File formats

Open files with File > Open... (or drop them on the editor) and export with File > Export.... How to use each option is in Opening, importing and exporting.

Size limits. Animated formats and Aseprite files open up to 4096 pixels on a side.

Opening images. An image opens as a sprite with one layer. Indexed images (GIF, FLC, 8-bit PNG, BMP, TGA, PCX, ICO, indexed Photoshop files) open as indexed sprites with their palette (an 8-bit PNG's partly transparent colors included); grayscale images (PGM, PBM, gray PNG, gray Photoshop files) open as grayscale sprites; a GIF whose frames have different palettes keeps a palette per frame. A PNG that is animated (an APNG) opens with all its frames and their timings, whether it's named .png or .apng.

Files from other editors. Photoshop, OpenRaster (Krita, GIMP, MyPaint), Piskel, Pixilart, Pixelorama and Pyxel Edit files open with their layers. Anything that doesn't carry over is listed in a notice:

• A blend mode pxstud.io doesn't have becomes Normal.
• Photoshop's Pass Through groups open as pass-through groups and its other groups as isolated ones, and export the same way. A Pass Through group below 100% opacity can only be drawn isolated: when a layer inside uses another blend mode, the notice says it may look different.
• OpenRaster groups keep their isolation (isolation="isolate" is an isolated group). In Pixelorama, a group set to Pass Through opens pass-through and any other group isolated.
• Photoshop layer masks are applied to the layer's pixels. Adjustment layers, text and effects come in as their pixels, or not at all.
• Pixelorama tilemap layers open as tilemap layers: layers that share a tileset still share it, and flipped and transposed tiles keep their transform. A tilemap with isometric, hexagonal or half-offset tiles, or one the square tile grid can't hold, opens as an ordinary layer of its pixels. An indexed Pixelorama project opens as an indexed sprite, with its palette's colors in the same slots; if the file's indices and colors don't agree it opens as RGBA. Linked cels stay linked, and guides and user data (project, layer, cel, tag and tile notes, layer and cel colors) come along.
• Pixelorama's layer effects, 3D and audio layers and frame user data are skipped (the notice names the layers). Files from before Pixelorama 1.0 need saving again in a newer Pixelorama.
• A Pyxel Edit file with animations opens at tile size, with one frame per animation cell and a tag per animation; the rest of the canvas isn't kept.
• Piskel keeps one frame rate for the whole file, so on export it uses the most common frame duration. Its export also leaves out hidden layers and has no groups or blend modes.

Icons and cursors. An ICO or CUR file holds one image per size; pxstud.io opens the largest. A cursor's click point (its hotspot) comes in as a slice named Hotspot with its pivot on that pixel. Exporting a cursor uses the pivot of a slice named hotspot, or the top-left pixel when there is none.

FLC timing. FLC players show every frame for the same time, so pxstud.io's FLC export repeats a frame as many times as its duration needs (as Aseprite does), and opening an FLC joins repeated frames back into one. Two neighboring frames that look the same become one frame either way.

APNG or GIF? An animated PNG keeps every color, soft transparency and exact frame timings, and plays in every current browser. GIF has at most 256 colors, only fully clear or fully solid pixels, and timings in 10 ms steps, but almost everything can show it. Apps without APNG support show an animated PNG's first frame.

Aseprite files keep almost everything. When opening one, a notice lists what couldn't be kept: an embedded color profile (pxstud.io works in sRGB), a blend mode pxstud.io doesn't have (set to Normal), a tilemap layer that isn't on its tile grid (opened as an image layer), a reference layer that shows different images on different frames (the first is kept), or a damaged cel or an unknown kind of layer (left out, as Aseprite does, while the rest of the file opens).

Aseprite has no clipping masks. pxstud.io saves a layer's clipping mask in the .aseprite file as a property under its own pxstudio extension name, which Aseprite keeps but ignores. The layer draws unclipped in Aseprite and is clipped again when the file is reopened in pxstud.io.

Aseprite isolates either every group or none: groups are pass-through unless Compose groups separately (in its Experimental preferences) is on. When a sprite has an isolated group, pxstud.io's .aseprite file asks for composed groups (and keeps the groups' opacity and blend modes), and marks each group that isn't isolated with isolated: false under the pxstudio extension name. Aseprite then draws those groups isolated too when that option is on, while pxstud.io reopens them pass-through. A file with composed groups from Aseprite opens with every group isolated.