Pixel Painter
Tap a pixel to paint it
What is Pixel Painter?
Pixel Painter is a free game about how screens actually make pictures. There is no picture on a screen - only a grid of tiny coloured squares called pixels, and each colour is three numbers describing how much red, green and blue light to mix. You copy a target image square by square, and in RGB mode you mix every colour yourself, which is where most people discover that red and green light make yellow.
How to play Pixel Painter
Controls: Tap a pixel to paint it
- 1The target picture is shown small in the corner. Copy it onto the big grid.
- 2In Pixels mode, tap a colour from the palette, then tap the squares to paint them.
- 3In Mix RGB mode, drag the red, green and blue sliders to mix a colour first.
- 4A square outlines in green when it matches the target.
- 5Match every pixel to complete the picture.
Pixel Painter tips and strategy
- Do the outline first, then fill the middle. It is much easier to see what is left.
- In RGB mode, remember this is light, not paint. Red plus green makes yellow, and all three at full makes white.
- Turning all three sliders to zero gives black, because black is simply no light at all.
- Equal amounts of all three always give a grey, and the number tells you how bright that grey is.
Pixel Painter FAQ
What is a pixel?
The smallest square of colour a screen can show. A picture is just a grid of them, and holding the same image at different sizes is only changing how many pixels are used. A modern phone screen has a few million.
How does RGB colour work?
Every colour on a screen is made by mixing red, green and blue light, each from 0 to 255. Because it is light being added rather than paint being mixed, the results surprise people: red and green make yellow, all three at full make white, and all three at zero make black.
Why red, green and blue specifically?
Because human eyes have three kinds of colour receptor, roughly tuned to red, green and blue. Screens are built to match the eye, so mixing those three can reproduce nearly every colour we can actually see.
What does rgb(255, 255, 0) mean?
Full red, full green, no blue - which your eye reads as bright yellow. The three numbers are always in that order, and each runs from 0 to 255 because one byte stores each channel.
