PixMag

Designing visual elements for video games or computer programs isn’t a walk in the park, especially since you need to keep track of various details like the color code you want to use. For closely inspecting anything on the desktop, PixMag comes as a neat alternative to the default Windows magnifier.

On the bright side of things, the application skips you the effort of going through a setup process, and allows you to use its set of features from the moment download is done. As such, it can be easily carried on a thumb drive to use on other computers as well, without having an impact on stability, because registry entries are not modified.

In terms of visuals, there’s no particular elements to make it stand out from the crowd, but it manages to present its features in an accessible manner to individuals of all levels of experience. Most of the space is used for preview, while the zoom level, and process trigger buttons are found in dedicated locations.

The application makes it easy to analyze anything on the desktop in great detail because of the wide zoom range. Simply selecting a value from the side panel can capture custom locations up to 64 times the original size. You can choose to show a smoothed preview, but this has a slight impact on color picking.

The window doesn’t follow the cursor, and can be placed anywhere on the desktop. It needs to be in focus to be able to stop preview update. Sadly, there’s no option to export pictures, and grabbing related color HEX values and mouse pointer easily becomes frustrating.

PixMag can come in handy for in-depth analysis of desktop elements. Zoom level is impressive, with HEX color code displayed in the status bar. Sadly, it’s a little tricky to capture an image, especially since it gets discarded if the main window is resized.