Pixel Studio
The Pixels workspace is Opal's drawing surface. Draw a sprite here, cut it out of a photo, or keep editing an imported sheet — then bake a PNG the scene can use, or a .ssb the Sprite Animator can play.
It is intentionally different from Art Canvas:
| Workspace | Best for | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Pixels | Draw, erase, select, layers, onion-skin frames | .opix working file, PNG sprites, optional .ssb |
| Art | Slice sheets, re-time clips, register frames | .ssb sprite sequence bundles |
| Motion | Keyframe an object moving, rotating, fading | Motion clips on scene objects |
Important: File → Save keeps the .opix working file (layers, frames, palette). Bake PNG writes sprites the scene can use — it does not create a working file. Use Bake animation only when the document has two or more drawing frames.
When To Use It
Use Pixel Studio when the pixels themselves still need work.
.opix, then Bake PNG onto the stage..ssb..aseprite / .ase or a JSON export. Continue in Pixels, then bake.Open The Workspace
- Open a project in the editor.
- Click Create ▾ → Pixels in the top bar.
- File → New for a blank canvas, Open… (
Ctrl/Cmd+O) for an image,.opix, or Aseprite file, or drop a file on the canvas.
Library images open from the Assets tab. File → Place… (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+O, or Shift-drop) puts an image on a new layer. A bigger image grows the canvas rather than clipping.
The command palette lists the same File, Edit, selection, view, layer, and frame actions as the studio buttons.
Find Your Tools
The left panel groups drawing, painting, shading, and selection tools by purpose. Hover a tool for its name and shortcut; the active tool shows both above its settings. Brush size and presets appear for brush-based tools, while fill, shape, gradient, and selection settings follow the selected tool. Switching tools preserves your settings.
Color sits above brush settings so the foreground and background stay within reach. Click either swatch to edit it. Color values opens the inline HSV/HSL channels, and Harmonies, ramp & replace holds palette and shading controls. Open More brush options for pen pressure and custom brushes. Choosing Ramp Shade opens its ramp controls automatically.
The document row holds File, Edit, Tiles, Slice, Cutout, and Bake. The canvas toolbar below it holds Undo / Redo, zoom, Fit, Grid, and Preview. Hold Space to pan and use the wheel to zoom. Undo and Redo affect the drawing document, including its layers and frames.
Click the canvas to return keyboard focus after editing a field. Tool keys then work from the canvas and toolbars; fields keep their normal typing and editing shortcuts while focused. Enter and Space activate focused buttons and menu headings. Escape closes an open document menu before cancelling a drawing gesture.
Draw
| Tool | Key | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Pencil | B | Draw with the primary colour |
| Eraser | E | Clear pixels |
| Brush | N | Soft or hard paint, textured tips, and soft erasing |
| Spray | A | Scatter paint; hold still to keep spraying |
| Smudge | Q | Mix paint or pull existing pixels with Smear |
| Blur | Button | Soften transitions under the tip |
| Dodge / Burn | Buttons | Build highlights or deepen shadows |
| Bucket Fill | F | Flood fill |
| Line / Rectangle / Ellipse | U / R / C | Shape strokes |
| Contour / Draw Polygon | J / K | Freeform and polygon strokes |
| Dither Gradient / Ramp Shade | D / S | Gradients and ramp shading |
| Pick Color | I | Sample a colour |
| Pan Canvas | H | Move the view |
Selection tools: Marquee (M), Ellipse Select (O), Lasso (L), Polygon Select (P), Tile Select (Y), Magic Wand (W). Move Selection (V) and Transform Selection (T) edit the current selection. A finished selection also gets flip and 90° rotate.
Press X to swap the primary and secondary colours. [ and ] decrease and increase brush size. Hold Space over the canvas to pan temporarily.
