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What it does
Pixelating by resizing gives you soft, muddy blocks, because the resampler blends. Pixel Crush does the two things that make low-resolution work read as intentional: it averages honestly, and it also cuts the number of colours.
How it works
Each cell is averaged from the pixels it covers, so a block represents its region rather than sampling one arbitrary pixel from it.
Every channel is then quantised to a small number of levels, four or six depending on the detail setting. This colour reduction is the part most pixelation effects omit, and it is what gives the result its era-appropriate palette.
Cells are filled as hard rectangles with a deliberate half-pixel overlap, so no seams appear between blocks at any zoom level.
What each control changes
Scale
Block size. This is the primary control and effectively sets the output resolution.
Detail
Above sixty it allows six levels per channel; below, four. The difference between a richer and a starker palette.
Contrast
Applied before quantisation, so it changes which levels the tones land on.
Intensity
Opacity of the pixelated layer over the untouched image. Slightly below one hundred keeps a faint impression of the original edges beneath the blocks.
Ink palette
Source keeps the original colours; the others recolour the reduced palette.
Good for
Deliberate retro and low-fidelity artwork
Obscuring a region while keeping composition readable
Album and game-adjacent artwork
Less suited to: Anonymising sensitive material. Averaged blocks can retain recoverable structure and should never be relied on for redaction.