IMG.LY vs. Pixel SDK
Need a highly customizable, scalable, and enterprise-ready solution? IMG.LY delivers it all. Discover why CreativeEditor SDK stands out as the top alternative to Pixel SDK.
What makes IMG.LY the best Pixel SDK alternative?
Fully-featured design & video editor
Our SDK has matured in demanding environments, powering 500+ million creations per month.
Full customization & white-labeling
A fully customizable, white-label solution where you control the UI, branding, and functionality.
Extensibility & plugin system
Custom plugins are treated like built-in features, so you can add new tools, automation, and industry-specific workflows.
Automated content generation
Use generative AI, batch processing, and programmatic design tools to automate and scale content creation.
Trusted by 100+
industry leaders
What our clients say about us
Integrating IMG.LY’s editor meant we didn’t have to build or maintain a complex editing layer ourselves. That kept our team focused on our core AI ad engine and saved us countless development hours — while still giving our customers the ability to polish and customize creatives at scale.
Hikari Senju
CEO, Omneky
With IMG.LY we built a central creative portal that now powers over 140 dealer campaigns across multiple automotive brands. Before this, asset creation was slow and inconsistent.
Martin Röhr
Product Owner, Digitas
By embedding IMG.LY’s editor we were able to hit key RFP requirements and deliver a template-based creative experience that now serves 1,000+ customers. It helped us win more deals and exceed enterprise expectations without needing to hire dedicated design teams.
Rob Driscoll
Director of PM, Optimizely
Since integrating IMG.LY’s editor, we now deliver 30,000+ ad creatives per month, dramatically shorten time-to-launch, and help our clients cut design spend by up to $10,000 per month.
Logan Welbaum
Founder, Plai
Our customers create over a million personalized postcards each year choosing from over hundreds of templates with IMG.LY’s SDK. It’s the only solution that allows us to build our own specialized, on-brand UI that integrates seamlessly with our platform.
Jeanine Zaalberg
Product Manager, SwissPost
From a developer’s perspective, the most powerful feature of the photo editor is the integration process. It was completely flawless, quick, and easy to integrate.
Stefano Fornari
CTO, Funambol
We compared IMG.LY SDK with other solutions and found that it would be the best fit for us since it provides all the features that are crucial for our use case.
Carem Pereira
SCRUM Manager, HP
IMG.LY vs. Pixel SDK at a glance
| Feature | IMG.LY | Pixel SDK | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep Customizability | Fully customizable; can include advanced editing features or simplified ones, making it highly flexible and user-friendly. | Custom colors and dark mode, limiting the editor to photos, videos, camera or library, and choosing and ordering tabs and filters. A full redesign of the bundled screens is not documented. | IMG.LY is fully customizable, from advanced editing features to simplified ones. Pixel SDK offers color theming and configuration of its tabs and filters. |
| Framework & Platform Support | Cross-platform support including Web, iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, macOS, Electron, and Node.js. | Runs on iPhone and iPad. Android and web versions are not documented. | IMG.LY supports a wide range of platforms and frameworks. Pixel SDK is a Swift framework for iOS apps. |
| Turnkey Solutions for Different Use Cases | Pre-built editors for video, social, and marketing content. | One editing framework covers both photos and videos. Industry-specific editors are not documented. | IMG.LY offers pre-built editors for video, social and marketing content. Pixel SDK is a general photo and video editing framework. |
| Advanced Video Editing Features | Advanced video editing with automation for dynamic content creation and multi-track editing for video, images, audio, and overlays. | Video segments can be composed, trimmed and reordered, with speed changes, filters and adjustments for each segment or the whole video. A multi-track timeline is not documented. | IMG.LY supports multi-track video, overlays, and automation. Pixel SDK edits video as an ordered sequence of segments. |
| Plugin System | Plugin system that lets developers extend functionality and add custom features. | A plugin system is not documented. Developers can add their own editor tabs and write custom filters in code. | IMG.LY supports a native plugin API for extensibility; Pixel SDK is extended through custom editor tabs and filters. |
