By the way, what programs do you guys use? Long time ago I was using Graphics Gale, but I think I liked the hotkeys in Photoshop more, so sticking with that for now- any suggestions on that, though?
My exact sentiments! ...
before I switched to using Cosmigo Pro Motion. If you plan on ever doing any larger pieces that have mid- to high-color counts, or doing any animation, or working on environments, the difference in speed between Pro Motion and Photoshop really blew me away. At first it was really weird, and it does have a few minor bugs here and there. But I've been using it almost exclusively for all my pixel art for a couple of months now, and I'm really glad I switched. Lately I'm finding that even on the smallest sprites, Pro Motion is just plain quicker. I still use photoshop for compositing sprites and tiles I've painted in Pro Motion, but that's mainly because layers and layer sets are pretty handy that way.
Haha, sounds like Jan paid me to write that, jeez
The nice thing is you can try Pro Motion out for free for a month to see if you will like the workflow and tools or not. If you dig it, it's just $80 and you're up and running with the full version. I would recommend un-installing the trial version before installing the full version though
One of those pesky bugs...
Anyways, here's the site, I'd definitely recommend giving it a shot!
http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/Also, a bunch of talented artists from Pixelation have been creating some timelapse videos of pixeling in Pro Motion, so you can get a feel for the benefits of fast index changing and index painting in general, not to mention the auto-tile completion feature...
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=2144.0
