Looking to make some small graphical pictures on your Windows Phone while out and about? Pixelator might seem a bit underpowered on first glace, being a basic bitmap editor, but it's a fun app, it's easy to use, and as it's free it's worth having a look.

I stumbled over this older app during a regular 'what's happening in the Windows Phone Store' sweep. It isn't a replacement for Photoshop or Gimp on your handset, Pixelator goes right to the other end of the curve. As the name implies you are working at a pixel level. you can set a single pixel to a different colour.

It's not quite pure pixel work, as you do have a 'background' colour you can set in the application that makes the erase option worthwhile, otherwise you can simply work in whatever colour you choose from the picker, tapping away at individual pixels in your masterpiece.

Part of the delight here is that while you could add in some fancy tools (drawing shapes, straight lines, flood fill, gradients, masking a specific colour, layers of pixel art built on top of each other, that sort of thing), Pixelator keeps it simple... you can set the colour of each pixel, save it for later, and export the final image as required.

There is a zoom tool so you can get a closer look at the images you have created. One thing that I would add in to the mix, and that's the ability to edit the pixels when the view is zoomed in. This seems like such an obvious trick I wonder why it has been missed?

I like that Pixelator goes beyond a mere curiosity and has become something that lets you get your creative works of art out of the application. You can save as many bitmap images as you like inside the application for later use, and when you are ready you can export any of these into your photo stream, where they can be saved, shared, emailed, or posted to social networks - just like a photo snapped on the phone's camera.

Because of the limited options in Windows Phone to customise the UI, Pixelator's use cases might not be readily apparent, but there are a lot of creators out there that will find this a nice little mobile tool. I also think that Pixelator is going to be an app that will work very well when added to Kids Corner - the creativity on offer should keep a lot of people quiet on a long car journey in the summer holidays.

You can grab your copy from the Windows Store right now.