PixelCraft v0.6.0

PixelCraft v0.6.0 adds live MCP painting, project saves, and scaled animation exports.

• Paint through MCP. Apply atomic batches of strokes, stamps, polygons, or compressed RGBA patches to specific layers and frames. Copy, move, flip, clear, and recolor masked regions. Each batch is one undoable edit.
• Preview and save live work. Render cropped previews of selected layers at an integer scale. Live MCP supports Undo, Redo, Save, and Save As. File MCP also supports Save and Save As.
• Export animations at higher resolutions. Export GIF, H.264 MP4, and numbered transparent PNG sequences from the editor or MCP. A 4× export turns a 480×270 sprite into 1920×1080. MP4 requires FFmpeg with libx264 on PATH.
• Work with larger animations. Projects can store up to 128 million pixels across layers and frames. File opening, saving, recovery, exports, and large color scans run in the background. The timeline reuses rendered thumbnails, and playback keeps its frame deadlines when a redraw is late.
• Launch directly into playback. Run pixelcraft --open PATH --play to open and play a project.

See the Autumn Breeze and Moonlit Sanctuary animation demos in PR #6.

The Linux x86-64 AppImage and Windows x86-64 installer each include a SHA-256 checksum.

Full changelog

PixelCraft v0.5.2

PixelCraft v0.5.2 updates the editor’s common dialogs.

• New Sprite, Rename Layer, save confirmations, file errors, and Help now share a themed dialog with a draggable header and a dimmed editor backdrop.
• The × has a fixed 34 × 34 hit area with hover, pressed, and keyboard-focus feedback. Help also has a Close button at the bottom.
• Escape and clicks on the backdrop dismiss the dialog. The backdrop blocks clicks from reaching the editor, and dismissing a save confirmation keeps your unsaved edits open.

Downloads include the Windows x86_64 installer and Linux x86_64 AppImage, each with a SHA-256 checksum.

Full changelog

PixelCraft v0.5.1

PixelCraft v0.5.1 improves interaction feedback in the editor.

• Custom switches, inspector headings, and artwork swatches show distinct hover, pressed, and keyboard-focus feedback.
• Artwork swatches keep their selection outline during hover and press. Screen readers announce the hex color and selected state, including alpha for translucent colors.
• Edit → Undo and Redo are disabled whenever the active tab has no corresponding history.
• The README and interaction audit describe the updated behavior, and the README includes a fresh 1080p editor screenshot.

Windows x86_64 installer and Linux x86_64 AppImage downloads each include a SHA-256 checksum.

Full changelog

PixelCraft v0.5.0

PixelCraft v0.5.0 brings a compact Fluent editor, a larger sprite preview, and expanded drawing, export, and automation tools.

Editor and preview

• Choose Compact or Comfortable density. Resize the inspector and timeline, or collapse the inspector from its header.
• Use native Windows and Linux window controls. Closing the window still prompts for unsaved tabs.
• Resize the pinned bottom-left preview and choose Fit, 1:1, 2×, 3×, 4×, or 8×. Drag to pan when artwork extends beyond the preview. PixelCraft remembers the preview size and zoom and follows the active sprite and frame.

Drawing, exports, and automation

• Copy and paste RGBA images through the system clipboard. Undo and Redo restore selections with the artwork.
• Add outlines and drop shadows, reorder palette colors, build shading ramps, and sample or copy reference images onto a layer.
• Scale PNG and sprite-sheet exports with nearest-neighbor sampling, export BMP, open files by dragging them in, and pack atlases from folders. Sprite sheets preserve animation repeat counts, and Godot exports honor finite repeats and generate unique animation names.
• Use MCP commands to create documents, manage layers, frames, and tags, and draw shapes.
• Start with wgpu and retry with OpenGL if initialization fails. Download and verify updates from Help → About.

Interaction feedback still in progress

Custom switches, section headings, and artwork swatches still need clearer hover, pressed, and keyboard-focus feedback. Swatches need accessible names and selected-state metadata, and Undo/Redo should appear disabled when their histories are empty.

Downloads

• Windows x86_64 setup executable
• Linux x86_64 AppImage
• SHA-256 checksums for both downloads

Full changelog

PixelCraft v0.4.1

PixelCraft v0.4.1 refreshes the editor's icons and navigation, adds a compact dominant-color panel, and improves large-image handling.

UI improvements

• Apply a consistent icon pack to drawing tools, menus, layer and animation controls, dialogs, workflows, and assistant settings.
• Add icon variants for high-DPI displays and tint them with the active theme.
• Refresh sprite tabs with independent close controls, unsaved indicators, and adjacent New/Open buttons.
• Show each action's current shortcut in a single tooltip. Local dialog and workflow actions avoid unrelated editor shortcuts.
• Add accessible timeline-cell names and keyboard navigation checks, and adjust the timeline so the sample's three layers fit.

Colors and stability

• Show up to 10 dominant colors, group similar shades, and ignore fully transparent pixels.
• Cache dominant colors until the artwork changes. Selecting a swatch changes the drawing color while retaining saved named colors.
• Render only visible palette rows to avoid creating hundreds of thousands of controls when opening detailed images.

