Ref2Pixel Reviews

Okay, let's start with the positives: true to its name, Ref2Pixel is great at turning reference images into pixel art. Its strength at this is comes from a solid automatic palette (if you choose to use the automatic settings rather than using a specific palette), well-implemented dithering if you choose to use it, and a handful of posterization presets that affect the banding and contrast of the reference image without impacting the colors once you start quantizing into a specific number of colors. I've done a lot (a lot A LOT) of testing and this is the most advanced and high-quality way of handling this that I've found. Honestly, the success I've found turning pictures and videos into pixel art in other programs is owed to what I learned from Ref2Pixel. That having been said, this released in October of 2025 and hasn't seen a single update since. An uncomfortable chunk of the program remains in German despite the store page claiming to be in English, as well, so it's hard to figure out things out. For example, while I was able to figure out that turning a reference into pixel art requires loading the reference, moving it into place, adjusting the settings on the right panel, and then clicking "apply brush from reference," sometimes the resulting image has empty gaps. I don't know why or how to avoid that happening. It's easy enough to patch up empty gaps, but that cleanup work is best done in another pixel art software because the drawing side of things is super awkward. The canvas is laggy, for one thing. There are options for brightening or darkening pixels, too, but these work continuously rather than per-click, so you'll quickly overshoot any shading you want to apply. You can create animations in Ref2Pixel, but I honestly wouldn't bother. I tried converting a short video clip to individual frames and then importing each successive frame in as a reference that then gets converted to pixel art and deleted once applied to the current frame, but this quickly overwhelmed the program to the point where it locked up and never came back. We're talking animations that other pixel art software like Aseprite don't break a sweat with. There doesn't seem to be an option for batch converting, either, so I had to attempt this with a macro-creating program. Some miscellaneous complaints: - The shortcut for loading a reference claims to be control + I, but it doesn't work. I tried L, i, and 1. It just doesn't work. - The maximum canvas size is 256x256. I would have liked to get up to 320 pixels, personally, for situations where I'm working on a game with an internal resolution of 320x180 and want to convert an image for a title screen or something. - Outside of posterization presets, there doesn't seem to be a way of pushing the brightness/contrast/saturation of a reference image into the pixelization process, meaning you can't experiment with hitting it harder or softer to get specific looks without editing the reference in a different piece of software and then continually deleting and re-importing it. - You can import gifs, but it only imports the very first frame rather than importing the whole animation. - If there's documentation for this anywhere on the internet, I certainly haven't found it. That means that I have no idea how to work with Ref2Pixel's tileset features (not that I'd want to given the aforementioned issues with drawing pixels directly on the canvas) or a handful of other options in the menu. - Picking out specific palettes is awful. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to delete or change colors once added to the palette, so I've found that the only way to have any semblance of control over what gets added is to create a .png strip of the colors I want in the palette, import that as a reference, apply it to the canvas, create a palette from the canvas, and then save it as a preset. The store page mentions exporting palettes, too, but this doesn't actually seem to be possible. I don't regret buying this, honestly. I learned a lot because of it, but it's pretty deflating how close to greatness it got right out of the gate, only to be seemingly abandoned immediately. With more development, more features, and some of the awkward parts ironed out, this could be a truly special piece of software. As-is, though, it's hard to recommend to anyone who isn't obsessing about the best pipeline for converting images to believable pixel art.