1-bit art tools?

Hi all,

I got curious what tools 1-bit artists use to draw 1-bit stuff?

Searching around a bit I found:

Photoshop is actually a pretty good option if you have it.

Piskel looks pretty nice. Web based and handles animations and seems specifically designed for sprite kind of stuff.

And this thread: Convert color PNGs to 1 bit per pixel? has some great links to various tools, especially if you want to do some dithering or convert existing images.

Anyone on here have great recommendations for tools or resources for creating 1-bit art? Whether it's animated sprites or background images? What do you use?

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I definitely recommend checking out Aseprite, it's an awesome tool for any kind of pixel art!

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Yes Aseprite is a really good option.

Somehow I tend to use Acorn on Mac. It is relatively lightweight and easy to use to create quickly some assets. But it's mainly because I am not an artist.

I also used recently ImageMagick to convert a bunch of pictures. You don't have great control IMO but there is still tons of options.

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On macOS I use Acorn for a bunch of stuff, and Piskel mostly for animation and spritesheet manipulation (really wish this could get a few small QOL improvements).

And on iPad I use Pixaki.

Some people swear by Pixel Studio (iPad), Artstudio Pro (macOS and iPad) but I'm yet to try either.

Though most of my work is automated using a make file build process that runs OpenSCAD and ImageMagick.

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Pixen (macOS) was recently updated to include new templates for Playdate. You can find it in the Mac App Store or pixenapp[dot]com.

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Whether you use Mac or Windows I think Aseprite is an excellent option. If Windows, besides, you can... Err... 'Jack Sparrow' it, you know, and for Mac I think there's also a free fork of it called Libresprite, basically exactly the same thing, prolly not last version tho but works excellently and gets the job done.

Otherwise, if properly set, you could also use Photoshop, and maybe if you want something to use from the web, Pixlr may be an option as well, although to be fairly honest I've not had enough experience with this last one as to say if it's really good or not...