Calligraphy Handbook vs Pixel art editor
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Calligraphy Handbook
This app is a digital tool for learning and practicing calligraphy. It offers various pens, colors, and effects for both beginners and experienced artists. Users can also challenge friends or test their skills with a calligraphy game.
- Digital pens and papers for learning
- Unique pen and color effects
- Calligraphy game for skill evaluation
- 11 calligraphic pens and 1 pointed pen
- 19 calligraphic hands in various styles
- Layer management for artistic creation
- Export creations to camera roll or email
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It's proven that practicing calligraphy can quickly improve bad handwriting by a better understanding of letters' structure and proportion. Writing bigger letters helps to make curves and lines correctly. The beauty of the letters will make the task of writing more pleasant. Calligraphy is also a very constructive leisure. It develops virtues such as patience, attention to detail, perfection, willingness to learn, and the sense of beauty. Calligraphy is a full art form using letters, words and illuminations. It’s also a meditation process when your mind focuses on the strokes, beautifully draw lines and curves, following your intuition and inspiration. The only pre-requirement to this art is the knowledge of writing, which everyone is proficient. Calligraphy has a high potential of discoveries, it’s one of the rare art form that you can start from a basis you already know: writing letters and words. 1/ CALLIGRAPHY HANDBOOK is a perfect tool for learning and improving your calligraphy skill. As a beginner, the app will provide the best digital pens and papers for your learning. Don’t waste paper and ink now, digital tools are endlessly renewable. As a confirmed calligrapher, you will find pen and color effects that are impossible to create in real life: 6 small parallel lines, 4 size-lines, light effect pen, shaded line, rainbow effect, mixed colors in one stroke, alternated colors in one letter… 2/ CHALLENGE your friends in different writing styles, or simply evaluate your skill with the incredible calligraphy game. Reproduce a model inside a limited space, with a limited number of strokes, and see how many stars you can gain. Avoid actions as: undo, exceeding strokes or using tracing image. Otherwise your score will be heavily cut down. 3/ WRITING TOOLS: - 11 calligraphic pens - 1 pointed pen - 12 mixed colors effects - 12 alternated colors effects - 1 eraser - Smoothed strokes for all pens, let you draw perfect curves and lines. NOTE: we have intentionally made the strokes slower and smoother, because drawing beautiful letters has to be done in a slower speed compared to handwriting or painting. Calligraphy is a highly relaxing activity, a slow motion is the best for it. Writing features and supplies: - 19 calligraphic hands in a large choice of styles (more hands are coming with future updates) - Old papers - Guiding lines - Shadowed letters for tracing - 24 preset pen angles - 63 premixed colors - Export your writing to the camera roll or by email. - Palm rejection - Pen offset 4 / ARTISTIC CREATION. Calligraphy Handbook is a truly comprehensive tool for creating calligraphic works (greeting card, invitation, letterhead, logo, brochure, magazine cover, etc ... - Users can create true works of art with all the calligraphic tools. - An entire page is provided with layers management. - A gallery to save works in progress. - The gallery is organized by blocks, each block contains an unlimited number of pages. - The works and the blocks can be exported and shared in png or pdf formats. - Shadows and texture can be added to your lettering. 5/ TIPS: - Draw your letters very very SLOWLY. - Take a long breathe before a long stroke, then expire slowly and regularly while drawing. - Take a comfortable sitting position. - Clean up your screen frequently. - When following the lessons in this app, don’t pressure yourself to immediately draw perfect letters, but simply follow your intuition and focus on the movement of the strokes. It’s not so important to get completely correct letters, don’t forget, it’s not typography. - Relax yourself before starting a calligraphy session, you will have better strokes. Stretch and simply shake your hands and shoulders. Take a comfortable sitting position.
Pixel art editor
Easily create pixel art with a range of professional tools, including layer editing, custom color creation, and various painting brushes. Export your creations as animated GIFs or PNG files. Load images for tracing or convert them directly into pixel art.