Choose and sample colors
Press Shift+C to edit the foreground (primary), or Shift+X to edit the background (secondary). These actions are also in Ctrl/Cmd+K → Pixel Studio → Color. The chooser has a saturation/value square, hue and opacity sliders, hex, and RGBA fields. Hex accepts RGB or RGBA, including short forms such as #f80. Use Apply or Enter to accept the draft; Cancel or Escape leaves both painting colors unchanged. Color choices do not create document undo steps.
In indexed art, the chooser shows the existing palette entry that will be used. Click an entry to choose its exact index, even when entries have identical colors. It never adds colors or changes the palette. The most recent twelve accepted colors remain available for the current Pixel Studio session.
Press I for the eyedropper, or hold Alt with a paint tool to sample without switching tools. A magnified preview shows the merged pixel, its hex value and alpha, and its coordinates. Click or drag to pick the foreground; right-click or right-drag picks the background. Release Alt to resume painting. Alt retains its selection-subtraction and Move Selection duplication behavior in those tools.
The palette is one Tab stop. Arrow keys, Home, and End move between entries; Enter or Space chooses foreground, with Shift for background. FG and BG markers show the selected entries. Typing in color fields stays local to the chooser, and closing it returns keyboard focus to where you opened it.
Paint with advanced brushes
Choose Brush, Spray, Smudge, Blur, Dodge, Burn, or Ramp Shade, then choose a Preset. Use Try this brush to draw in an isolated scratchpad; Sample draws an example and Clear resets it. The scratchpad does not alter your artwork or document history.
Advanced brush settings control hardness, spacing, scatter, density, tip shape, angle and aspect. Flow is the amount deposited by each dab; Stroke opacity limits how much the entire stroke contributes, including where dabs overlap. Choose a Pressure target to vary size, flow, or strength with a pen. Mouse strokes always use full pressure. Follow stroke turns the tip with your motion.
Capture selection turns the active layer's selected pixels into a custom tip. Use Mask · primary color to tint its shape, or Captured colors for a color stamp. Soft Eraser is available as a brush preset. The ordinary Pencil and Eraser retain their precise, hard pixel behavior.
Smear pulls existing colors without blending new colors. Smudge carries and mixes paint, with Color pickup controlling how quickly it picks up what is underneath. Blur averages nearby paint without dragging it. Dodge and Burn use strength/exposure to lighten or darken existing paint; select shadows, midtones, highlights, or all tones. They preserve transparency, and right-click temporarily switches Dodge to Burn or Burn to Dodge.
In indexed documents, explicitly choose Quantize to palette or Dither. Both retain the existing palette; quantization may leave a subtle change invisible until enough paint has accumulated. Dither represents intermediate colors and coverage with a pattern. Brushes never add palette entries automatically. Indexed Dodge/Burn only choose entries with the same alpha, so an unsuitable palette can leave a pixel unchanged.
Shade materials
Generate a ramp in Color → Harmonies, ramp & replace, then choose Ramp Shade. The brush moves existing ramp colors forward; right-click reverses direction. Colors outside the chosen ramps stay unchanged, and pixel alpha is preserved.
- Single step moves each affected pixel at most one ramp entry per stroke.
- Build up accumulates strength to travel farther through a ramp.
- Texture distributes ramp steps through a repeatable grain pattern.
Under Material shading, name and Capture active ramp for materials such as skin, cloth, or metal. Select one saved material, or enable Use all saved material ramps to shade several materials in one stroke. The active ramp takes precedence; the first matching saved ramp wins when a color belongs to several ramps.
Under My brush library, save a named preset to this browser or export a portable JSON library containing presets, captured tips, and material ramps. Import adds validated entries to your library. If browser storage is unavailable, keep the page open and export the library to retain your changes. Brush libraries are personal settings; painted results save normally in the .opix document.
