Best tool for pixel art?

Hi All,

Ages ago I use to draw all graphics on the Amiga using Deluxe Paint 3.

When I moved to the PC (Windows), I lost interest in drawing as the tools weren't that good (eg Paint).

Ive tried GIMP (not really a drawing program, more for editing), Paint.NET (which is okay... but I would like some animation tools)...

So what do you use?

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/index.html

Second vote for GraphicsGale.

pro motion is good :)

I keep drifting back to Paint Shop Pro 7.

Thanks for the reply guys.

Pro motion looks cool... ill have a look at that some time...

I downloaded the free version of GraphicsGale and it seems pretty good...

Just quickly drew this in GraphicsGale (I know the hands/arms are all out of wack, but hey this is my first proper drawing in ages!):



Anyone know how to get transparency to work with it?

thats pretty good

Paint shop pro 9 is what I use.

It has so many cool features, that even if your not all that good
at artwork,(Like me ^_^) you can still make some pretty cool stuff.

I usually use Paint for image editing (changing masks, prototyping, resizing, etc).
IMO Paint is good for simple images.

If I remember correctly, you need to use a higher bit depth for the transparency to work in GraphicsGale. It won't work with 256 color images

Thanks Jeremy


I have got it set to 24bit, I then add Alpha Channel - but the background is still white...

So the tools so far:

* GraphicsGale
* Paint
* Paint Shop Pro
* Pro Motion

Once you have added alpha channel the paint mode icon at the right lets you change to Clear from Normal.

Paint pretty much only works with lower bit formats, although it can edit PNG's, it has no support for transparency (the alpha channel is cleared - to black - when you save a PNG, a little dabble of GIMP or Paint.NET for a fix).

Okay, found that... but what do you do with it? On mine its got Normal, Clear and Opacity...

Another quick play around:





Thanks!

Both PAINTshop pro or Gimp are both very good for pixel stuff, being from a DP background myself i prefer painshop as it has the 2 colors on left and right mouse (although on gimp you can press X to swap).

However, PHOTOshop is not good for this stuff at all imo.

Lol. If there is a place like hell, ms-paint would be the devil's mid section and using it would be the punishment.

It's not that bad, provided you turn off all the anti-aliasing stuff when doing pixel work.

I use both Photoshop and Paintshop Pro 7 for creating sprites myself.

Photoshop has a Pencil tool which you can set to 1px, you can have a 1x1 grid, too, which makes it perfect for pixel art. Plus you can draw individual frames onto separate layers, which is much the same as onion-skinning so its good for animation, too.

Photoshop is fine for pixel art. You don't know how to use Photoshop if you would insist otherwise.

LOL... Photoshop costs $1415AU ($699US)... quite a bit for doing a bit pixel art isn't it? ;-)

GraphicsGale is free or if you want the shareware version its only about $35AU ($23US)...

Think Ill stick with GraphicsGale for now... hopefully I can work out the transparency stuff (still cant get it to work... :/)

Well, I never said it was cheap. Just disupting the suggestion that "PHOTOshop is not good for this stuff [pixel art]".

By the way - MSPaint in Windows 7 is quite nice.

The thing about photoshop (i only have an old version, so i don't know how things are now) is you find so many uses for it, and they are all combined in the one package. Very expensive though. That price prevents me from buying an upgraded version. I like the look of the new one, where you can rotate the canvas and paint textures, whilst seeing the 3d model update. Looks sweet.

@ Gfk,

Can you zoom in more than 8 times in the new paint? That always annoyed me that lack of zooms available.

I didnt say it(PS) couldnt do it, its just not -as- geared for it as PSP and GIMP imo. I use photoshop, psp and gimp for work as they are all good in their own way, however PS is the last app i would want to get 'pixelly' with..

Plus theres the price tag.

TBH, nothing is as good as DP when it comes to pixel art imo, i would prefer a full flat memory version of DP3 with better zoom over any of them... or maybe i just remember it more fondly than i should.

If you want DPaint, get ProMotion. Its as close as you can get on the PC. I use it for professional and hobby projects. The only problem is its 8-bit colour only.

For pure pixel art I would use GraphicsGale.

These days I rarely use pure pixel art. Usually my process goes something like: scan of a scetch / blueprint --> vector art -> pixel layers --> edit & effect & process --> final bitmap.

I use Photoshop Elements 6.0. It cost about $80 I think - it has most of the features of the expensive versions. I mainly use it for editing and organizing my photos, but it works very well for pixel art too.

I actually prefer Elements 2.0 - it has less bloat and loads much faster. However 6.0 has some great features.

I don't know.

I'm back on Vista now until Win7 comes out, so I can't check.

Ive only used PhotoShop a few times at Uni and I couldnt stand the interface... each to their own :)



According to the source of all knowledge, you can access 10x with MS Paint...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ms_Paint

"10x zoom can be accessed by clicking on a horizontal line of about 2 pixels right below the 8x zoom button."

I just tested it on XP and I can get 10x zoom by clicking on the bottom right of the box... (right in the angle _| )

Ive still got Win7 installed on the test box, Ill check tonight if you can do more...

Heres a screenshot of Paint in Windows 7:



As you can see it only goes up to 800%...

photoshop is good - a little pricey maybe..but good - i use it for all
my pixeling work.. and i still use my mouse..jst like in the amiga days..

didnt snarty release a sprite/paint tool ages ago? er.. cant remember what
that was called..

found it - propixel : http://www.softpicks.net/software/ProPixel-2D-4326.htm