View SAI files in your browser
The painting app illustrators sketch and ink in, on Windows only. Open a .sai right here, on a Mac or a phone, with its layers. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your painting opens drawn from its layers, fitted to your window, with them listed beside it.
- Every layer and folder • Hide one or show it alone
- Drag to pan • Pinch or scroll to zoom
- A checkerboard, white or black behind it
- Export • Save the picture, a layer or every layer
About SAI
PaintTool SAI is a light painting app for Windows made by SYSTEMAX in Japan, much loved by illustrators and anime and manga artists for its smooth strokes and its pen stabilizer. Version 1 came out in 2008, and its .sai file keeps a painting with every layer, set and mask.
A .sai is a small file system of its own, enciphered in pages of 4 KB with a key every copy of SAI carries: a canvas file with the size and resolution, a list of the layers from the bottom up, a file for each layer with its name, blend mode and opacity and its pixels in tiles of 32 by 32, and a small thumbnail.
Filepeek deciphers it in your browser and draws the painting from its layers, the sets and layers listed beside it. Hide a layer or show it alone, and save the painting, a layer or every layer as PNG.
PaintTool SAI image
.sai
Format
- MIME type
- image/x-sai
- Made by
- SYSTEMAX, for PaintTool SAI
- Released
- 2008
Inside the file
- Layers
- Layers, linework, sets and masks
- Pixels
- 32 px tiles, run length packed
- Kept as
- 4 KB pages, enciphered
- Preview
- A small thumbnail
Opens in every browser
Filepeek opens SAI files with their layers in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on phones too. On their own, browsers only download them.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open SAI
- WindowsPaintTool SAI, paid
- MacNo app opens it
- iPhone and iPadNo app opens it
- AndroidNo app opens it
Questions
How do I open a .sai file without PaintTool SAI?
Drop it on this page or choose Peek a SAI. The painting opens in your browser with its layers beside it, on a Mac, a phone or a PC without SAI.
How do I convert SAI to PNG?
Open it, then choose Export and Save as PNG. Save this layer and Save every layer save layers on their own, with their transparency.
Why is my lineart missing?
SAI's linework layers keep their strokes as curves SAI draws itself, and Filepeek doesn't draw them: the layer is listed, marked Linework, and the rest of the painting shows. In SAI, merging a linework layer down onto a normal layer turns its strokes into pixels.
Can it open SAI 2's .sai2 files?
No. SAI 2 saves a different format, .sai2, which Filepeek doesn't open. SAI 2 can also save a PSD, which opens here with its layers.