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Pixel Lens

·4 mins
Pixel Lens demo (animated)

Pixel Lens is a real-time conversion app for Windows: hold its floating “lens window” over anything on your screen, and whatever is underneath turns into pixel art on the spot.

YouTube, anime, games — anything on screen can be converted, exactly where you want it. The conversion runs on a proprietary ultra-lightweight AI model of just 3.1 MB, entirely on your local GPU (works offline, no account required).

Promo Video

More videos and examples are available on the YouTube channel.

Example Screenshots

Games

Game converted to pixel art

Anime / Cartoons

Cartoon converted to pixel art

Live Streams

Live stream converted to pixel art

Music Videos

Music video converted to pixel art

Manga

Manga converted to pixel art

Pixel-art Creation

Using Pixel Lens for pixel-art creation

Where to Buy

Pixel Lens releases on August 13, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT (10:00 PM JST). The price is $4 USD, with a 10% launch discount during the first week (until August 20).

Tips (details not covered on the store page)

How to use Stream Mode

Besides the lens mode, Pixel Lens has a Stream Mode that outputs the converted image as a virtual webcam called “Pixel Lens Virtual Camera”. OBS, Zoom, and other apps see it as a regular webcam, so you can pixel-art your whole game stream or video call.

  1. Switch to STREAM mode in the control panel (or press the hotkey Ctrl+Shift+V)
  2. Pick the window or monitor you want to convert
  3. In OBS: add a “Video Capture Device” source and select “Pixel Lens Virtual Camera” from the device list

If it doesn’t show up properly:

  • Black image → make sure Stream Mode is ON in Pixel Lens (no frames are produced unless Stream Mode is running)
  • The device doesn’t appear in OBS → restart OBS so it re-enumerates DirectShow devices
  • Not recognized after a Windows update → re-register the virtual camera filter from Settings → Virtual Camera → Re-register
  • The aspect ratio of the video capture looks wrong in OBS → restart OBS and re-create the Video Capture Device source. Make sure to re-create the device after Pixel Lens’s Stream Mode is already running
  • Note: Discord does not recognize the virtual camera (use OBS / Zoom etc.)

Keyboard Shortcuts (global hotkeys)

These hotkeys work system-wide, even while another app has focus.

KeyAction
Ctrl+Shift+DToggle pixel-art conversion on/off (raw passthrough when off)
Ctrl+Shift+MMinimize the lens to a 64×64 icon / restore it
Ctrl+Shift+SSave a screenshot of the current pixel-art view
Ctrl+Shift+VToggle Stream Mode
Ctrl+Shift+ZCycle through dot sizes (4–8)

Performance Tips

  • The AI optimizes its compute kernel for the first lens-window size it sees after each launch. Resizing later still works, but inference runs ~3x slower until you restart the app. Once you’ve found your favorite size and shape, keep the app at that size — Pixel Lens remembers the lens position and size automatically
  • Smaller lens areas run faster
  • Sharpness defaults to 0.25. Raising it works well for slightly soft sources such as retro anime or heavily compressed video

Screenshots

  • Saved to Pictures\PixelLens\ by default (configurable in Settings), named pixellens_DATE_TIME_WxH.png
  • Enabling the “view-size copy” setting also saves a second PNG upscaled to the on-screen view size using nearest-neighbor interpolation
  • If the help overlay gets captured in your screenshots, turn off the help display in Settings to keep it out of the shot

Other

  • If the itch.io / BOOTH (ZIP) version shows “GPU acceleration unavailable” and falls back to CPU, install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x64)
  • Pixel Lens never sends any data over the network. All inference happens locally on your GPU (settings are stored in %APPDATA%\PixelLens\)

Planned free updates

  • Color-palette constraints with dithering (16 blend modes; currently in internal testing)
  • Automatic text passthrough that keeps small on-screen text readable while everything around it stays pixel art

System Requirements

  • Windows 10 (2004) or later / Windows 11 (64-bit)
  • DirectX 12 / DirectML-compatible GPU
  • Real-time FullHD (1920×1080) conversion: ~24 FPS on an RTX 3060, 60 FPS (the frame-rate cap) on an RTX 3090. Smaller lens areas run faster
  • UI available in 15 languages, including English and Japanese

Support

Bug reports, suggestions, feedback, and translation fixes are all welcome:

When reporting an issue, please include the warning log from the Settings screen (there’s a Copy button) — it makes investigation much easier.

For Media / Press

A press kit (icon, key visuals, screenshots, promo videos, and fact sheet) is available. All assets may be used freely for coverage of Pixel Lens.