What features do you use in your graphics app?

Branching off from the discussion about which image software is best or most useful, what features do you use from your graphics software in the development of your games/software?

e.g from Photoshop, things like:

Layers
Alpha channels
Saving in different file formats
Drawing bezier curves
Making paths
Your favorite filters, etc.

and as a secondary question, what features would you LIKE there to be that don't exist, or require you to do things in a longwinded way?

I almost exclusively use Photoshop for 2d work.

I make extensive use of layers, layer effects ( bevel, contour, emboss, drop shadow, inner glow, outer glow, all that stuff ) and also of grids, particularly for texture creation.

I don't make much use of filters, as they're easy to spot overuse of, but I do use Gaussian blur a hell of a lot. I use the offset filter a lot when working on textures to make sure everything is tileable.

Yeah, I use channels ( not just alpha channels ) and variable level selections ( ie, selections where pixels can be selected to various degrees ) and I tend to use JPG, PNG and DDS wherever possible.

I don't make much/any use of beziers, and only some use of paths.

I don't do much of what you would call drawing because I'm a pretty crappy artist. Hence I don't make much use of burn and dodge, but you'll probably find that most people who actually can draw do use these a lot.

I make quite a bit of use of the image adjustment features too. Things like invert, adjust brightness/contrast, adjust color. Also levels and curves, those can be useful.

I also use the flip, rotate, etc functions quite a bit for manipulating layers.

HTH.

My use of tools in Photoshop is very similar to Gabriel's.

I use layers and layer styles extensively. I use Gaussian blur often too.

Unlike Gabriel, I use beziers very often.

I'm not a very good artist either, so I hardly use some of Photoshop's more artistic tools.

Are there things you wish you could do with it that you cant, things that would be particularly useful for the kind of development that you?

Well Photoshop is the industry standard, so when you start learning how to do things, you invariably get told how to achieve it in Photoshop, so your mindset tends to always be "ok, how do I do this in Photoshop?" With the possible exception of animstrip handling, I can't think of anything I've ever been unable to do in Photoshop ( except draw, and ain't no software in the world gonna turn me into someone with artistic talent. )

I suppose it would be nice to have some kind of procedural/fractal creation/manipulation functionality built into a program like PhotoShop. There are separate apps which do it, but it'd be nice to be able to do it all in one place.

layers, styles (glows, dropshadows, bevels and other more fancy stuff.

Save in png and jpg sometimes (for less important images).

that's it :-)

For 2d, I use Gimp for:

* Grid division / snap
* Transparency/Alpha layers
* Scaling, rotation, pen, brush, fill and selection tools
* Filters (all sorts)
* PNG, JPG export

I use layers and layer effects the most, those are the things that other apps can't seem do as well as photoshop.

I found http://www.filterforge.com/ Photoshop plugin very sexy.

One thing missing in Photoshop and GIMP is rotating canvas (like Painter, ArtRage, openCanvas and more). I use graphics software mostly to draw in, and without a TabletPC or Cintiq, being able to rotate the work surface comes in very handy. I don't own Photoshop, but have used it at work. I wouldn't buy it either, as I can do everything I would do in Photoshop (i.e. image editing, not painting) in GIMP or Krita. (and no, I'm not saying these open source alternatives have all the features of photoshop, just that they have all the features of photoshop that I need).

For animation TV Paint looks very nice, but it's a bit too expensive for me. Though, if I had a project I needed it for, I would strongly consider buygin it. It's basically Photoshop, After Effects and Plastic Animation Paper combined, with onion skinning and more (including rotating canvas). Tried the demo on my iBook G4, and it actually ran very fast there. :)

For me the most important features of a graphics app are:
1. Wacom pressure support.
2. Rotating canvas.
3. Spline interpolated strokes (so your lines don't become polygony when you draw fast).
4. Layers
5. Performance (actually, this should be number 1, as a slow app is pretty useless).

What features would you like to see that would really help with your game development? e.g. integrate game editor, texture generation, tile map assembler, etc?

yes, it is. I've been playing with the demo version, and it's very sexy indeed. Quite expensive ( you need the $300 version if you want normal maps ) but an excellent piece of software without question.

- zooming
- grids
- alpha
- creating seamless textures
- basic drawing operations
- saving PNG & JPG
- smudge / blur / burn
- multitude of selection options (freehand, polygon, magnetic, magic wand)

What would be helpful:

- multi-frame animation support, an easy way to line up sprites and 'stack' them as well so you can see changes between current and previous sprites.

- additional magic wand selection options: select not just on color, but also luminescence (I believe PSP will do that)

Airbrush set to normal, hard light, etc. Layers. Polygonal and rectangular selection. Guides. That's about it as far as I know.

If I'm doing something other than 'work,' I'll probably use a the stamp tool a lot, because I tend to do Photoshops in my spare time:

Does Photoshop or PaintShop have any kind of networking thing for working in a group on the same media at the same time? Is there a call for that?

What about animation, is photoshop/paintshop decent for animating, making sprite-sheets, etc? I know that `image ready` thing was sort of an attempt to turn photoshop into a web animation package. Any thoughts?

hmm, with my monitor if I rotate it to portrait orientation then windows rotates with it so you can use your apps and read online mags on a tall screen.

Is that similar to rotating canvas? If your monitor doesn't fo it automaticly the functionality is in nvidias drivers to rotate it manualy for you.

With the latest Photoshop, they did away with image ready and added most of the useful functionality directly to photoshop. I'm not sure about anim, but the slicing tools are quite nice for building interfaces and such.

No, it's not the same feature, though I love having a tall screen when working with text. I always keep my screen at work that way, and people think I'm weird. :) You can download ArtRage ( http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html ) and try it out. They have a free version. It basically let's you rotate the work surface at any angle, not just in 90 degree increments. ArtRage also let's you zoom in in realtime, not in stepped increments (more like a 3D app in a way...or one using OpenGL to draw 2D).

As for network paint, I believe version 1.1 of openCanvas had that...and was free. Don't know if it's still in there, as I've never had any need for that feature. :)

Ragnar

I thought maybe being able to rotate the canvas would be useful, and to then be painting `vertically` on the screen while it is rotated so you are really drawing at an angle.

It would also be nice if when you zoom in and see bigger pixels, your drawing operations are based on the floating point mouse coords not the integer ones. I found that to be the case in paintshop 6, at least, which is a few versions old now.