When comparing PaintCAD 4Windows vs PixiEditor, the Slant community recommends PixiEditor for most people. In the question“What are the best pixel art / sprite editors?” PixiEditor is ranked 17th while PaintCAD 4Windows is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose PixiEditor is:
It's actively developed on GitHub under MIT license, and it's totally free.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Doesn't need to be installed
Simply download package, unpack, and use: no installation/setup/registry are required. Furthermore, all settings are saved in its own folder.
Pro You can draw images using the keyboard alone
The cursor on the image allows you to move it to any pixel of your image and place colored pixels precisely. You can draw on a small notebook (when travelling on a train or bus, for example), or in any other situation where you don't have access to a mouse.
Pro Completely free to use
All the user has to do is download the software and put it to use: draw images, create animations (gif), videos (avi), tilemaps, draw raster PCF fonts, and use it on your images for free!
Pro Support for Russian and English
The interface and help system have two localizations (English and Russian) included in the distributive package.
Pro Works with every Windows version
PaintCAD 4Windows doesn't need any .net, java, or other VM installed: it is a pure Windows 32-bit application and will work on every Windows-based operating system starting from Windows 95 until Windows 10.
Pro Free and open-source
It's actively developed on GitHub under MIT license, and it's totally free.
Pro Very easy to use
Pro Stylus support
It has decent stylus support, erasing and drawing
Pro Active development
Pro Multi-document editing
Interface is dockable and supports editing multiple documents at the same time, even side-to-side.
Pro Clean and readable interface
UX is very similar to popular editing tools like photoshop, so getting started is easy.
Pro Multi-document edititng
Interface is dockable and supports editing multiple documents at the same time, even side-to-side.
Cons
Con A little buggy
It's still in early development stage, so there are some bugs.