2D Paint packages
BlitzPlus Forums/BlitzPlus Programming/2D Paint packages
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| Just out of interest what paint packages do you guys all use? I`m using Promotion at the mo and would urge you all to get a copy as the developer is very open to new ideas and has just included an anim strip function that is perfect for Blitz. Are there any other decent 2D packages around that allow for DPaint style animations etc...? Jason. |
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| Hi Mr Silva, I use PSP and animation shop. Free on PC Format coverdisk. Later, Jes |
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| I got PSP quite recently. Very good. Get a drawing tablet too. |
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| I use Microsoft Paint for my gfx. |
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| Paint Shop Pro 6. Never found a need to update it... yet ;) |
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| PSP 7 it's awesome! |
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| I use PSP but would much rather have a copy of Promotion... if I could afford it! =] If anything rocks as much as DPaint did for dealing with game gfx, it's Promotion! |
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| If you can afford it. Photoshop 6.0 is tops. |
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| IDraw 3.xx I bought and used ProMotion, but I tried IDraw ( full freeware ), and now I only use it. For me it is PERFECT !!! |
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| Paintshop pro 4..... I'm just used to the interface now. It was hard enough to get used PSP after Dpaint :) |
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| I use PSP.. but I'll never truly stop loving photoshop.. <wipes a tear from his eye> |
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| I use Photo-Paint 10, and a Wacom Ituos2 tablet; I also have Photoshop 6, but I hardly ever use it. |
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| Photoshop 6, ProMotion, and once in a while I slip into the disturbing miasma that is Painter. |
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| I use ArtGem. Its easy to use. |
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| ah new promotion update? nice! /me is off to the cosmigo page... laters! |
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| Yep, as I mentioned above a new version of Promotion is comming out real soon, possibly this month. The author is very open to new things to include so if you have any thing you want included post it here and I will pass it on to him as I am a beta tester for the program. Cheers, Jason. |
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| >ENAY PSP7 is good. I used to use paint, but was surprised by how much easier it is to do decent graphics, and how much more decent they actually are! I don't have photoshop though, so I don't know how much of a difference that makes. |
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| Good ol DeluxePaint 4. > . I used to use paint, but was surprised by > how much easier it is to do decent graphics, Photoshop is bloody class. If only for the cloning tool. Used to use it all the time at work. So I use MSPaint instead and pick up the pixels manually, still I'm probably the only person to use MSPaint to it's limits. MSPaint is useful in that you can 10 or so open at once with a frame in each and alt+tab between them. I hate having them overlapping in PSP or Photoshop. The only thing I miss from PAint is a decent rotate and rescaling. Although you can do that easily in other progs. But thanks to MykeP and his image wibbling routines. I can fiddle about with the colours and brightnesses and images with ease. What matters is having the skills to draw. Otherwise you can have the best package in the world and still not make anything good. |
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| Blunder pointed me in the direction of ProMotion - which I bought before Christmas - glad to hear about the new feature :) |
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| Just brought PSP Pro7 and Photoshop 7 |
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| How much was Photoshop 7? |
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| The only thing I don't like about PSP7 is that you can't rotate an image without it making the colours blend together. I'd rather have a pixelly version that I can touch up when making graphics, over an image with 100 semi-transparent pixels the human eye can't pick out. Until you use them in game. It would be if you had the option of distort or don't distort when you rotate. |
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| ENAY got them both for £5 at car boot sale, both originals, only thing is there were no manuals, but cannot complain for the price |
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| I'm using Photoshop 6. |
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| I use PaintShop Pro 7, it's awesome. I have Photoshop 5 and rarely use it. I just got the trial of ProMotion, looks very promising. I like it because it's similar to DeluxePaint I started out with on an Amiga 500 (the good ol' days) :) |
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| I'd love Photoshop for 5 quid. It is legitimate? |
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| ENAY, yeh its legitimate |
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| I don't think Photoshop is that good for artist work, very powerful tool for image manipulation that's true. But as far as far as creating gfx from scratch, I find others much better. |
