Field Test / November 8, 2026

Tested / one-sprite comparison

One lantern.
Two normal maps.

Pixel Art Lighter versus Laigter, using the same painted crate and the same moving amber light in Godot.

The verdict

Pixel Art Lighter kept the painted face flatter and gave the bevel a stronger light response in this trial. Keep Laigter for command-line batches.

Read this with the resultThis result covers one 48 × 48 sprite, both tools’ default normal maps and one light setup. It is not a whole-tool ranking. Android and performance were not tested.
Godot captures from three lantern positions. The Pixel Art Lighter column keeps the painted A on a flat face. A bright streak moves over the letter in the Laigter column.
Three frames from a 13-position sweep. Unmodified sprite on the left. Pixel Art Lighter in the middle. Laigter on the right.

The tested setup

Date
November 8, 2026
Tools
Pixel Art Lighter 3.6.0 · Laigter 1.14.0
Engine
Godot 4.7.2 stable
Renderer
Compatibility / OpenGL
OS and GPU
Windows · NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000
Input and sweep
One 48 × 48 PNG · 13 rendered light positions

What we saw

Pixel Art Lighter won on a 48 × 48 painted crate. We swept the same amber light across the unmodified sprite and both tools' default normal maps. Pixel Art Lighter kept the painted A close to the surrounding flat face and gave the right bevel a stronger response. Laigter's default threw a moving hotspot across the lettering.

What stayed the same

An original PNG depicts a beveled crate with a flat painted A. Both tools generated their default normals from that PNG, with no manual edits. Pixel Art Lighter used Generate → Apply → Export. Laigter used its Windows portable release through the command line.

Each map was applied through a Godot CanvasTexture at nearest-neighbor 3× scale. A flat control and both mapped sprites received identical amber PointLight2D sweeps over 13 rendered positions. Normal maps were the only input varied.

The measured difference

Painted stencil versus flat face
The mean lighting-factor gap was 0.30 percentage points for Pixel Art Lighter and 3.47 for Laigter. In this setup, the smaller gap better preserved the painted flat face.
Right bevel, light moving left to right
The lighting factor changed by +43.50 percentage points for Pixel Art Lighter and +27.98 for Laigter. The Pixel Art Lighter bevel responded more strongly.
How the comparison was measured

For each pixel, the lighting factor is rendered luma divided by the same pixel in the unmapped control. Comparing the stencil and background ratios removes most effects of their different source colors and the lantern's falloff.

The contact sheet shows Laigter's moving hotspot crossing the lettering and Pixel Art Lighter preserving the separation between faces. These metrics apply to this sprite and light, with default settings.

What to use them for

Try Pixel Art Lighter for a few prominent pixel sprites. Keep Laigter for command-line batches. A different sprite or tuned preset could change the result.

This trial covers normal maps only. Animated sheets, custom presets, other sprites and direct-light masks still need a separate trial. No physical Android or performance check was run for this comparison.

Sources and tool versions

Pixel Art Lighter · Laigter 1.14.0 release · Godot CanvasTexture documentation

Versions and setup above are from the recorded November 8 test, not a claim about the latest releases.