As someone who will always prefer the nostalgic feel of a 2D retro game over many of today's 3D ones it's pained me when I've found amazing pieces of pixel art online and not been able to 'zoom in' on them without the images just getting blurry.
Part of the nostalgic feel to me has somehow always been about actually seeing those boxy squares making up an image. I remember pressing my face up against the screen as a kid and seeing those same squares.
As a pixel artist myself sometimes I even just want the ability to zoom in on my own images once they're online without having to go through the process of copying or saving the image and opening it up in a graphics program again.
Thankfully PixIV user hariet has decided to upload a free chrome extension called HexenNail that allows it's users to 'zoom in' on a piece of pixel art directly from any webpage and without losing quality (crisp pixels).
HexenNail also grabs any colours used in GIF images and places them in to a palette at the bottom of the window. Hovering over any colour in the palette also gives you it's hex code. A great tool for anyone studying limited colour use in pixel art.Unfortunately if an image is too large to begin with when you try to 'zoom' in on it it may extend past the bottom of your window with no way to scroll. The extension also doesn't keep images animated upon zooming so it isn't good for viewing more than the first frame.
Once installed the extension adds a button to the top right of your Chrome browser. Clicking the button and hovering your cursor over any image will give you the crispy zoomed in version in a popup.In conclusion, HexelNail does have some drawbacks but I still recommend checking it out if you ever find yourself wanting to take a closer peek at a piece of pixel art!
You can install the extension Here!
