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Pixx Suite

Create · Image-to-pixel converter · Advanced

Pixxato — Advanced

How Pixxato converts a picture step by step, how Auto colours are chosen, locking art to a game palette, large outputs and what gets saved where.

Open Pixxato

#What you'll learn

  • The exact order Pixxato applies every setting, so you know which control to reach for.
  • How Auto colours are chosen, and when a fixed palette beats it.
  • How to lock a whole game's art to one palette and keep edges engine-friendly.
  • How to work with very large outputs, and what is saved locally, in the cloud and in your library.

#Before you start

  • Work through Pixxato — Intermediate first: sampling, colour modes, dithering, clean-up, presets and batch.
  • For the palette workflows, have your game's palette as a .hex or .gpl file, or in Pixxulo.

#How-tos

#How to predict the result: the conversion order

Pixxato always works in this order:

  1. Crop (kept in the original picture's own pixels, so it stays exact at any output size).
  2. Adjust: brightness, contrast, saturation, gamma and hue are applied to the full-size picture before it is shrunk.
  3. Remove the background: colour connected to the four corners, within Tolerance, becomes transparent.
  4. Resize with your Sampling method to the target Width × Height.
  5. Alpha cut: every pixel becomes fully opaque or fully transparent.
  6. Colours: the palette is chosen (Auto, Palette or Custom) and every pixel is mapped to it, with Dithering at your Strength.
  7. Remove lone pixels, then Ink edges, then Outline last.

Because the outline comes last, its colour is never dithered or replaced, even if it isn't in your palette. Because adjustments come first, a contrast boost changes which colours Auto picks.

#How to understand Auto colours

  1. Auto looks only at the opaque pixels of the resized picture.
  2. It splits the colours into groups (median cut) and then refines the groups a few times (k-means) so the final colours sit where the picture really has detail.
  3. Raise Colours for subtle gradients; lower it for a poster look. The slider goes from 2 to 64.
  4. The swatches under Colours in the result are the colours actually used. Save them with .hex or .gpl, or click Use as custom to edit them.

#How to lock art to a game palette

  1. Get your palette as a .hex or .gpl file (or send it from Pixxulo as a palette and open it from Library).
  2. Under Colours, choose Custom and Import .hex / .gpl, or choose Palette for a built-in one.
  3. Every pixel is mapped to the nearest palette colour. Use an Ordered dither if you need in-between tones that still stay inside the palette.
  4. If an Outline colour isn't in the palette, add it to your custom palette or pick a palette colour for it.

#How to make outputs engines like

  1. Convert at the exact size used in the game, so the engine never has to resample.
  2. Set Alpha cut so the subject keeps a solid, 1-pixel-sharp silhouette; anti-aliased half-transparent edges don't exist after the cut.
  3. Export at 1× for the engine (a scaled-up export is for previews and sharing), or send the image to Pixxula or Pixxizi.

#How to work with very large outputs

  1. Each side can be up to 4096 pixels. While you adjust, the preview converts a smaller copy of the picture; the export converts the real thing.
  2. Try the look at a modest width first (for example 256), then raise the size for the final export.
  3. Large conversions run in your browser and can pause the page for a moment above about 2000 pixels. Avoid running a big Batch at maximum size.

#How to know where your work is kept

  1. On this device: your settings save automatically. The last picture is restored after a reload only if it is at most 1200×1200 and small enough to store; bigger pictures need reopening.
  2. In the cloud: Cloud → Save to cloud stores a project with your settings, the prepared source picture and the result. Open from cloud… restores all of it on any device.
  3. In your library: Send to App → Save to my Pixx library keeps the pixel art as a shared asset any Pixx app can open.

#Workflows

#One palette for a whole game

  1. Build the palette once in Pixxulo.
  2. Import it in Pixxato as Custom, save the look as a preset, and Batch every source picture.
  3. Use the same palette in Pixxivi for hand edits, so nothing drifts off-palette.

#Photo reference to animated scene

  1. Convert a background photo at your screen size (for example 320 wide) with Average sampling and an Ordered 4×4 dither.
  2. Send it to Pixxado to add light and shadow, or to Pixxevi for weather and ambient effects.

#Pixxato in a Flow pipeline

Put Pixxato first in a Flow (Pixxato → Pixxivi → Pixxula): convert, Send result to Flow, and the Pixxivi step picks up your image with one click.

#Tips and shortcuts

  • Flat sampling plus Keep all is a quick way to shrink existing pixel art by a whole factor without new colours.
  • Detail sampling never invents colours, so it pairs well with a small Custom palette.
  • Gamma below 1 lifts dark areas before colours are chosen; above 1 deepens them.
  • Accepted files: PNG, JPEG, GIF (first frame), WebP, BMP, AVIF and .pxasset library files.

#Troubleshooting

  • The outline uses a colour that's not in my palette. The outline is drawn after the colours are mapped. Pick a palette colour for it.
  • Changing contrast changed my colours. Adjustments run before Auto chooses colours. Use a fixed palette if colours must not move.
  • The preview and the export look slightly different on huge sizes. The preview uses a smaller copy for speed; the export uses the full picture.
  • The picture didn't come back after reloading. Large pictures aren't kept on the device; save to the cloud or reopen the file.
  • Batch results don't match each other. Use Palette or Custom colours; Auto picks per picture.