleased to announce that Pixelmash 2023.2 is released and ready for you to download! This release includes the ability to import animated gifs, which is a surprisingly powerful workflow enhancement. Also included in this release is an update to the Remap Colors layer effect - now a single instance of the effect can remap multiple colors. We’ve also added a few other handy workflow enhancements which you can find detailed in the release notes. Check out the release video below: Animated gif import in Pixelmash 2023.2 allows you to do things like create complex animated scenes in smaller pieces as individual documents, which can then be imported into a larger project via animated gif. Animated gifs also make for easy transport between different software packages. There are also just lots of animated gifs out there that you can import into Pixelmash to study exactly how someone has m…
- Pixelmash 2023.1 Released - 9 February 2023
We’re excited to announce the release of Pixelmash 2023.1, which includes a powerful new layer effect (Remap Palette) for reassigning some or all of the colors in a layer/document, improved tools for choosing colors for layer effects in general, and lots of fixes for things like SVG import and animation. Check out the release video below: The new Remap Palette layer effect gives you powerful options for applying a new palette of colors to a layer (or your whole document via the Master layer). Included are several algorithms for how to perform the color mapping based on your needs, like Luminance Order, which will remap the darkest document color to the first color in the effect list, the next darkest to the second, and so on. The improved color list UI (in all layer effects) lets you import color palettes to any layer effect, either from the document palette or from an image/palette fil…
- Pixelmash 2023.0 Released, Includes New Color Adjustments and Reflection Effects - 26 October 2022
We’re excited to announce that we’ve released Pixelmash 2023.0, including some great new layer effects (Color Adjustments and a newly enhanced Mirror effect) and several bug fixes and workflow improvements. The new Color Adjustments effect has sliders to control exposure, saturation, contrast, and hue shift, for when you need to tweak all the colors in a layer together. The Mirror layer effect has been improved and expanded to better support things like reflections in floors or water, now including an opacity slider and a pixel offset amount. Bug fixes and tweaks include useful day-to-day things like making layer selection with the pointer and transform tools more intuitive and reliable, and making images import at the pixel scale of the document rather than scaling to the document bounds. What's new in v2023.0? - Added new Color Adjustments layer effect (adjusts exposure, saturation, c…
- Pixelmash 2022.3 Released - 3 August 2022
Dear Pixelmash Users, We’re excited to announce the release of Pixelmash 2022.3, which includes two powerful and exciting new features: layer blend modes (for all layer types) and snapping for vector layers! Check out the release video below: Layer blend modes, familiar to Photoshop users, are a powerful way to change how layers are rendered on top of layers below them, and make it easier to create advanced coloring and lighting effects. Previously, all layers in Pixelmash were rendered using “Standard” blend mode, but now you can also choose from the following blending algorithms: “Screen”, “Overlay”, “Add”, “Multiply”, “Soft Light”, “Hard Light”, “Darken”, “Lighten”, and “Erase”. Give them a try! Additionally, now when editing vector layers using the Curve Tool, you can hold down Shift while dragging bezier nodes to snap to pixel centers. Holding Shift while dragging bezier handles sn…
- Pixelmash 2022.2 Released With Full Vector Layer Support - 22 June 2022
Pixel art animation using vectors and tweening? We’re very excited to announce the release of Pixelmash 2022.2 with a huge new feature we’ve been planning for a long time: fully editable vector layers! You can now create, edit, and animate vector-based pixel art with ease, including animation tweening support. Non-destructive vector layers in a pixel art app unlock limitless possibilities. Make fluid organic animations without having to hand-draw every in-between frame, create and change complex shapes with ease, and make pixel art that works at any resolution, all without having to leave Pixelmash. You can seamlessly mix and match vector layers with traditional pixel layers, and of course all of Pixelmash’s powerful layer effects work on any vector layer just like they would on a standard pixel layer.
- Pixelmash 2022 Now Available With Dynamic Vector Layer Support - 22 February 2022
Get ready for another pixel art revolution—Pixelmash 2022.0 is ready for you to download and now supports non-destructive dynamic vector layers via SVG file importing! Vector layers in Pixelmash can be infinitely transformed with full fidelity, maintaining smooth outlines and single-pixel line width for strokes regardless of scaling or rotation, and support all of Pixelmash’s adjustable layer effects. Importing SVGs into other pixel art apps produces unwanted anti-aliasing effects and doesn’t allow infinite adjusting of transforms without introducing unwanted jaggies and irregular stroke widths. If you want to perfect the pixels in an imported SVG layer in Pixelmash, simply bake the layer into a fixed-resolution pixel layer and tweak pixels at will. With dynamic vector layers, Pixelmash now gives you unprecedented flexibility in pixel art creation. You can now begin your design work in…
- Coming Soon To Pixelmash 2022.0: SVG Vector Layer Importing! - 14 February 2022
Get ready for another pixel art revolution - Pixelmash 2022.0 is coming out very soon and will support dynamic vector graphics layers via SVG file importing! Note in the video how the vector layers can always be dynamically transformed, maintaining smooth outlines and single-pixel line width for strokes regardless of scaling or rotation, and support all of Pixelmash’s adjustable layer effects (here we use the Colorize effect to add atmospheric distance shading). Importing SVGs into other pixel art apps produces unwanted anti-aliasing effects and doesn’t allow infinite adjusting of transforms without introducing unwanted jaggies and irregular stroke widths. If you want to perfect the pixels in an imported SVG layer in Pixelmash, simply bake the layer into a fixed-resolution pixel layer and tweak pixels at will. Coming very soon, watch this space!
