Pixel art editor guide

Three looks

Each picture below is the tree the tool opens with. The page draws nothing on its own, and a palette pick changes only the swatches, so these three differ in what the panel can change without a hand on the grid: the background and the grid lines.

The table under each one is the whole recipe; everything not listed stays as the page opens.

As it opens

The pixel-art tree on its dark checkerboard with faint grid lines, as the tool opens — The tree on the see-through checkerboard, with the grid showing.

Each empty square shows four dark checks, so you can tell which squares hold nothing. Those squares are see-through in the PNG.

Setting	Value
Background	Transparent
Show grid	On

Save at 16x and the tree can be laid over any picture.

On white, grid off

The pixel-art tree as blocks of green and brown on a white square, with no lines between the squares — White background with Show grid off.

With the grid off, the squares read as blocks of colour on a white ground, much as a 4x PNG does.

Neighbouring squares meet with no line between them, at any zoom: each edge is snapped to the screen's own pixels. The saved PNG has no lines either.

Setting	Value
Background	White
Show grid	Off

The white is saved into the PNG and the copy as well.

On black, grid on

The pixel-art tree on a black square, with faint grid lines over every square — Black background, with faint grid lines over every square.

On black the greens stand out more. The grid lines are faint white, so they show best on dark squares.

Setting	Value
Background	Black
Show grid	On

Try the dark greens of the Game Boy palette on black: pick a swatch and use Fill on the main green of the leaves.