Comparison

Resprite vs ImageBuddy

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

Head to head
About

Resprite

This professional pixel art editor offers desktop-class features optimized for touch and pen input. Create pixel illustrations, animations, and game assets with an extensive toolset, advanced layers, and a high-performance renderer, all on your mobile device.

Highlights
  • High-performance drawing engine
  • Innovative palette and coloring tools
  • Advanced layers and timeline system
  • Optimized gesture and pen controls
  • Flexible interface layout
  • Import/export GIF, spritesheet, and PSD files
Features
Read full description

Resprite is a professional pixel art editor. Desktop-class features combined with touch/pen optimizations let you create efficiently anywhere. Resprite brings together a complete pixel toolset, an innovative coloring system, advanced layers and timelines, and a Metal-powered high-performance renderer so you can easily make pixel illustrations, spritesheets, GIF animations, and game art assets. Wherever you are—at home, camping, on the beach, or waiting at the gate—you can start creating. Resprite is your mobile pixel art studio. Resprite includes: - High-performance drawing engine - Innovative and efficient palette and coloring tools - Complete dithering pattern support - Flexible interface layout, always one tap away - Optimized gesture and pen controls for precision Flexible interface layout: - Arrange floating panels freely - All panels can be minimized - Shorten the distance between pen and target to boost efficiency - Cohesive pixel-styled UI All-in-one toolset: - Brushes, innovative coloring tools, three selection tools, eyedropper, paint bucket, three shape tools, plus rich sub-options - Pixel Perfect, Alpha Lock, dithering textures, and other advanced features - Place the toolbar anywhere for instant access - Copy, paste (including across files), flip horizontally/vertically, rotate, scale - Zoom and transform both canvas and image - Quick outline, HSV tuning, brightness/contrast adjustment, blur filter - Insert multi-line or vertical text, with custom fonts Convenient reference images: - Load multiple reference images - References can be zoomed and minimized - Place them anywhere Innovative palette: - Free placement layout - Linked workflow with coloring tools - Interpolate to create intermediate colors - Palette import and export - Automatically sample palettes from the canvas Import and sharing: - Import/export GIF, spritesheet, and Resprite packages - Export with scale, frame margin, spritesheet layout options, and more - Export per animation clip or by row - Import/export palettes (GPL, RPL formats) - Export PSD files - Import/export APNG animations - Export timelapse recordings of your drawing Layer and timeline system: - Comprehensive features for flexible layer-based creation - Copy, merge, flatten, rasterize, and other advanced operations - Onion Skin support - Set multiple animation clips and select them individually - Reliable performance—smooth even with hundreds of frames - Color tags, multi-level grouping, and opacity control Fast gesture operations: - Supports low-tilt and heavy-press stylus gestures - Two-finger/three-finger tap for undo/redo - Customizable pen Double-Tap actions - One-finger gestures to switch frames, play, and toggle onion skin - Long-press gesture - Flexibly map gestures to actions Pixel art in the demos comes from these artists: 史大巴、斯尔娜娜、扑倒奥利奥、吱小墨、妘归、KATLEE十三、石睐暮 PREMIUM: Your Resprite PREMIUM unlocks: - Remove export limits - Color adjustments - Stroke - Symmetry tool - Text tool All app features are available, and Premium is shared between iPad and iPhone. Customer support: Docs: https://resprite.fengeon.com/ Email: support@fengeon.com Optional in-app purchases: Charges are deducted from your iTunes account. Subscriptions renew automatically unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the current period ends. After purchase, you can manage auto-renewal anytime in your Apple ID account settings. Terms and conditions: Your use of this app is governed by the Terms at https://resprite.fengeon.com/terms and the Privacy Policy at https://resprite.fengeon.com/privacy, including future versions.

