Create pixel art
Use pixel art when you want a blocky, retro look: a game character, a small icon, a badge, a cross-stitch motif. You paint a pixel sprite, a grid of colored cells, and it stitches as cross-stitch, mini-satin, or a tatami fill. It stays an object you keep editing, not a frozen conversion: repaint a cell at any time and the stitching follows.
Make one
New pixel art makes a blank 16×16 sprite, at 1.5 mm per cell, and opens the pixel editor on it. Reach it from:
- The tool rail, in the Editor group, next to Add shape.
- Tools → New Pixel Art…
- The command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+K).
To reopen a sprite you already made, double-click it on the canvas, or select it and choose Edit pixel art in the floating action bar.
A sprite can also arrive already drawn: Advanced auto-digitize → Pixel art turns a picture into one for credits. See Turn a picture into pixel art. What lands is an ordinary sprite, so everything on this page applies to it.
If you cancel the editor on a new blank sprite, the sprite is removed again, so nothing is left behind in your design.
A digitized sprite is different: it cost credits, so closing the editor keeps it.
The editor
The pixel editor is a full-screen mode, not a panel over the canvas, and it has its own undo history. While it is open, the app's normal shortcuts are suspended, so Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes a brush stroke rather than something in the design behind it.
New in v1.3.3, the editor has its own Tutorial button in its header, beside Done: "A tour of the pixel editor, and short demos of each thing it does." See Take the in-app tutorial.
The same three-way view switch as on the design canvas sits at the top right, so you can flip between the cells you're painting, the real Stitches, and the Realistic thread without leaving. (The first button shows a checkerboard here. Realistic tells you if your computer can't display it.)
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Place pixel | Paint one cell. Right-click, or hold Ctrl, to paint the back color. |
| Eraser | Clear cells back to empty. |
| Fill | Flood the touching cells that share a color. |
| Pick color | Take a cell's color. Alt does this with any tool. |
| Line | Drag a straight line of cells. Shift holds it to 45°. |
| Rectangle | Drag a rectangle. Shift keeps it square. Outline or filled. |
| Ellipse | Drag an ellipse. Shift keeps it a circle. Outline or filled. |
| Select | Drag a box round part of the sprite. Shift adds; drag from inside to move it. |
| Fuzzy select | Click a cell to select every touching cell of the same color. Shift adds another patch. |
| Pan | Drag to move the view. Space or the middle button works with any tool. |
Brush sets how many cells across the brush paints, from 1 to 16. The shape tools draw Outline or Filled.
Two colors at once
You paint with a front and a back color. Right-click, or hold Ctrl, to paint with the back one, and there is an explicit swap button between them.
The color panel keeps two lists apart, so you always know which is which:
- Your threads: the colors already in this design.
- Add a color: colors merely on offer. Click one to bring it into the design.
The brush starts with the sprite's own colors, not the first colors of the design's palette.
Selection, copy and paste
Select a block with Select or Fuzzy select, or take everything with Ctrl/Cmd+A. Then copy (Ctrl/Cmd+C), cut (Ctrl/Cmd+X), delete (Delete), or paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V). You can also drag a selection to move it.
A paste floats before it lands: the cells sit in the air while you position them with the mouse or the arrow keys, so the artwork underneath is untouched until you commit. Enter drops it, Esc throws it away.
Zoom
100% means the whole sprite fits the view, not one screen pixel per cell. The zoom steps are 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, 200%, then doubling. Center the sprite brings it back to the middle.
How a sprite stitches
Under Stitch as, a sprite has three methods:
| Method | What it makes |
|---|---|
| Cross-stitch (default) | One cross per painted cell. The classic pixel look. |
| Mini-satin | One small satin block per cell, the thread direction alternating between neighbors so the sprite reads as a woven basketweave. Dense and glossy. |
| Tatami fill | Floods each block of color solid. Better than cross-stitch at large cell sizes, but it sews the merged blob rather than the cells, so it gives you a silhouette rather than pixel art. |
Cell (mm) is how big one pixel is when stitched, and it is what decides whether the sprite is a badge or a cushion. A 16×16 sprite at 1.5 mm finishes at 24 mm. The field takes 0.5 mm to 20 mm; cross-stitch wants at least 1 mm per cell and mini-satin at least 1.5 mm, and the editor says so when you go under.
- Set the sprite to 32 × 32 cells (Presets… offers 32).
