PixelStick – Mac App To Measure Pixel, Angle, Color Onscreen

$10.00

Version: 2.16.2
Latest: 1/11/20
Requires: Mac 10.6-14.1+

PixelStick – Mac Onscreen Measuring Tools

PixelStick is a tool for measuring distances, angles and colors on the screen in any app. PhotoShop has distance, angle and color tools but they only work in PhotoShop. PixelStick works in any app and anywhere on screen anytime and costs a hundred times less.

„Determining the RGB color code of individual pixels and performing pixel-precise distance measurements on-screen has never been easier – thank you for this awesome little App!“ – Alexander

 

   PixelStick – Mac App To Measure Pixel, Angle, Color Onscreen

PixelStick is a tool for measuring distances (in pixels), angles (in degrees)  and colors (RGB) on the screen. Photoshop has distance, angle and color tools but they only work in Photoshop. PixelStick works in any app and anywhere on screen anytime and costs a hundred times less. Excellent for designers, navigators, mapmakers, biologists, astronomers, cartographers, graphic designers or anyone who uses a microscope or telescope or wants to measure a distance on their screen in any window or application.

Click here to try it now free.

It’s easy, simple and fast. PixelStick is a measuring tool you can pinch and stretch to measure anything on your screen. Use the eyedropper to copy colors in 4 formats (CSS, RGB, RGB hex, HTML) to the clipboard for use in any app.

PixelStick is a professional measuring tool used by:

  • Cartographers – for maps or all kinds.
  • Biologists – for microscopy and morphology.
  • CSI Technicians – for crime scene investigations.
  • Manufacturing – for design and fabrication.
  • Physicists and Astronomers – for all kinds of measurements.
  • Engineering – for mechanical, electrical and civil engineering.
  • Builders – for measuring existing buildings or blueprints.
  • Education – for students, teachers and researchers.
  • Photographers
  • Designers – for graphic, architecture, interior, space, marine, and aeronautical.
  • Software Developers – for graphics, web, layout and user interface.
  • Medical Technicians – for X-rays, ECG, EKG, and microscopy.

For anyone who needs to measure objects on the Mac.

Anyone can use PixelStick because it’s easy to use, simple and fast. Measure on:

  • Retina, regular displays and multiple monitors.
  • Mac OS 10.6 – 13.0 or higher
  • Any app and between apps.

Supports the scaling in Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Photoshop. Also has Customized (user settable) scaling options. PixelStick is a measuring tool you can pinch and stretch to measure anything on your screen. It’s like an onscreen virtual ruler that you can use vertically, horizontally and at any angle to measure distances (pixels), angles (degrees) and much more just by dragging. When you know the scale of the document you are measuring then you can create a custom scale to measure inches, miles, centimeters, microns, parsecs or lightyears.

Most of what PixelStick does is obvious. Drag the endpoints to change the measurement. Click the locks to constrain the movement. Launch it, play around, no more limitations to just one app in measuring distance, angle and color.

Its easy, simple and fast. PixelStick is a measuring tool you can pinch and stretch to measure anything on your screen when you know the scale

Check out this screencast which was is from a GigaOm review that shows PixelStick in use.

Use

PixelStick is totally intuitive and works exactly like what you would hope for. PixelStick sits in the frontmost position on the screen. Drag the endpoints to change the measurement. Click the locks to constrain the movement. Drag to change the angle. See the changes and info in the small on screen info panel.

Coordinate System

PixelStick uses a Cartesian coordinate system like the OS X coordinate system. This means that the origin (pixel 0,0) is at the lower left corner of the screen. However, OS X deals mainly in points, whereas PixelStick is all about pixels. A point has no width and resides between pixels.


Distances
 
PixelStick reports both pixel distance and pixel difference.

In the illustration below, the height of the picture is 13 pixels, so the distance is reported as 13.00. Note that if the diamond endpoint is at a position of y = 1, then the circle endpoint is at a position of y = 13. Thus pixel difference is 13 – 1 = 12.The pixel distance includes the width of the PixelStick endpoints. This is so that the actual size of the item being measured is reported. The pixel difference merely subtracts the coordinates.

PixelStick Tips:

When measuring, position the endpoints inside the area to be measured.The easiest way to get both dimensions of an area is to position the endpoint exactly on top of the corner.After measuring the height (see example), the circle endpoint can be dragged over to the other corner to get the width.

Requirements

PixelStick requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later.

“I’ve used a number of different screen rulers over the years, including Free Ruler and the rulers in Art Directors Toolkit. But nothing comes close to PixelStick.

PixelStick is different. There are no rulers to block your view of the screen. Instead, PixelStick displays a measuring line. Drag the endpoints to measure the distance. To measure height and width, position the endpoints on the corners, then drag one endpoint to the opposite corner to measure the other dimension. You can lock the endpoints to constrain the length or angle, or to snap the line to the nearest 45° angle. PixelStick also displays guidelines to help you quickly measure or align objects at a glance.