About

ImageBuddy

Features
Read full description

ImageBuddy is a fast image-prep tool for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Bring an image in — drag it onto the Mac window, or pick from Photos or Files on iPhone and iPad — and it lands over a checkerboard preview, so any transparency you create is obvious at a glance. Camera RAW files (.CR3, .NEF, .ARW, .DNG and more) open too; edits save as a TIFF beside the untouched original. Work one image or a whole batch: they queue up, and saving one moves you straight to the next. On Mac, Edit ▸ Undo steps back through settings, exclusion marks, rotations and removed images. One app, three devices The same pipeline on Mac, iPhone and iPad — the same queue, the same stages, the same save formats — laid out for whichever one you're holding. Trim, straighten & crop Auto-detect the artwork's bounding box, and shave off the transparent or matching-color edge. Rotate and flip in 90° steps. Straighten levels any angle and corrects Vertical and Horizontal perspective: Auto levels by the image's straight vertical lines, or its horizon, and Draw lets you mark a line that should be vertical or horizontal (or one of each) and sets the angle and perspective to match. Drag any edge of a manual crop, with a loupe and arrow nudges for precision. Remove the background Simple mode figures out the real background color, whatever it is, and knocks it out to transparency — including matching-color pockets inside the artwork — while genuinely different interior details like eye whites and letter counters survive. Or switch to Photo mode, which lifts the subject off any background with an on-device cut-out. (Photo mode needs macOS 14.) If Simple mode keeps eating a detail you want, paint exclusion marks straight on the preview to protect it. Stylize Wrap the cut-out in an outline, give it a shadow, and round off the corners — three independent switches. The shadow is one click: Low, Medium, High, or Glow for a soft halo in any color (detailed controls live in Settings on Mac). The canvas grows to fit the shadow and crops tight to the result, so it looks the same with trim on or off. Backdrops Grow a transparent margin — uniform or per-side — then composite over a solid color, a two-stop gradient, or an image scaled to cover the frame. Or blur the backdrop for a portrait-style finish: behind the subject of an untouched photo, or behind a cut-out you've placed on a new picture. Titles, captions & watermarks Set a title above the image and a caption below, in bands of space added outside the artwork rather than printed over it — your choice of typeface, color and alignment. Stamp a text or image watermark over the finished result at any size, margin, and position. Resize & vectorize Resize Image and Adjust Canvas are independent steps: scale to an exact width × height with an aspect lock, reframe the canvas without scaling — pick an origin, an absolute or relative size, an optional fixed ratio like 16:10 — or do both. Trace the silhouette, or every flat color, into clean scalable paths with any background color discarded automatically, and export or copy an SVG. Split collages Drop a sheet of images and, when ImageBuddy spots the gaps between them, split it into separate files in one click. Save it your way Save over the original, or save as new in PNG, JPEG, TIFF or HEIC with a quality slider for the lossy ones — and a warning before a format that can't hold transparency flattens a cut-out. Presets Every stage you've dialled in — the cut-out, the outline, the backdrop, the type, the watermark — saves as a named preset you can drop onto any image. Native, fast, private Pure Swift. No account, no cloud, no telemetry. It only ever touches the files you hand it, and writes only where you tell it to. Localized into 10 languages English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português (Brasil), Русский, 简体中文.

Screenshots

Resprite4 screens
ImageBuddy4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Resprite at Free against ImageBuddy's $4.99. ImageBuddy's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 5) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 weeks). On ads, device support and iOS requirement 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

Resprite is free to download; ImageBuddy costs $4.99 up front. Resprite sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month. ImageBuddy asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Resprite ships an update every 5 weeks, ImageBuddy every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Resprite versus ImageBuddy: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRespriteImageBuddy
PriceFree — better$4.99
Rating4.7 (1.5K ratings) — better—
Positive reviews79.6% of reviews—
Number of ratings1.5K — better—
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksEvery 2 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS16.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size31 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperFengeonBenjamin Dansby

Bugs and requests

Resprite

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Tools disappearing from the UI
  • Importing Aseprite files not working properly
  • Export function counting against trial limit even when cancelled

Requested features

6 requests
  • Add keyframe animation support
  • Implement tile set creation tools
  • Allow importing/exporting more file formats
  • Improve undo/redo functionality
  • Add cursor/crosshair display option
Show 1 more
  • Increase free export limit

ImageBuddy

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

5 purchases

Resprite

Subscriptions2
  • 1 Month$1.991 Month
  • 12 Months$14.991 Year
One-time3
  • A Coffee$0.99
  • Lifetime$19.99
  • Lifetime Standard$29.99
None

ImageBuddy

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Resprite free?
Resprite is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is ImageBuddy free?
ImageBuddy costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Do Resprite or ImageBuddy have ads?
Neither Resprite nor ImageBuddy shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Resprite or ImageBuddy?
Resprite ships an update every 5 weeks, and ImageBuddy every 2 days. Most recently, Resprite was updated on October 30, 2026 and ImageBuddy on October 31, 2026.

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