Install Pixelorama

What Pixelorama is

Pixelorama is a program for pixel graphics. You draw image by image in a grid where each square is a pixel, much like in old games, and the result is icons, figures or short animations. The program is free, and it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

For a business it is most useful for three things: a logo at a small scale, icons for the app or the site, and animated figures if the business idea involves games. You do not need to be able to draw. Pixel graphics is more about placing the right color in the right square than about skill with a pencil.

Installing on Windows

Download the latest version from the project's own releases page on GitHub, that is github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama under Releases. You get a zip file. Right-click, choose Extract All, and put the folder somewhere you can find it, for example in Documents. Then start Pixelorama.exe from inside the folder.

There is no installation wizard to click through, and that is intentional. The program runs directly from the folder. Windows may show a blue box saying that Windows protected your PC. That is SmartScreen, and it says that about every program that is not signed by a large company. Click "More info" and then "Run anyway", but only do that when you are sure the file comes from the project's own page.

Installing on Linux Mint

The easiest option is Flatpak, which is already available in Mint. Open the Software Manager, search for Pixelorama and install it. If you would rather type it in a terminal, that works just as well:

flatpak install flathub com.orama_interactive.Pixelorama

The Flathub package is maintained by users and not by the developers themselves. It works, but if you want exactly the version the developers released, download the AppImage file from the same releases page as the Windows version instead, right-click, select Properties, check the box that allows the file to run as a program and double-click.

Three things to do first

1. Create a new image at 32 by 32 pixels. It sounds absurdly small and is exactly right. An icon at that size forces clear shapes, and clear shapes are the whole point of pixel art.
2. Draw something simple with the pencil tool and put the background on its own layer. Layers work like transparent plastic sheets stacked on top of each other, and you will want to move the figure without moving the background.
3. Export to PNG and test the image where it will be used, for example as a profile picture in the company channel. It takes two minutes and immediately reveals whether the shape holds up.

The most common trap

Exporting at the original size. An image of 32 by 32 pixels is about the size of a thumbnail on a modern screen, and when someone then scales it up it becomes blurry. Blurry pixel graphics look like a mistake, because that is what it is.

Scale up during export instead. In the export dialog there is a setting for scale in percent: choose 800 percent, and the image becomes 256 by 256 pixels with razor-sharp edges. Make sure the upscaling is done with the method called nearest neighbour. It copies each pixel as it is instead of blending colors, and that is the difference between a sharp icon and a mushy one.