Bottom Line: If you want to rule your screen, don’t use a ruler, shake a PixelStick.”

Robert Ellis, Upstart Blogger

PixelStick is a tool for measuring distances, angles and colors on the screen. PhotoShop has distance, angle and color tools but they only work in PhotoShop. PixelStick works in any app and anywhere on screen anytime and costs a hundred times less.

PixelStick is a professional measuring tool used by:
* Designers – for graphic, architecture, interior, space, marine, and aeronautical.
* Software Developers – for graphics, layout and user interface.

* Cartographers – for maps or all kinds.
* Medical Technicians – for X-rays, ECG, EKG, and microscopy.
* Biologists – for microscopy and morphology.
* CSI Technicians – for crime scene investigations.
* Manufacturing – for design and fabrication.
* Physicists and Astronomers – for all kinds of measurements.
* Engineering – for mechanical, electrical and civil engineering.
* Builders – for measuring existing buildings or blueprints.
* Education – for students, teachers and researchers.
* Photographers
…anyone who needs to measure objects on the Mac.

Anyone can use PixelStick because it’s easy to use, simple and fast.

Modern measuring for:
* Retina, regular displays and multiple monitors.
* Mac OS 10.6 – 10.8 +
* Any app and between apps.

PixelStick is a measuring tool you can pinch and stretch to measure anything on your screen.

Use the loupe to magnify anything on screen.

Use the eyedropper to copy colors that are anywhere on your monitor in 4 formats (CSS, RGB, RGB hex, HTML) to the clipboard for use in any app.

It’s like an onscreen virtual ruler that you can use vertically, horizontally and at any angle to measure distances, angles and much more just by dragging. Using the palette one can lock distances and angles (also by using the shift key).

Supports scaling for Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Photoshop and Customized scaling options.

 

2.16.22020-01-11
  • - changed the event tap code
    - macos catalina 10.15 now requires user permission for “screen recording” to allow apps like pixelstick to see the contents of the screen. now fixed
    - when building pixelstick with xcode versions 10 and above: the window is no longer transparent, so you only see pixelstick on a grey background covering the whole screen. this is now fixed.

    if you have any issue make sure you uncheck and check the permissions for pixelstick in privacy:accessibility, privacy:input monitoring and privacy:screenrecording.
2.16.02019-11-29
  • - macos catalina 10.15 now requires user permission for “screen recording” to allow apps like pixelstick to see the contents of the screen. now fixed
    - when building pixelstick with xcode versions 10 and above: the window is no longer transparent, so you only see pixelstick on a grey background covering the whole screen. this is now fixed also.
    - if you have any issue make sure you uncheck and check the permissions for pixelstick in privacy:accessibility, privacy:input monitoring and privacy:screenrecording.
2.15.02018-07-30
  • - fix for 0's displaying for location of circle and square in pixelstick panel for some people. this occurred if in the system preferences:mission control the item "Displays have separate Spaces" was unchecked. this was, as you can imagine, difficult to discover. we apologize for the delay. this version solves that. the sys pref can now be set either way. you don't need to change any settings.

    a major upgrade is still on the way.
2.12.02017-11-06
  • IMPORTANT: With PixelStick 2.12 now recommends that its default scale uses the coordinates directly reported by macOS. Previously it scaled those coordinates by a screen-dependent "backing scale" (typically 2x for Retina screens).
    However the "backing scale" does not correspond to physical pixels because macOS supports a variety of scaling options via Displays Preferences, none of which change the backing scale reported by macOS to apps. For compatibility with previous versions' saved coordinates, PixelStick will continue to apply
    that scaling until you open PixelStick's preferences and select "Use macOS coordinates".

