Track the evolution of Novaboard. New features, improvements, and fixes, all documented here.
The file grid sorts, filters and shows a table; selections and transforms can follow the symmetry axes; new preferences for the mouse wheel, the right button, cursor size and frame numbers; the History panel menu can compact or trim a long history; files take far less storage and big canvases draw faster; General bug fixes and improvements.
The color picker is one mode chosen in settings, with a new Sliders mode as the default; animation tags can overlap and sit in lanes above the frame ruler; Ctrl+drag with the Transform tool leaves a copy; the Text tool has a color swatch; tile mode wraps selections, gradients and text across the seam; Preview settings apply live; General bug fixes and improvements.
The Spray tool gets dots, speed, hardness and pen pressure, and Scatter is a tool of its own; a sprite sheet can be added as a new frame of a sprite stack; palette swatches have a size setting; a second tab on the same file is read-only instead of overwriting it; a transform commits when you leave it; General bug fixes and improvements.
Preview panel now plays independently of canvas; History is now a panel; You can compare different versions of an artwork; Timeline selections now can be shrunk/enlarged using shift+arrow keys; New context menu for layers; General bug fixes and improvements.
The transform tool takes numbers: type a position, a size, an angle or a pivot and the pixels go there, on one cel or across several. Sprite Stack turns like a dial and stops twitching. Timelapse exports get a commit range you can see. Effect values can be keyed per frame, Curves has a real curve editor, guides and rulers are readable and snap, and the export dialog went through a second drawing round.
The release that came out of drawing. We made real pieces in Novaboard, wrote down everything that got in the way, and fixed about two hundred of those things here. Around that: the export dialog is one screen with a live preview, the New File dialog shows you what you are about to make, the timeline gets a proper transport and a footer, timelapses export as video, layer groups carry a tag and a color that flows down to their children, Palette Swap picks its colors straight off your art, and a big canvas stops fighting back.
The editor becomes a panel. Open several files as tabs, split the window into side-by-side views of one file or many, and pop a view out into its own window. The tool options get a row of their own under the menus, every panel header grows a settings cog and a fold button, floating windows resize from any edge, and the timeline learns loop tweens so a spin from 0 to 360 no longer stutters where it wraps. JPEG XL comes in and goes out, Pixelorama files round-trip properly, and the first pass over production error reports closes a pile of real bugs.
The reshuffle release. The app opens on a grid of your files now instead of an infinite plane, and it calls them files, not boards. The pencil folds into the brush as a Pixel-Perfect option that works at any brush size. Select a few cels and your next stroke, fill or color adjustment lands on all of them. Panel groups fold into strips of icons, the timeline lets you drag cels past the end and stretch a hold by its edge, shortcuts finally work on every keyboard layout, and one key hides the whole interface to show your sprite full size.
The controls release. Brush and pencil gain ink modes — Lock Alpha to paint only where paint already is, and Shading to walk pixels along a ramp. Cels get their own opacity and tween it. Easing stops being a fixed list: draw your own curve and save it. Clip layers do 9-slice and stop coming back blurry, the layers panel was rebuilt around what you actually change, and sprite sheets export without seams.
The file-fidelity release. Aseprite import and export were checked against Aseprite itself across a library of 800 real files, and four ways files came back wrong are fixed. Indexed boards got their worst bug fixed: the shape tools drew nothing at all. Big boards no longer choke on zoom, the export wizard tells you the size you are actually getting, and a new stylus-only mode keeps your palm from painting.
The trust release. Flips, rotations, canvas resizes and the transform tool now preserve everything, even pixels past the canvas edge. The undo system was rebuilt and then attacked with months of automated adversarial testing until history restore, branch switching, and .nova round trips held up under everything we threw at them. Text renders sharper and more consistently, and layers gain Grayscale and Modulate effects.
The biggest release on the road to 1.0 so far. The palette became a live grid you can arrange freely, with multi-selection, cleanup tools, and a multi-color Replace Colors panel. The color picker gained RYB and OKLCH color spaces, color harmonies, a normal-map mode, and retro hardware color depths. Selections got a paint-a-mask Quick Mask mode, the canvas got a perspective grid with draggable vanishing points, the desktop app now autosaves to disk with crash recovery, and exports reach Godot, GameMaker, Phaser and Pixi. Plus the deepest bug-fix pass Novaboard has ever had.
