Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

A place for your artistic side. Discuss techniques and tools for pixel art on the NES, GBC, or similar platforms.

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loopy
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by loopy »

qbradq wrote:Loopy, can you give us an idea of what the restrictions are for the free version?
Sure. I installed the trial verison to check, just for you :)
Trial version limitations

The following functions are restricted in this Trial version
* export via Windows clipboard is not allowed
* save animation as single images is not allowed
* plugin execution will be delayed for some seconds
* images may only be saved to image files (e.g. PNG, BMP) if they don't exceed 0.5M pixels
* animations may only be saved to animation files (e.g. AVI, FLC) if they don't exceed 10000 pixels per Frame

The Trial version only supports image/animation file output for the first 30 days!
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tokumaru
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by tokumaru »

In other words, there's no free version, only a trial version, seeing as it becomes unusable after 30 days.
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loopy
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by loopy »

Free trial, then :P
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jayminer
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by jayminer »

I still do all my pixeling on my good old Amiga 4000 running Brilliance. Has anyone tried Grafx2? I have been meaning to try it out for quite some time but have never gotten round to it.
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Kasumi
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by Kasumi »

I don't like Grafx2, but you'll probably like it. It's close to Amiga programs like Brilliance. I'm aware it can probably be customized to work like I'd want, but it's not like that out of the box. (It may have changed, it's been a while since I've used it)

Things I remember disliking are exceptionally odd hotkeys (to a user used to ones used in most modern programs), and a circular undo buffer. (Press undo after you've already undone the last action, and it will redo all actions in the buffer. Press redo after all actions in the buffer have been redone, and it will undo them all)

It has really solid palette control, though.
LocalH
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by LocalH »

For those who came up on Amiga DPaint or Brilliance, there's always the option of running the originals under an Amiga emulator :P
blackstrip
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by blackstrip »

Hi2all!

I create my own freeware graphics editor PaintCAD 4Windows for pixel art =) You can operate with this editor using ONLY keyboard (but can use mouse or touchscreen also).

And there is cursor on image operated by you! Also you can create fonts, pack/unpack animated GIFs, pack/unpack AVI videos, use webcamera for getting photo/video/3d-photo/3d-video, draw 3d pictures and animations (anaglyph and stereopair), draw PNG images with semitransparency. Also PaintCAD contains some mini-tools: mini-webbrowser, IRC client, Muzz music compozer.

Check it out (latest version) at http://blackstrip.ru/pcw.rar

Official page with info: http://blackstrip.ru/soft.php?softyp=co ... n&softid=4

Screenshot:
Image

Also there is reduced version of PaintCAD for Java mobile and Android:

Official page with info: http://blackstrip.ru/soft.php?softyp=ja ... n&softid=1

Stable 2.2 version for Java: http://blackstrip.ru/PaintCAD.jar http://blackstrip.ru/PaintCAD.jad

Alpha 2.3 version for Java: http://blackstrip.ru/tmp/pc23alpha/PaintCAD.jar http://blackstrip.ru/tmp/pc23alpha/PaintCAD.jad

Alpha 2.3 version for Android: http://blackstrip.ru/tmp/pc23alpha/PaintCAD.apk

Screenshots of android version(java version is similar):
Image Image
Image Image
giles
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by giles »

Gimp is the worst for anything colormap related.

Does anybody know of any program that let's you apply the colormap from one image to another while preserving the order of the colormap? Also, it should use all the colors of the colormap instead of trying to match colors like Image Magick appears to be doing.
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tokumaru
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by tokumaru »

giles wrote:Gimp is the worst for anything colormap related.
I think Photoshop is worse. I have used GIMP for pixel art before, didn't think it was that bad.
Does anybody know of any program that let's you apply the colormap from one image to another while preserving the order of the colormap?
If I'm not mistaken, in Photoshop you can go to Image > Mode > Color Table and export the palette of one image, then go there again on the other image to load the palette you saved. I imagine GIMP can do it too, I just don't have it available now so I can't check.
Sik
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by Sik »

tokumaru wrote:I think Photoshop is worse. I have used GIMP for pixel art before, didn't think it was that bad.
Both are horrible though. They're oriented more towards more high resolution and detailed images (like photos), not pixelart, and it shows.
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tokumaru
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by tokumaru »

Sure, I certainly don't recommend either of them for pixel art. But if by any chance that's all you have available at a random time when you need to do pixel work, it's doable.
giles
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by giles »

As far as colormaps go gimp works fine. Export colormap as palette and apply the saved palette to the other image.
tepples
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by tepples »

To turn a colormap into a palette, do Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Palettes, right-click inside the box, and choose Import Palette...

To apply a colormap to an image, do Colors > Map > Set Colormap...
darkhog
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by darkhog »

MS Paint. No, seriously it's great for PA, but only one that was in xp and earlier (you can find it patched up so it'll work in vista/7/8, just google "paint xp").

Other than that, ASEPRITE.
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Kasumi
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Re: Pixel art (raster) drawing softwares for Windows

Post by Kasumi »

Just for the record, the MS Paint that comes with Vista is fine. It even adds quite a few more undo steps than the XP version. It was Windows 7 that added all the antialias and ribbon crap.
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