Tesserra

BETA

Tesserra is a heavily retro-inspired and fully cross-platform pixel art editing software. It is currently available on Windows, Linux, macOS and Android, with iOS and iPadOS versions in development and coming soon.

Draw & Animate

Run cycle sprite from the 2D Pixel Art Character Template Asset Pack by ZeggyGames, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

• All the basic drawing tools, pencil, eraser, shapes and fills
• Advanced tool options and custom created brushes
• Different brush and blend modes including advanced mixing and shading
• Tile mode for easy creation of repeating patterns
• A full featured animation timeline with advanced tools
• Advanced animation features such as onion skinning and more
• Layer tools with layer groups and blend modes

Themes

• Dozens of built in retro-style themes
• Colourful themes and others inspired by retro style games and systems
• Import your own font, change the UI scale and customise almost every UI element down to the button shadows

Shaders

• Built in shaders to preview your pixel art in a retro style
• Animated shaders for extra authenticity
• Six built in shaders: Composite NTSC, three CRT types and two handheld LCD looks
• And there's more on the roadmap

Shaders need hardware acceleration, and are a desktop and tablet feature (the phone layout has no preview window).

Palettes

• Lots of palettes built in ranging up to 64 colours
• Import your own palettes (.gpl, .pal, .hex, .ase)

Files & Cloud

• Import images as references or use them to create projects
• Export in a variety of different formats (.gif, .png, .svg, .ase)
• Save and sync your files between your devices using cloud storage integration (cloud provider account required)

Works with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or Nextcloud.

What You Get

Tesserra Lite (free)

• Drawing, painting & layer tools
• Colour picker, wheel & limited built-in palettes
• Import images & export PNG

Tesserra Full adds

• Animation timeline, frames & onion skin
• Custom brushes & advanced tools
• Custom palette import
• Advanced selections, symmetry & tiling
• Sprite sheet & GIF export
• Cloud sync across your devices
• Retro shaders & full customisation

Tesserra Lite is a free and limited demo version of Tesserra. Any files saved in Tesserra Lite can still be used in Tesserra Full, so you can upgrade at any time. A purchase of Tesserra grants access to all platform versions except for iOS.

$7 while Tesserra is in beta, rising to $14 on full release.

By buying Tesserra you agree to the End User Licence Agreement.

Platforms

• Windows, macOS and Linux desktop platforms!
• Android available now, iOS and iPadOS in active development and available soon!

The same file opens on every platform. Tablets run the full desktop layout; phones use a simpler touch layout.

System Requirements

• Windows 10 (22H2) or 11, macOS 14 Sonoma, or a modern 64-bit Linux (.deb, Flatpak or AppImage)
• Android 12 or newer
• 4 GB RAM on desktop (3 GB on Android), around 250 MB of free storage

These are estimates and may be refined as Tesserra runs on a wider range of devices.

Installing & First Run

Tesserra is a small independent release and is not yet code-signed, so the first time you open it your system may show a security warning. This is expected and Tesserra is safe to run. Here is how to get past it on each platform.

Windows (installer or portable)

1. Run the installer, or unzip the portable build and run Tesserra.exe.
2. If a blue "Windows protected your PC" box appears, click More info.
3. Click Run anyway to continue.

macOS

1. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Tesserra into your Applications folder.
2. Right-click (or Control-click) Tesserra and choose Open.
3. In the dialog that appears, click Open again. macOS remembers this, so future launches are normal.
4. If it is still blocked, open System Settings, go to Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.

Linux

• Install the .deb with your package manager, or add the Flatpak.
• For the AppImage, mark it as executable first (right-click, Properties, Permissions, Allow executing, or run chmod +x on it), then launch it.

Android

• Open the downloaded .apk. If Android asks, allow installs from this source, then tap Install.

Code signing for Windows and macOS is on the roadmap, which will remove these prompts in a future release.