AuthorTopic: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.  (Read 12631 times)

Offline Cybernetic

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what software has totally improved your workflow and is something that you enjoy creating in?

ive been playing with grafx2, and am now trying paint.net. im trying to find a very stable, very fast, multi-threaded, ergonomic and not ugly ui and updated frequently. im just curious what software has brought out the inner artist in you and that you find is very fun at the same time?

p.s. sorry about the one line spamming i didn't know these rules at the time :-[
« Last Edit: February 02, 2011, 08:19:44 pm by Cybernetic »

Offline Mathias

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #1 on: February 02, 2011, 11:13:59 pm
This comes up all the time. Pro's and con's of pixel software.
Have you tried searching the forums here?
I just use Photoshop, it's awesome and horrible, for pixel art, at the same time.
Look at Graphics Gale and Pro Motion while you're busy testing software.

Offline Cybernetic

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #2 on: February 03, 2011, 12:26:49 am
This comes up all the time. Pro's and con's of pixel software.
Have you tried searching the forums here?
I just use Photoshop, it's awesome and horrible, for pixel art, at the same time.
Look at Graphics Gale and Pro Motion while you're busy testing software.

i didn't do a search. i looked at the recommended software (which always ends up in cosmigo promotion)
:edit: i just read threads like that, and see that promotion and gale are the most popular. i would buy promotion but, as ive bought 1000s of dollars in software, i know how the development world works. id say promotion is a dead product, basically, "we wont acknowledge that development has stopped as that would lead to loss of sales but we wont dont plan on developing it anymore either" which is why im afraid to purchase it. hate to say but 2 half years since a new release is basically software in stasis unless somebody has heard different then my mistake.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2011, 01:00:24 am by Cybernetic »

Offline setz

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #3 on: February 03, 2011, 02:20:43 am
I use Cosmigo Pro Motion, but sometimes I'll do edits or doodles in KolourPaint (Think MSPaint, but with hotkeys and more undo).

I tried using the Gimp once, it was probably the worst pixel editor I've ever used. Graphics Gale was probably the second worst. I can't really remember why these days, but both left me feeling very sour while trying to use them.

Grafx2 was really nice, I used that for awhile, if you can't afford Pro Motion for whatever reason, I'd definitely suggest using that. PM being "dead software" doesn't change the fact that it works really great, and has saved me probably entire days or maybe even weeks of time.

Offline Cybernetic

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #4 on: February 03, 2011, 03:01:30 am
i also own adobe ps7 elements. not sure if elements is good for pixel art. theres artrage too. dunno if artrage work for pixel editing though. and im trying the demo of pd pro4
« Last Edit: February 03, 2011, 03:03:53 am by Cybernetic »

Offline ptoing

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #5 on: February 04, 2011, 08:49:09 am
PM is NOT dead software, it is still in development, but the coder has not much time atm. What with life and all.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline krasimir

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #6 on: February 14, 2011, 06:35:14 am
Same, Photoshop for me although it is horrendously bloated for pixel art  :D
Playing: online RPG with  over 4 dozen pixel units and a ton of pixel enemies.
Blog: Diablo 3 item duping

Offline pmprog

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Re: what is your favorite pixel art program for any operating system.

Reply #7 on: February 16, 2011, 05:30:22 pm
I use JASC Paint Shop Pro 5 (picked it up for £5 off eBay), gives you nice easy access to palettes, colour counting, layers but still pretty streamlined for pixelling.

Paint Shop Pro 9 is also pretty good (have that at work), but these days it's owned by somebody else and called PaintShop Photo Pro... Meh

Offline drakus2011

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Check out my post "The Tile Wizard Software" in this forum category.  Its a new project of mine for helping with pixeling terrain tiles.  Its made with the Java programming language and should be cross-platform.  There will be more projects for other areas of two-dimensional game pixel art in the near future.

Offline malkomk

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Seconding GraphicsGale. I use the Free Edition and it's certainly the best free program for pixel art that I've seen so far. Check it out.