Comparison

Pastello vs Pixel Art Focus

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Pastello

Transform your photos into stunning dry media art, mimicking styles like pastel, charcoal, and colored pencil. This app offers a professional workflow with customizable layers and one-click presets for creating expressive, traditional-looking artwork.

Highlights
  • Photo to Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon conversion
  • Layering of different dry media
  • Customizable stroke direction, size, and volume
  • One-click presets with customization options
  • Traditional sketch styles and DaVinci effect
  • Professional workflow for artists and photographers
Read full description

Transform photos into a fine art drawing with Pastel, Pencil, Chalk, Charcoal and Crayon Introducing Pastello, a brand-new companion app to JixiPix’s Impresso Pro. Pastello takes you back in time to the 15th century. Away from brushes and large strokes and into the realm of dry media with color that is both brilliant and subtle. The “Dry color method” made famous by Leonardo da Vinci is so powerful in its simplicity and beauty with its black and red chalk and yellow pastel highlights. Later, artists would paint charming portraits in a smooth heavily blended fashion. Move forward a few centuries later and pastel quickly became filled with brilliant color and crisp detail. Fast forward to today and a digital age has made it so you, the artist, can mix and match media that is difficult or impossible in a traditional setting. Pastello makes it simple and convenient to take an image and change it into Pastel, Chalk, Charcoal, Crayon, Colored Pencil and Graphite drawings. Use alone or combine these medias using powerful layers to produce interesting expressive sketch effects filled with colorful personality and passion. And the best part is Pastello does all the work. With Pastello, photographers and artists can now go beyond the camera to turn image files into creative works that resemble traditional handmade media using a professional workflow that is easy and comfortable to operate. Pastello has a pro workflow that automatically transforms a photo into a pastel drawing and places it on an art paper with options to customize. The Pastel can then be changed to Chalk, Charcoal, Colored Pencil, Graphite, Conte or Crayon using Layer styles. The medias start out delicate like traditional drawings do, then allows you to build them up using fills, shading and detail layers. The medias are beautiful as they are, or mix them for an expressive artwork. Pastello includes plenty of traditional sketch styles as well as a DaVinci effect using a mixed media of pencil, charcoal, crayon and old paper. It’s easy to use! We have mixed the media into one-click presets with all the freedom to customize, blend and fine-tune for your own unique artwork filled with age, depth and timeless beauty as if created by the renaissance artist himself. Pastel Styles: Colored Pencil, Graphite, Charcoal, and Chalk come with a fill and detail option that can be layered for infinite variation. Conte has a dynamic sketch feature that lets you fill in shadows, mid-tones and highlights with crosshatching or scumbling. All with the ability to change stroke direction, size, volume and variation. Pastel—(Soft) is a soft, buttery consistency and intense color. This effect is dense and filled with the grain of the paper. Chalk—(Hard Pastel) is a light dusty effect with little specks of preserved paper. This chalky pastel is known for it’s soft strokes and velvety texture. Charcoal—creates a velvety black charcoal effect with shades of grey. Use it for warming up the under painting of a composition, or to complete a finished charcoal piece. Colored Pencil—creates soft colorful strokes in the drawing that can be layered to build up color then burnished with a light Pencil Layer, or the Smudge tool. Pencil—creates pencil drawings with fluid outlines and soft, limpid tonal shadings for a drawing filled with warmth and charm. Conté—is a beautiful crayon media for enhancing highlights, midtones and shadows in drawings using classic colors. Crayon—creates a colorful waxy base to a drawing, then burnished it with a Conte White for highlights or Bistre for shading.

About

Pixel Art Focus

Features
Read full description

● By using subject recognition, you can apply pixel art effects to only the foreground or background of the subject. ● You can apply a pixel art effect mosaic to the subject or background. ● Of course, you can also apply pixel art effects to the entire photo. ● Equipped with a real-time "automatic pixel art focus" monitor. ● You can easily create unique photos with pixel art effects applied only to the parts you want to focus on, such as people, pets, cars, buildings, and flowers. ● The reverse switch allows you to invert the side to which the pixel art effect is applied. ● Edited image files can be copied, saved, and shared. [Photo source] ・Real-time camera images ・Launch the camera and take a photo ・Select a photo from the photo album ・Import shared files from other apps ・Paste photos copied from web images, etc. [Settings] ・Dot width ・Bevel width ・Saturation ・Resolution ・Foreground mask ・Reverse effect [Touch operation] ・Pinch in/out: Zoom in on the image ・Pan: Scroll through the zoomed image [Photo output] ・Save to camera roll: Photos ・Photo sharing: AirDrop, LINE, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram,...

Screenshots

Pixel Art Focus4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Pixel Art Focus at $0.99 against Pastello's $29.99. Pixel Art Focus also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Pastello costs $29.99 and Pixel Art Focus $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Pastello versus Pixel Art Focus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPastelloPixel Art Focus
Price$29.99$0.99 — better
Rating4.8 (44 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews78.9% of reviews—
Number of ratings44 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 months—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.013.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size123 MB10 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJixiPix, LLCMasanori Katsuta

In-app purchases

None

Pastello

No in-app purchases

None

Pixel Art Focus

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pastello free?
Pastello costs $29.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pixel Art Focus free?
Pixel Art Focus costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Pastello or Pixel Art Focus have ads?
Neither Pastello nor Pixel Art Focus shows ads.

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