Making Pixel Art In Photoshop. As with a real pencil or pen, the pen tool is used to place coloured pixels on the canvas. Fills an empty area with one solid.
If you want to work with clean pixels (one peg = one pixel), simply make a blank psd with the proper amount of pixels in width and height, and drag that original picture in. The pen tool is similar to the brush tool, but with hard edges (i.e. First, go to “file” then “new” and name your canvas.