How to use the Pixel Art Sharpener
- Drop the blurry sprite. Try the blurry blob sample to see what it does.
- Set the alpha threshold: anything above it becomes solid, anything below becomes transparent.
- Turn on despeckle to drop lone pixels and thin stubs left on the edge.
- Snap colors to the sprite's own dominant colors, or to a fixed number of colors.
- Compare with the original, then download the PNG.
What you get
- PNG with only fully opaque or fully transparent pixels
- Reduced palette made of the sprite's real colors
- Before/after counts of colors and semi-transparent pixels
Tips from making games with it
- Start with 'own colors'. It keeps every color that covers a real area of the sprite and folds the thin blend colors into their nearest neighbour.
- If outlines lose pixels, lower the alpha threshold. If a halo remains, raise it.
- Check on a dark and a light background with the background buttons. Halos that hide on the checkerboard show up instantly on white.
- If the sprite was also scaled up by a non-integer amount, fix the size first with the Pixel Art Resizer, then sharpen.
Use cases
- Cleaning AI-generated sprites before using them in a game
- Fixing art that was resized with smoothing on
- Removing the soft halo around exported transparent PNGs
- Recovering a tight palette from a JPEG-damaged sprite
FAQ
Why does my pixel art look blurry?
Usually it was scaled with bilinear filtering or saved as JPEG. Both create new blended colors and semi-transparent edge pixels that real pixel art doesn't have.
What does 'snap to own colors' do?
It finds the colors that cover a meaningful share of the sprite and maps every other color, usually thin anti-aliasing blends, to the nearest of those in perceptual (OKLab) color space.
What does despeckle remove?
Opaque pixels with no opaque neighbours (lone specks) or, at the stronger setting, with only one neighbour (stubs). These are usually leftovers from a soft edge.
Can it fix a blurry upscaled sprite?
It cleans colors and edges, but it doesn't reconstruct the original grid. If the sprite was scaled up, scale it back to its native size first, then sharpen.
Does it work on sprite sheets?
Yes. The settings apply to the whole image, so a sheet is cleaned in one pass.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Processing happens in your browser.