Pixel art on Mac, crisp to the last pixel

How to make pixel art on a Mac

1. Start a Pixel Art canvas

   Choose File ▸ “New” and pick the “Pixel Art” preset (512 × 512 px). For sprites, pick the “Transparent” surface, then click “Create Canvas”.

2. Pick the Pixel Brush

   Press X or click the Pixel tool in the tools palette. A grid appears over the canvas.

3. Set the cell size

   Open “Tool Options” in the palette and set “Cell”, from 4 to 64 px, or press [ and ] to step it by 4 px.

4. Draw on the grid

   Click to fill one cell, or drag for a line of cells. Keep “Pixel-perfect” on to avoid doubled corner cells.

5. Zoom in for detail

   Pinch on the trackpad or choose View ▸ “Zoom In” (⌘+), up to 6400%. View ▸ “Zoom to Fit” (⌘0) shows the whole canvas.

6. Export as PNG

   Choose File ▸ “Export as PNG…”. The paper is never included, so empty cells stay transparent.

A pixel art app for Mac that keeps every pixel crisp

Paint My is a drawing and painting app for macOS, and its “Pixel Brush” turns the canvas into a pixel art editor. Every point you draw lands in a square cell, sized with “Cell” from 4 to 64 px in steps of 4 (16 px by default).

A grid appears over the canvas while the Pixel Brush is active, and its lines adjust as you zoom. Fast strokes leave no gaps, because the brush joins the cells along your line. Each cell gets one flat color with hard edges.

The Pixel Brush ignores pen pressure and skips stroke smoothing, so a mouse, a trackpad and a drawing tablet give the same clean cells. It is one of the 14 free styles among Paint My's 57 brush styles, in the Pixel family of the brush library.

What is a pixel perfect brush?

On a grid, a freehand diagonal or curve often picks up extra cells where it steps. These form small L-shaped corners, which pixel artists usually clean up by hand.

“Pixel-perfect” removes them while you draw, so your lines stay a single cell thick. It is on by default. Switch it off in “Tool Options” when you want to keep those corner cells.

Canvas size, zoom and layers for pixel art

The “Pixel Art” preset on the “New Canvas” card is 512 × 512 px, a 32 × 32 grid at the default Cell. Lower “Cell” for a finer grid, or set any size from 64 to 8192 px per side.

Zoom goes up to 6400%, so single cells are easy to hit. Pinch on the trackpad, use View ▸ “Zoom In” (⌘+), or pick a zoom level from the zoom control in the bottom-right corner.

Paint My is a drawing app with layers, so the outline, base colors and highlights can sit on separate layers (3 in the free version). “Left ↔ Right” and “Up ↕ Down” symmetry drawing also work with the Pixel Brush, and mirrored cells snap to the same grid.

Is there a free pixel art app for Mac?

Paint My is pixel art software for Mac that is free to start: a free download with the “Pixel Brush”, “Cell”, “Pixel-perfect” and the grid all in the free version. No account is needed, and drawing works offline.

The free version has 3 layers, 50 undo steps, one canvas open at a time and a five-color palette, and every export is free. Paint My Pro removes the layer limit and the one-canvas limit, has no undo step limit, and adds the Chroma Orb color wheel and the Mixing Well.

Large cells make pixel art a simple first project for younger artists; see the drawing app for kids on Mac guide.

Export sprites with a transparent background

File ▸ “Export as PNG…” leaves the paper out, so unpainted cells are transparent on any surface. “Export Selected Layers…” (⇧⌘E) saves just the layers you pick as a PNG, cropped to the edges of your art.

A full PNG export is canvas-sized, so each cell is a square block of pixels (16 × 16 at the default Cell), and there is no export scaling. Paint My is made for still pixel art, so it does not include:

• Animation, frames or sprite sheets
• A palette-limit mode
• A pixel eraser mode (the Eraser does not snap to the grid, so paint over a cell to fix it)

Questions