Aseprite

About Aseprite

Aseprite is built for images where every pixel is placed deliberately. Everything about it reflects that: the brush is pixel accurate with no anti-aliasing unless it is asked for, the zoom goes deep enough to work comfortably at very small canvas sizes, and the colour palette is a first class object rather than a panel that happens to exist.

Animation lives in a proper timeline with layers and frames as a grid. Frames have individual durations, layers can be locked and grouped, and onion skinning shows the surrounding frames behind the current one at adjustable opacity so motion is judged while it is being drawn rather than only on playback. Tags mark loops and sequences within a longer strip.

Palette handling is where it separates itself. Indexed colour mode keeps an image genuinely limited to its palette, colour ramps are generated and edited in place, remapping the palette recolours the whole sprite at once, and shading tooling shifts pixels along a ramp instead of blending them into new colours that break the constraint.

The tilemap and export tools cover the production end. Tilemap layers build a level from a tileset that stays editable, and export writes sprite sheets in the common arrangements with a data file describing frames, tags and durations, so the result drops straight into an engine without hand editing anything.

What is included in this build

• Pixel accurate brush and drawing tools with no unwanted anti-aliasing
• Animation timeline with per-frame durations, layers and frame tags
• Onion skinning at adjustable opacity across surrounding frames
• Indexed colour mode with palette editing, ramps and whole sprite remapping
• Shading tools that shift pixels along a ramp instead of blending
• Tilemap layers built from an editable tileset
• Sprite sheet export with a data file describing frames, tags and durations
• Scripting interface for automating repetitive editing and export tasks

Changed in version 1.3.18.1

• Improved tilemap editing performance on large maps
• Additional export arrangements for sprite sheets
• Better handling of very long animations in the timeline
• Scripting interface extended with more editor functions
• Reduced memory use on documents with many layers

Installation walkthrough

These steps assume a clean machine. If a previous release of the same application is present, deal with that first, since an overlapping install is the most common cause of a setup that stops halfway.

1. Extract the archive to any folder with a short path.
2. Run the installer as administrator, or use the portable build from any folder.
3. Choose the interface theme and scaling on first launch, since the default suits small displays.
4. Set the default palette and canvas size in preferences before starting a project.
5. Associate the sprite format with the editor if working across many files.

System requirements and file details

Frequently asked about this title