- Layer editing (add, delete, copy, display)
- Various painting tools (pen, syringe, rectangle)
- Animated GIF export
- Custom color creation and saving
- Load images for tracing
- Convert pictures to pixel art
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BE CREATIVE in your spare time!! This app enables you to make a pixel art easily. Although the operation is simple, it has layer editing, color making and other professional tools. Wanna make your original work during your spare time or before going to bed? To prevent a crash, creating a new project needs more than 300MB free space of your device. Sorry for the inconvenience. The app’s main functions are below. - Layer editing You can add, delete and copy layers. You can also choose the layer display or non-display and change the order of layers. - Various tools The app has basic tools to paint. (Pen, Syringe, blotting out, rectangle, circle, transfer... etc) - Animated GIF export Each layer is going to be one frame. - Undo, Redo You can cancel the line you draw. - Color making You can make your favorite color easily. It is also able to choose a color you would like to change to transparent. You can save 20 colors in maximum by a work. - Zoom-in, Zoom-out You can paint details by the Zoom-in, Zoom-out function. - Saving several works You can save several project files of your favorite works, so you can edit you work other day. - Setting canvas size You can set any canvas size from 5*5〜120*120. - Setting the dot size of exportation You can choose the dot size of exportation. The work will be saved as a png file in you r camera roll. - Rotate function You can rotate a work horizontally and vertically. - Selection area You can edit, transfer and copy only the area you selected. - Loading a picture for trace You can load a picture in forefront or back. You can set a rate of transparency, a position and a rate of magnification. - Conversion function of a picture to pixel art. It is able to convert a picture in camera roll to pixel art. After conversion, the pixel art will be loaded in new layer, so you can edit it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Calligraphy Handbook at none against Pixel art editor's shown. Calligraphy Handbook also leads on iOS requirement (9.0 vs 14.0). Pixel art editor's advantage is device support (3 vs 1). On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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
Both are free to download. Calligraphy Handbook sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Pixel art editor sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.5 for Calligraphy Handbook against 4.6 for Pixel art editor. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 518 and 1.5K respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 74% of Calligraphy Handbook's written reviews are positive against 81% of Pixel art editor's.
Calligraphy Handbook ships an update every 4 months, Pixel art editor every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 12, 2026 and September 22, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Calligraphy Handbook | Pixel art editor |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (518 ratings) | 4.6 (1.5K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 74.1% of reviews | 80.8% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 518 | 1.5K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 2 months — better |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 257 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Etienne Nguyen Tan Hon | Yosuke Seki |
Customer experience
Calligraphy Handbook
Pixel art editor
User reviews
Calligraphy Handbook
From 518 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Helpful for learning calligraphy
- 💡 Variety of font styles and color options
- 👍 Calming and meditative experience
- 👍 Great for beginners and intermediate users
- 👍 Useful for practicing without supplies
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs
- 💰 Misleading about free features
- 🔒 Lack of palm rejection and input issues
- 👎 Overly strict grading system
- 👎 Limited free features, need to pay for full access
Pixel art editor
From 1.5K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Easy to use
- 🎨 Great for pixel art
- 💡 Useful for game development
- 🚀 Efficient for small textures
- 🎨 Good color selection
Room to improve
- 🔒 Limited storage/canvas size
- 🐛 Blurry image exports
- 🔒 Limited layers
- 🔒 Lack of zoom/pan functionality
- 🔒 Restricted color options (no black/white/gray)
Bugs and requests
Calligraphy Handbook
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes when switching between uppercase and lowercase letters
- Undo feature causes freezing and loss of progress
- Inconsistent performance and lag when using Apple Pencil
- Restoration of in-app purchases not working as expected
Requested features
5 requests- Add more font styles, especially Gothic and modern
- Implement better palm rejection and input handling
- Allow users to favorite/save preferred font styles
- Add the ability to practice full words and sentences
- Improve export and sharing options
Pixel art editor
Reported bugs
4 issues- Crashes when trying to select custom colors
- Deletes unsaved work when exiting the app
- Ads interrupt music playback
- Transparent GIFs not exporting correctly
Requested features
5 requests- Add palm rejection to prevent accidental drawing
- Increase maximum canvas size
- Add ability to rename/organize artworks
- Implement auto-color option for imported images
- Add line tool and more advanced drawing tools
In-app purchases
Calligraphy Handbook
- Unlock All Features$3.99
Pixel art editor
- Removing ads, and increasing project storage limit$2.99
Questions
Is Calligraphy Handbook free?
Is Pixel art editor free?
Which has better reviews, Calligraphy Handbook or Pixel art editor?
Do Calligraphy Handbook or Pixel art editor have ads?
Which is updated more often, Calligraphy Handbook or Pixel art editor?
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