- Set Cell (mm) to 1.5: 32 cells × 1.5 mm finishes at 48 mm.
- Leave Stitch as on Cross-stitch and paint.
For a bolder, glossier look, switch to Mini-satin; expect many more stitches.
Resize or rotate a sprite
Cell (mm) sets the sprite's size cell by cell. You can also drag its handles on the canvas, type a size or angle in Transform, use Edit → Rotate…, or scale it together with other objects. Fixed in v1.4.0: all of these keep it a pixel sprite, with its colors, its stitch method and the pixel editor. Before, dragging its handles, the Rotate dialog, or scaling it with other objects turned it into plain shapes in one color, sewn as tatami.
For example, drag a 24 mm sprite's corner out to about 48 mm, or turn it 15°: it is still pixel art, and double-clicking it still opens the pixel editor.
A sprite is one object in your Layers panel, but at stitch-out it splits into one run per color, which is what the machine needs. Three separate red blobs stay one red run rather than three thread changes.
Mini-satin settings
Mini-satin adds three knobs, in a Satin popover on the essentials bar:
- Direction: which way the threads run inside each pixel. Basketweave alternates between neighbors, which is what makes the sprite read as woven and balances the pull on the fabric. Basketweave, inverted turns every one of those threads the other way, which shows on a picture with a grain. By color, All horizontal and All vertical are also offered.
- Density (mm): the gap between needle penetrations along one edge of a block. Smaller is denser and glossier, and costs proportionally more stitches.
- Bleed (mm): how far each block is stitched past its own cell, along the thread direction. Satin contracts along its threads once the fabric relaxes, so without bleed the seams open and draw a grid of bare fabric across the sprite.
The right value depends on your fabric, stabilizer and thread. Stitch a test piece and use the smallest value that closes the seams.
Roughly 4 to 10 times cross-stitch on the same sprite. A sprite that was fine as cross-stitch may be refused as mini-satin for size ("This pixel art is too large to stitch"): use fewer cells, smaller cells, or another method. Cells under 1 mm are refused outright, because a narrower block has no room for its zigzag; switching a smaller sprite to mini-satin raises its cell size for you.
Trace a picture
Import image… brings a picture into the editor, and asks what you want it for:
- Use as reference: the picture is drawn behind the cells so you can draw over it. It shows in the stitch view too, so you can still see it while checking the thread.
- Convert to pixel art: one cell per pixel, one thread per color. This becomes the sprite, replacing whatever was there. Boldbobbin confirms first, and undo inside the editor brings the old artwork back.
You can also drop an image straight onto the editor.
The reference has its own panel at the end of the tool bar, with Size (100% fits the picture inside the sprite), Move X / Move Y in cells, opacity, and Fit to recenter it. Adding or removing a reference can be undone like a brush stroke.
It is a tracing aid, not part of the drawing. Leave the editor and it is discarded; you would have to import it again.
Why a picture gets refused
An import is capped at 128 × 128 pixels and 256 colors. The message names the reason and the numbers: a picture too large shows its own dimensions, and one with too many colors shows the exact count. Reduce the colors or resize it first, or use it as a reference instead. For example, a 200 × 150 px logo must be resized to fit within 128 × 128 before it can become the sprite.
A sprite you build yourself can be larger than an import: the Width and Height fields take up to 256 cells each, and the Presets… button offers the common squares (8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96, 128) with what each finishes at on fabric.
Break a sprite apart
Convert to → Connected component layers turns one sprite into a folder of sprites, one per connected blob of color, each named by its thread and cropped to itself. A rotated or scaled sprite does not scatter when you split it, and each piece keeps its colors.
What it costs
Painting, previewing and editing pixel art is free on any plan. Exporting or publishing a design whose sprite is stitched as cross-stitch or mini-satin needs Pro, the same way Photostitch and Auto-Trace work.
A sprite set to Tatami fill exports on any plan, and so does an empty sprite. Switch a sprite's method to Tatami fill and that sprite stops needing Pro right away. See Plans and credits.
A sprite from Advanced auto-digitize → Pixel art is the exception: it exports free in any method as long as you haven't changed its cells. Edit the cells and it needs Pro like any other sprite.
Convert to → Stitch block keeps the Pro requirement too: as of v1.3.1 the blocks still need Pro if the sprite did.
Related
- Import as cross-stitch: turn a small picture into a sprite in one step, from the Auto-digitize chooser, instead of painting it cell by cell.
- Objects and layers
- Stitch types