Every canvas stroke is one undo step. Escape, lost pointer capture, leaving the workspace, or losing window focus cancels the in-progress stroke, including spray.
| Selection | Key |
|---|---|
| Select all / deselect | Ctrl/Cmd+A / Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+A |
| Invert | Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+I |
| Copy / cut / paste | Ctrl/Cmd+C / Ctrl/Cmd+X / Ctrl/Cmd+V |
| Erase selected pixels | Delete or Backspace |
| Nudge pixels with Move, or outline with a selection tool | Arrow keys; hold Shift for 10 px |
| Finish a polygon or shape | Enter |
| Cancel a gesture, then clear the selection | Escape |
Drawing frames are onion-skin columns, not a clip timeline. Frame duration, tags, and playback live on a baked .ssb or in Art Canvas. , and . step frames. Linked cels share pixels across frames.
| View | Key |
|---|---|
| Tile grid | G |
| Fit the canvas | 0 |
| Zoom in / out | + / - |
| Zoom to selection | Z |
Preview shows the document at true size, plays frames at the bake fps, and can tile 3×3 so wrap-around strokes are visible. Symmetry can mirror left–right or top–bottom while you draw.
Layers live in the studio dock: add, duplicate, delete, merge, flatten, group, and indent. F2 renames.
Ctrl/Cmd+Z in Pixels rewinds the document, not the scene. Redo with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z or Ctrl/Cmd+Y. Help → Keyboard shortcuts lists the full set.
Cutout
The Cutout menu folds photo-to-sprite work into the same document:
| Control | Use |
|---|---|
| Import limit | Scale a large photo down on the way in (256–2048 px, or Original) |
| Remove background | Runs a model on Opal's servers (rembg, BEN2, or Apple Vision) against the active layer |
| Magic Wand with Contiguous off | Select one colour everywhere, then Delete to key it out |
| Crop to selection | Crop every layer and frame to the selection |
| Trim to art | Crop the canvas to the drawn pixels across all frames |
Background removal is a hosted feature. Import, crop, trim, and the wand still work if removal is unavailable. Pixel art, tiny sprites, and already-transparent layers are a poor match for Apple Vision — pick BiRefNet Lite or BEN2 instead.
Save And Bake
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
File → Save (Ctrl/Cmd+S) | Write the .opix working file to Assets › Art |
| File → Save as copy | A new .opix beside it |
| File → Export PNG | Same as Bake PNG, then reveal the first sprite |
| Bake → Bake PNG | PNG sprites the scene can use (overwrites this document's last PNG bake) |
| Bake → Bake as new | PNG sprites as a fresh set of assets |
| Bake → Bake animation | PNG frames plus an .ssb — needs two or more drawing frames |
After a bake, Reveal shows it in the asset browser, Art Canvas opens those frames as an Art pipeline, and Use as sprite places the first baked frame in the scene.
Slice re-cuts an opened sheet into drawing columns by cell size, margin, and gap. Aseprite… imports a .aseprite / .ase document or a JSON export.
Tiles
The Tiles menu bakes the active drawing column as one atlas a TileMap 2D can slice. Set tile width/height and margin, then Bake tileset. The atlas is never trimmed or scaled — tile ids are grid positions.
After a tileset bake, Reveal shows it in Assets, and Use as tilemap adds a TileMap 2D to the scene.
Edit Menu
Edit covers outline, align-to-canvas, canvas size with a 9-point anchor, scale sprite with quick multiplier chips, canvas transforms (Flip Horizontal/Vertical, Rotate 90° CW/CCW, Rotate 180°), and Invert Colors:
- Outline: Stroke the drawn pixels with the primary color (outside or inside, with optional rounded diagonal corners); a selection clips it.
- Align: Align the selection or active layer to the left, center, right, top, or bottom edges of the canvas.
- Canvas size: Change canvas dimensions around any of the 9 anchor points.
- Scale sprite: Resample every cel across all layers and frames, with Nearest or Clean (Scale2x) filtering and quick
½×,2×,4×,8×multipliers. - Transform: Flip canvas horizontally (
↔) or vertically (↕), rotate 90° clockwise (↷), 90° counter-clockwise (↶), or 180°. - Invert colors: Invert colors (negative) on the active layer or within an active selection.