Another polish release on the road to 1.0. Novaboard now reshapes itself for phones, tablets, and desktops, with full menus and long-press gestures on touch. Keyboard shortcuts gained multi-stroke chords and a wheel-menu editor, onion skin got a real strength slider, indexed boards export true palettized PNGs and GIFs, and the desktop app learned Open Recent. Plus a big batch of tile-mode, shape, transform, and tablet fixes.
Another polish release on the road to 1.0. The timeline got a real rebuild with proper transport controls, an editable frame-rate field, a Once/Loop/Ping-pong selector and a seconds lane. Playback speed is now saved per board and finally matches the preview, the blur tool actually blurs (and sharpens on right-click), you can swap colors mid-stroke with the other mouse button, plus onion-skin, palette and tablet fixes.
Another polish release on the road to 1.0: a Key/Mouse Preview overlay for recordings, an interactive Canvas Size dialog you can drag and zoom, a rebuilt animation-tags panel with tag creation straight from a cel selection, copy/paste and single-undo batch edits for effects, select-all and smarter group placement in the layer panel, correct BMP/AVIF exports, and the desktop app moving onto Electron.
Another polish release on the road to 1.0: nine new layer effects behind a categorized, searchable add-effect menu with a drag-to-reorder stack, indexed color mode made real with palette remap and a Replace Color panel, a rebuilt isometric renderer with new volumes, wider palette format support, popout windows you can drag tabs between, and global animation defaults.
A polish release on the road to 1.0 — navbar surfaces for the command palette and quick-open, a dockable layer-effects panel with live preview, a new Distortion effect, drag-to-scrub number fields, move-selection-contents, isometric render-mode and skew fixes, a sturdier text tool, and a single-zip Export All.
Performance work across the editor for canvases up to 4k, smoother undo/redo, layer effects that animate across keyframes, six new effects, per-export effect stacks, spritesheet slice import, Pixelorama and Pixilart export, Artkal bead palettes, and a smoother new-board dialog.
Open-box isometric shapes, Pixilart import, slice to a new board, deep links into tools, export by animation tag, and a big round of playback and timeline performance work.
Isometric cuboids at any orientation, library folders with use-as-brush, hexagonal tiling, dockable reference panels, auto-shade filter, Perler / Hama / PhotoPearls bead palettes, and a rewritten WebGL renderer.
We're moving toward a stable release with all the features and polish we want in it. This version took longer than usual as we refreshed the logo and the landing page alongside polishing many parts of the app.
Color mode improvements with grayscale palette and palette lock, canvas size dialog with border controls, selection area move/click, non-drawable layer safeguards, and multiple bug fixes
Layer drag-and-drop rewrite with pointer events, magic wand drag-to-select, improved circle brush, delete group and contents, and undo/redo stability fixes
Timeline improvements, pixel grid overlay, double-click to zoom board, tablet navbar, ruler improvements, symmetry preview fix, and selection fixes
Palette sorting, eyedropper picking, VOX export, unified storage, number input fix, and Firefox drawing fix
Complete docking system with drag-and-drop panels, animate-style timeline, dodge/burn tool, text tool with font management, slices with auto-slice and nine-slice preview, native .nova file format, cross-stitch PDF export, anti-alias dialog, VOX import/export, zen mode, symmetry handles, isometric shear, ellipse selection tool, curve tool thickness, unified file exporter, and more
Unified transform tool (WIP), radial wheel menu, bezier curve tool, workspaces, 12 GPU layer effects, adjustment layers, improved WebGL renderer parity, non-destructive HSL adjustments, custom cursor overhaul, new file format importers, timelapse export flair, and more
Full internationalization with 14 languages, new blur and jumble tools, layer clipping masks, draft layers, reference layers, ruler tool, timeline frame lock, WebGL rendering, and more
Real-time brush preview, palette color groups, alignment tools, free polygon drawing, selection marquee improvements, and new file format support
New isometric drawing tool for pixel art cubes and shapes, Graphics Gale file import/export, indexed color mode, and a precision crosshair cursor
Bake layer effects into pixels, improved rotation transforms, oversized image import handling, and enhanced outline effects
New selection option, layer reordering fixes, and voxel viewer improvements
Sprite stack preview, voxel rendering, shading tool, and multi-cel editing
Non-destructive layer effects and quality of life improvements
Small fixes
Small fixes
The first public release of Novaboard, a free browser-based pixel art editor.