    [New] Reworked the loupe code so that the magnified screen images are much crisper and do not include magnified copies of PixelStick's endpoints and guides.
    [Fix] Prevent the situation on some systems where the cursor appeared in the endpoint and colour picker loupes (and thus was magnified and prevented colour selection).
    [Fix] Remove the red frame from accessibility element screen grabs.
    [Fix] Prevent PixelStick from reporting the screen width as double the number of pixels macOS reports. (This is precisely the problem of previous versions of PixelStick using a Retina screen's backing scale.)
    [Fix] Corrected the measurements PixelStick reports when moving PixelStick from a Retina screen to a non-Retina screen.
    [Fix] Redraw and, if necessary, adjust PixelStick's endpoints when the display's scale is changed via Displays Preferences.
    [Fix] Reduce duplication of some internal calculations, improving consistency between unscaled and scaled measurements.
2.1.12017-06-03
  • [Fix] Draw circle guides correctly on Retina screens.
    [Fix] Improve behaviour when editing values directly in the palette.
    [Fix] Double-click on the palette title bar only to collapse the palette. This means double click within the content of the palette now correctly selects the text to edit instead of collapsing the window.
2.1.02017-04-19
  • [new] Map mode for measuring angles increasing clockwise. When combined with setting the baseline to a vertical line, this is great for taking bearings on a map. [mod] Updated to a more secure version of the Sparkle Updater framework. [mod] The manual has been updated to explain map mode. The manual is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KqDl9z-s0jOYSFL-YB5XR-NDN0YKRVLVG0N9eHYhjAU/edit
2.92015-11-30
  • IMPORTANT: If you have version 2.5 then you need to manually download and replace the old version with the new version on our site.
    [new] Remembers the last used scale and eye dropper settings. [new] Can now measure angles relative to a non-horizontal baseline. [mod] Angle and length now displayed with more precision (i.e. not rounded to integer values).
    [mod] Compatible with Mac OS 10.6 - 10.11
    [new] User preference setting for displaying or hiding the loupe shown when dragging points. [new] User preference setting for displaying or hiding the grid inside the loupe (when the loupe is shown).
    [fix] Loupe view now also works on OS X 10.6 (previously it only could appear on OS X 10.7 or higher).
    [fix] Make closing the preferences window behave in a more standard fashion. [fix] Restore the missing app icon and include hi-res versions.
2.82014-12-18
  • [new] Support for the "Screens have separate Spaces" user preference added in OS X Mavericks.
    [mod] compiled with xcode 6.1.1 [mod] compatible with Mac OS 10.10 - 10.6
    [fixed] Color picker shows the wrong color in some screen arrangements, particularly when secondary screens are arranged higher or lower than the primary screen.
    [fixed] Loupe not magnifying the correct area of the screen on secondary screens in some screen arrangements.
    [fixed] Reset position can result in endpoints moving off-screen some screen arrangements.
    [fixed] PixelStick does not extend into newly revealed screen space when screen arrangements are changed while PixelStick is running.
    [fixed] Crashes on OS X Mavericks and higher when selecting the "screen elements" ruler more than once.
    [new] this version courtesy of guest programmer Bernie Maier of australia. thanks should be directed to him for this holiday gift. Bernie identified issues with multiscreen support and stepped and nailed them and made other improvements. Big thanks to him for his ability to quickly get up to speed, understand and make a huge contribution to PixelStick.
2.72014-04-14
  • [fix] a variety of small improvements. [updated] icons and some graphics
2.52012-10-11
  • [fix] issue for users of Mac OS 10.6 may also work in 10.5 (we can't test, let us know). IMPORTANT: Mac OS 10.7 users. Please make sure you have the latest Mac OS version installed. PixelStick won't launch unless 10.7.5 has the latest update. The reason is this app is code signed and uses gatekeeper (Apples latest security) and 10.7.5 was updated to handle that. The info on that update is here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
2.42012-10-1
  • [mod] updated graphics, icons and function for retina displays (thanks to user Damien).
    [fix] cursors disappearing under "invisible rug". this happens when you use several  displays or simply change screen resolution (thanks to user Colin Murray's).
    [fix] position of main panel was not saved in older versions of OS X (thanks to user Chris Pritchard).
    [new] new icons.
    [mod] optimized code and compiled with xcode 4.4.
    [mod] improved documentation.
    [new] signed by plum amazing with apple developer certificate to follow apple's latest security guidelines.
    [new] 100% compatible with mac os 8. more improvements coming...
2.22011-09-11
  • [mod] added 5-th item into color format menu RGB
    [mod] rewrote the code dealing with resize panel 100% lion (Mac OS 10.7) compatible.
2.12011-08-14
  • [mod] 100% lion (Mac OS 10.7) compatible.
2.02011-07-18
  • [new] eyedropper shows the color under the cursor in 4 formats (css, html, rgb integer, rgb hex)
    [new] eyedropper copies the color under the cursor using copy (command c) in the chosen format.
    [new] zoomed view shown under the cursor.
    [new] user interface changes and additions.
    [mod] code updated, optimized and improved.
    [new] customized scaling settings in addition to templates for google and yahoo maps and in photoshop.
1.2.12010-11-21
  • [Fix] added copy and paste to the registration dialog.

Users rave about PixelStick on MacUpdate

Click on a version number to get that older version of PixelStick.

This is a link to the changelog which may help in figuring out a version  for an older Mac OS. It will open in a new tab, leaving this window open

2.16.0

2.15.0

2.1.2

2.3

Manuals can also be found in the Help menu or ? icons within every app.

Reading Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) from a Satellite Image Using PixelStick on a Mac

PixelStick Use In Navigation and Cartography.

PixelStick Used in Graphic Design

Below is a screencast from GigaOM

PixelStick Use In Meteorology, Climatology and Atmospheric Physics.

PixelStick In Speaker Design

Here is a link to that speaker design article. (above)

PixelStick Simple Demo

Let us know how you use PixelStick to include it here.

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