GraphicsGale, limitations?

[pixelrox]

I would like to give GraphicsGale a try and noticed it come up in alot of conversations. I am new to pixel art, and have some questions regarding limitations.

There are several good tutorials out there, for example Derek Yu.

He talks about importing a sketch.

Is it possible to work in this way with GraphicsGale. It seems, that importing pencil sketches is an important consideration. Not necessarily having the option to import scans, but being able to load it as a layer. Are the pixels too big for this to be effective? The software seems zoomed in by default.

Also, is there anyone that would recommend GraphicsGale over Photoshop. Don't misunderstand, I know PS is an industry standard and all around great software, but the Pixel scene has some incredible techniques and such, that warrants looking at other options for a workflow reason. Can someone post some differences and positives between the two software packages?

[Atnas]

GraphicsGale can import from a scanner. It zooms from 10% to 4000%. What kind of screwed up program would be autozoomed in this day and age haha. I'd recommend it over Photoshop for pixel work. I think whatever you've heard or seen can't do justice to the real thing... have you tried it? Try it!

Pixels in photoshop
+ curves!
+ certain filters Gale doesn't have
+ actions to tile a whole defined area at the press of a button
- the snap to edges with tiles can be a bit of a pain
- for less able computers, way more intensive than you need

Pixels in Gale
+ great animation
+ palette manipulation is the best
+ lightweight
+ It's made for it! Everything that could be done to make the process smoother is.
- no programmable actions

And there's more, those are off the top of my head. Little biased. I use both pretty much equally doing freelance work. I prefer Gale for the flow when spriting and animating and doing limited palette but I need the auto AA'd brushes/erasers when trying to do larger scale polished stuff. I often find myself doing a non pixel art tiny painting type thing and then honing it in graphics gale for the sharpness pixel attention gives and the specific color palette tweaks that are available. So eh. See for yourself! c:

[pixelrox]

Ok, very cool.

I decided to concentrate on Photoshop, after looking at GraphicsGale and MS Paint. I started a new thread. Thank you for the intro and the comparison.