Drag-and-drop import

Drag a file straight from your operating system's file explorer (Windows Explorer, macOS Finder, Linux Nautilus) into the PixelArt Creator window and it does the obvious thing for that kind of file. There is no File ▸ Open dance — drop it anywhere on the window and the app routes it by file type, not by where on the window you let go.

Routing is by type, never by drop location

An image always opens as a new document, a .pixproj always opens as a project, and a palette file always loads into the active palette — no matter where on the window you drop it. In a single drop you can mix types and even drop several files at once.

Drop an image → a new document tab

Drop a .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp or .gif and it opens as a brand new canvas / document tab that becomes active. It is imported as a new document, not as a layer on the document you are editing — your current document is untouched.

• The new document is RGBA at the image's own width and height. A paletted (indexed) PNG or GIF is expanded to RGBA on import.
• For an animated GIF, the first frame is imported.
• Import is read-only on disk — dropping a file never modifies the source.

Image size limit

An image larger than the canvas maximum (7680 × 4320) is rejected with an error notice — it is never silently cropped or scaled. Convert or resize it outside the app first.

Drop a .pixproj → open the project (with a save guard)

Drop a .pixproj and it opens as a project.

If the document you are currently editing has unsaved changes, the app first shows a Save / Discard / Cancel prompt so you never lose work by accident:

Choice	Result
Save	Saves the current document, then opens the dropped project.
Discard	Opens the dropped project without saving.
Cancel	Aborts the open — nothing changes.

If the current document has no unsaved changes (or none is open), the project opens immediately with no prompt.

Drop a palette → load it into the active palette (undoable)

Drop a .gpl (GIMP), .hex (plain hex list) or .pal (JASC-PAL text) palette file and its colours replace your active document's palette.

• The replacement is a single undoable step: one Undo restores your previous palette exactly.
• If no document is open, the drop is a harmless no-op with a short notice.

Which palette formats?

The v1 palette set is the common text pixel-art formats: .gpl, .hex and .pal. The binary Adobe formats .aco and .aseprite are not yet supported — they are planned for a later iteration and are reported as an unsupported type for now.

Dropping several files at once

A multi-file drop processes each file independently, by its type, in the order dropped:

• several images → several new tabs;
• a .pixproj opens (honouring its unsaved-changes guard);
• palettes load one after another — the last palette dropped is the one that ends up active (each is its own undo step).

An unknown or unreadable file in the batch is skipped with a notice; the rest still process. Dropping zero files does nothing.

When a file can't be imported

Drag-and-drop never crashes the app:

• an unsupported type (for example a .txt, or an .aco/.aseprite palette) is ignored with a brief, non-blocking status notice;
• a corrupt, undecodable or oversized image, a malformed palette, or an invalid .pixproj shows an error notice naming the file and the problem, and leaves your work exactly as it was — no half-made tab, no half-loaded palette.

All prompts and notices are translatable, keyboard-reachable, and legible in both the light and dark themes.

What is not covered

• Import as a layer — an image always opens as a new document, never as a layer on the current one (a future "import as layer" is deferred).
• Indexed import of a paletted source image — images decode to RGBA; apply Convert to Indexed afterwards if you want an indexed document.
• Animated GIF import — only the first frame is imported.
• The export / save-out side of the pipeline, and dragging a file out of the app.