Compatibility

• Improve Lua Point, Size, and Rectangle constructor and setter behavior, backed by regression tests.

Validation

• The full local suite passed 225 tests, with three manual tests skipped.
• The Windows test build passed compilation, automated theme/scaling/accessibility/keyboard tests, and installer install/app/uninstall checks. Manual testing confirmed it works on Windows.
• Linux package checks passed on X11 and native Wayland.
• The 1549×1015 warriors project was exercised through the editor's opening path and an isolated native Wayland session.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64 AppImage.
• Windows x86_64 setup executable.
• SHA-256 checksum files accompany both packages.

Changes merged in PR #4.

Known maintenance items

The dependency scan continues to report five existing informational advisories covering I/O-safety issues and unmaintained dependencies. They remain follow-up maintenance work.

• rustix — RUSTSEC-2026-0486
• tokio — RUSTSEC-2026-0386
• zbus_names — RUSTSEC-2026-0371
• zvariant — RUSTSEC-2026-0370
• zvariant_derive — RUSTSEC-2026-0372

PixelCraft v0.4.0

PixelCraft v0.4.0 adds drawing tools, sprite workflows, and assistant access to the live editor.

Drawing and editing

• Magic Wand selection, shade and dither brushes, selection stamps, and edge wrapping.
• PNG/JPEG reference overlays with movement and scaling. Save references inside .pixel projects.
• Palette import/export and snapping, configurable onion skinning, recent files, and editable shortcut presets.

Import, export, and automation

• Import grid sprite sheets, export animations by tag, and combine frames from multiple projects into an atlas.
• Headless CLI and MCP tools for working with files.
• Opt-in live MCP inspection, rendering, revision-checked pixel edits, and Undo. Access can be revoked in the editor.
• Improved Lua color and Point/Size constructor compatibility.

Fixes and security

• Preserve indexed transparency when importing palettes and require an explicit choice before discarding references in ASE saves.
• Fix reference dragging, cropped Wand masks, shortcut removal persistence, wrapped shading, narrow atlas packing, and large ping-pong GIF exports.
• Bound live bridge request times and interrupt active connections when access is disabled.
• Update TLS dependencies and certificate roots, with vendored source verification and dependency audit tooling.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64 AppImage.
• Windows x86_64 setup executable.
• SHA-256 checksum files accompany the packages.

Verification

201 regular Rust tests, both live socket tests, build, formatting, and headless CLI/MCP checks passed on Linux before release. The pinned dependency scan reported zero vulnerabilities and five informational warnings. The release workflow also builds and tests both desktop packages.

Changes since v0.3.1 are included in PR #2.

PixelCraft v0.3.1

PixelCraft v0.3.1 follows your desktop’s light or dark appearance and starts in Light when the system reports no preference.

• Choose View → Theme → System, Light, or Dark. Existing explicit choices are preserved.
• On Linux, System mode reads and listens to the desktop appearance portal on X11 and Wayland.
• Saved custom colors are restored after applying the saved base theme. In System mode, custom colors can still fall back to the built-in palette if the desktop reports a different appearance after startup.

This addresses the dark-startup feedback from the AppImage catalog test. See PixelCraft #1.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64: PixelCraft-v0.3.1-x86_64.AppImage
• Windows 10/11 x64: PixelCraft-v0.3.1-x86_64-Setup.exe
• SHA-256 checksums are included for both downloads.

Full changes: v0.3.0...v0.3.1

PixelCraft v0.3.0

PixelCraft v0.3.0 adds workspace recovery, expanded drawing and selection tools, and new animation, sprite-sheet and game-development workflows.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64: PixelCraft-v0.3.0-x86_64.AppImage — make executable and run.
• Windows 10/11 x64: PixelCraft-v0.3.0-x86_64-Setup.exe — close PixelCraft and install over your existing version. The installer is unsigned.
• SHA-256 checksums are included for both packages.

Artwork and recovery

• Autosave open tabs and unsaved work every 15 seconds, with a previous-backup fallback. Restore active tab, saved baselines, named colors, selections and canvas views. Recovery does not overwrite project files or restore undo history.
• Lasso and move tools; selection resizing, 90° rotation, flips and canvas crop.
• Horizontal/vertical symmetry, a one-pixel pixel-perfect pencil and pressure-controlled brush size when the platform supplies pressure events.
• Gradients, shading ramps and invert/grayscale/lighten/darken effects.
• Rename/delete named drawing colors and save/load named palettes.

Import and export

• Sprite-sheet packing with columns, padding, trimming, animation ranges and JSON metadata; import exported sheets back into animation canvases.
• Numbered PNG sequence import and animated GIF, APNG, WebP and layered OpenRaster import.
• Godot 4 SpriteFrames export and Unity multiple-sprite importer metadata. Engine files have structural test coverage; live editor imports have not been validated.
• Visual tileset browser, seamless repeat preview, and finite orthogonal Tiled JSON map/tileset import and export.
• Windows builds now bundle the WebP decoder DLLs and licenses and verify animated WebP import from the installed app without build-tool DLLs on PATH.