| Creative Automation | Supports dynamic content insertion, batch processing, and generative AI for automation. | Photos and videos can be edited in code as well as visually, and media files can be transcoded without the UI. Templates, data-driven batch generation and server-side rendering are not documented. | IMG.LY enables automated, data-driven editing and generative AI integration. Pixel SDK supports programmatic photo and video edits. |
| Openness & File Compatibility | Can import Photoshop (PSD), InDesign (IDML), and Illustrator (AI) files, export designs back to IDML and to PSD (on the server), and save work-in-progress as scene files. | Imports photos (including RAW) and video, and exports JPEG images and MP4 video with H.264 or HEVC encoding. Import of design files such as PSD, AI or IDML is not documented. | IMG.LY supports industry-standard file imports/exports. Pixel SDK works with photo and video files. |
| Asset Libraries & Integrations | Easily integrates third-party libraries like Unsplash and Getty Images for asset management. | Third-party asset library integrations are not documented; the editor works with the device library, camera and DSLR imports. | IMG.LY integrates third-party libraries like Unsplash and Getty Images; Pixel SDK works with the device library, camera and DSLR imports. |
| Scalability & Enterprise Support | Established, enterprise-grade solution powering creative editing for many large enterprises across the globe. Server-side processing handles large-scale tasks efficiently on the backend. Backed by a dedicated engineering team with continuous updates, ensuring long-term reliability. | Pixel SDK has passed its announced sunset date and is not accepting new customers. | IMG.LY is actively developed and enterprise-focused. Pixel SDK has passed its announced sunset date. |
Key capabilities
Learn more about some of the functionalities of IMG.LY’s SDK.
Editing
Printing
Templating
Text variables.
Enable mass personalization and creative automation by embedding variables.
Placeholders & lockable designs.
Constrain templates to guide your users’ design and ensure brand consistency.
Configurable presets.
Enforce a consistent aesthetic across all creations by using preset filters, adjustments, fonts, and crop ratios.
Customizability
Build custom UIs.
Use the headless API powering all creative operations to implement an entirely custom UI.
Theming.
Theme the editor to match your app.
Media libraries.
Set up custom libraries that are easily sortable.
Toolbar customization.
Reposition toolbar elements, change icons, or rename tools to fit your use case.
Internationalization.
Add support for additional languages, and customize any button label.
Export options.
Export designs in JPG, PNG, or PDF with custom quality, page ranges, and dimensions.
Check out other use cases
Learn more about related solutions.
Apparel Designer
Whether t-shirts, hoodies or caps, build for any use case, deploy on any platform.
Get in touch
Contact our sales team to learn more about licensing options and get access to our AI plugins for CE.SDK.
FAQs
We believe IMG.LY is the strongest alternative to PixelSDK, particularly if you need a flexible, multi-platform editor that scales beyond iOS. While PixelSDK is iOS-only, IMG.LY's PhotoEditor SDK and VideoEditor SDK run on iOS, Android, Web, React Native, Flutter, and beyond.
Four key differences: (1) Cross-Platform Coverage: Unlike PixelSDK (which focuses solely on iOS), we support iOS, Android, and Web, plus frameworks like React Native and Flutter; (2) Out-of-the-Box Editing Tools: We provide features such as text overlays, advanced stickers, brush tools, overlays, filters, and effects; (3) Customization & Branding: Our solution allows you to theme and re-skin the editor to match your brand; (4) Automation and headless mode: You can generate videos and photos programmatically on a server.
Multi-Platform Theming: We offer a consistent theming engine that works across iOS, Android, and Web, letting you maintain a cohesive brand identity. Pixel SDK's theming covers iOS only.
Yes, certainly. You can either consult our getting started guides in the documentation to get a first feel for the editor in the context of your application. If you have serialized edits you would like to transfer our solutions team is happy to help you to write a migration script.
IMG.LY: iOS, Android, Web (JavaScript), React Native, Flutter, and more. PixelSDK: Limited to iOS devices (iPhone and iPad).