Scripting fixes

• Selection-aware Flip, InvertColor, Desaturate and ReplaceColor commands.
• Fixed Flip losing artwork in offset cels; regression coverage includes selections, off-canvas pixels and undo/redo.
• More accurate Color equality and HSV mutation handling, including clearing stale grayscale representation.

Verification and boundaries

The automated suite contains 136 tests, including the existing upstream Aseprite project and script corpus. Release CI checks packaged Linux startup on X11 and Wayland, Windows installation/upgrade/uninstall, bundled WebP import and the GUI subsystem. Both downloads have verified SHA-256 checksums.

Tiled support currently excludes infinite maps, image collections, object/group layers and compressed tile arrays. OpenRaster supports the documented blend-mode subset. Crop requires rasterizing tile layers first. Sprite-sheet packing does not rotate frames. See README and COMPATIBILITY.md for details and remaining Aseprite API limitations.

Made via CraftAnything by ArtCraft, using Aseprite as the basis and reference for PixelCraft.

Full changes: v0.2.1...v0.3.0

PixelCraft v0.2.1

PixelCraft v0.2.1 adds an About dialog and update notifications, and improves Lua grayscale compatibility.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64: PixelCraft-v0.2.1-x86_64.AppImage — make it executable and run it.
• Windows 10/11 x64: PixelCraft-v0.2.1-x86_64-Setup.exe — close PixelCraft and install over the existing version. The installer is unsigned.
• SHA-256 checksum files are included for both packages.

This replaces the earlier v0.2.1 downloads with the updated build. Re-download and reinstall if you installed the first v0.2.1 build. Because the version number is unchanged, the update checker will not announce this replacement to existing v0.2.1 users.

What's new

• Help → About displays the developer, installed version, latest stable GitHub release and project links, with CraftAnything by ArtCraft attribution.
• Background update checks run at startup and hourly. You can also check manually from About. A newer stable release shows a New version found link and a download link. Updates are downloaded and installed manually.
• Added a GitHub button in the top bar. Official GitHub builds embed the repository; developer credit is Asad. These details are read-only in About, and legacy saved values cannot override the build identity.
• Update checks use semantic version ordering, ignore drafts/prereleases, and do not announce an update when a check fails.
• Fixed Lua Color.gray and grayPixel conversion and packing; improved grayscale construction/assignment, independent Color copying, and indexed input normalization.
• Refreshed the README screenshot with the current interface at 1920×1080.
• Added regression coverage for update comparisons, repository links, the update notification UI and grayscale behavior.

Verification and limitations

The automated suite has 114 tests. Release CI verifies both builds, Linux graphical startup and Windows installer operation, including the GUI-subsystem check that prevents an extra console window. Aseprite compatibility remains partial; see COMPATIBILITY.md.

PixelCraft was made via CraftAnything by ArtCraft.

Full changes: v0.2.0...v0.2.1

PixelCraft v0.2.0

PixelCraft v0.2.0 adds a Windows installer, multi-document editing and broader Aseprite project and extension compatibility.

Downloads

• Linux x86_64: download PixelCraft-v0.2.0-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable and run it.
• Windows 10/11 x64: download PixelCraft-v0.2.0-x86_64-Setup.exe. Install per user or install over an existing PixelCraft installation. Packaged Windows builds now open without an extra terminal window.
• SHA-256 checksum files are included for both downloads.

What's new

• Open multiple sprites in tabs with separate undo histories and unsaved-change protection.
• Choose named drawing colors through a compact Colors selector and reuse colors found in the sprite.
• Expanded ASE/ASEPRITE support: external tilesets embedded on save, sparse tileset IDs, linked tilemaps, off-grid/off-canvas geometry, compact tile entries and legacy empty tiles.
• ICC and fixed-gamma conversion to sRGB for previews while retaining editable source pixels and profile data.
• Expanded Lua support for selections, transactions, undo/redo, cel movement, file operations, preferences and local modules.
• Interactive extension dialogs, callbacks, timers, events and live previews.
• Import original XML theme colors, supported Aseprite shortcut bindings, language INI files and BMP/PNG dithering matrices.
• More accurate Lua color construction, channel mutation, packed RGBA conversion and current drawing-color getters.
• Consistent pixel-P branding and embedded Windows icons.

Verification and compatibility

The automated suite includes 99 tests, reference rendering and round trips for ten upstream Aseprite projects (33 frames), and four unchanged upstream example scripts. Release builds also verify standalone saves/exports/extensions, Linux graphical startup, and Windows installation, upgrade, uninstall and the executable's GUI subsystem.

Aseprite compatibility remains partial. Exact original widget skins, every API/command, multiple independent Lua Sprite objects, monitor-specific color calibration and some file semantics remain unsupported. See COMPATIBILITY.md for the tested surface and remaining limitations. The Windows installer is unsigned.

PixelCraft runs independently of an Aseprite installation and was made via CraftAnything by ArtCraft.

Full changes: v0.1.0...v0.2.0