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| Yep, I`d have to agree on this to. I use PS at work and can honestly say that for image manipulation it`s the best but for other things I have my doubts. Has anybody tried Newtek`s Aura paint package, I`ve heard good things about that. Jason. |
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| Photoshop is the best for all aspects of art. From creating to modifying images. Most, if not all games companies who work on next-gen titles will use Photoshop. You will see in job adverts in magazines such as EDGE that Photoshop is always mentioned. Just for ease of use and flexibility it cant be beat. The only drawback is if you want it for home use, its damn expensive. I also love ProMotion for low colour work (such as GBA stuff). Its just DPaint for Windows and is just great for animating sprites. |
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| PSP is great for game graphics, and general in-game art, eg. title screens, where you don't have to worry about the animation, and can shade without it looking funny, and without the lighten/darken brushes accidentally being used in your transparent colour. You can do good game animations, or realistic-looking artwork. Top notch. |
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| Is there a trial of ProMotion for D/L anywhere |
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| http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/ |
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| I don't think Photoshop is that good for artist work I'm not saying I'm the worlds best artist or anything but I haven't had trouble doing things in it. http://www.perturbatio.co.uk/images.html |
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| I don't think Photoshop is that good for artist work You gotta be jokin' me, I've seen some AMAZING things done from scratch in Photoshop7 that look so real-life in the end. As for me, I'm yet another (legal) user of Photoshop7, I color my anime piccies with it, and I also create game GFX with it, for pixel-art I use my custom created square brush (as awkwardly there is no preset square brush :P ) and I also use my Wacom Intuos2 9x12" tablet with PS7. The odd time I'll user ImageReady to put together GIF animations for small things like smilies. |
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| I think at the end of the day it all depends on talent. A gifted artist can still produce decent results in a lower cost paint package but a poor artist, no mater if he/she is using a top package like PS will still have trouble. Jason. |
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| I supose it's a bit like the real thing, everyone has his/her favourite set of pencils. |
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| Until they get sharpenned all the way down to a stump. I have a favourite rubber, though. It's a (pink - not my choice of colour, but what the hey) dinosaur-shaped rubber, and its head is really good for rubbing in small spaces and/or around corners. It's also good for staging reinactments of popular japanese films :) |
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| I recommend you use a soft rubber, you can shape them anyway you like, they are great for highlights. |
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| My artist uses Promotion, i myself use PSP 7.. Biggest bitching my artist does is about the 256 color limit in Promotion :) I AM however surprised that Flameduck hasn't attacked every single post in this thread with a Linux and Gimp thing :) Mikkel, you okay man??? Tracer |
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| I like and always use a 256 color palette !!! :) |
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| Reno, we use 65535 usually now :) Tracer |
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| Nobody here uses Gimp? That's my favorite tool; all the snazzy features of Photoshop for free. |
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| I use gimp in linux, the windows version doesn't work too well for me. |
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| I use MS Paint and PSP7/Animation Shop. |
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| I AM however surprised that Flameduck hasn't attacked every single post in this thread with a Linux and Gimp thing :) I don't have to. I'm obviously not the only person here using GIMP. :o> |
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| NOTHING will ever beat DeluxePaint 4/5 on the Amiga!!! NOTHING YE HEAR ME!!!!!! Can still use it too which is damn nice :D Anyway, use PSP7 and PhotoShop 7 here and for those who love PSP (like me, tho not as much as DPaint :P) then head over to Jascsoftware's home page http://www.jascsoftware.com/ and download the beta for PSP8.0 Its nice :D |
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| NOTHING will ever beat DeluxePaint 4/5 on the Amiga!!! NOTHING YE HEAR ME!!!!!! Can still use it too which is damn nice :D Anyway, use PSP7 and PhotoShop 7 here and for those who love PSP (like me, tho not as much as DPaint :P) then head over to Jascsoftware's home page [url=http://www.jascsoftware.com/] and download the beta for PSP8.0 Its nice :D p.s. if the link dosnt work above, then its http://www.jascsoftware.com/ :P |
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| NOTHING will ever beat DeluxePaint 4/5 on the Amiga!!! NOTHING YE HEAR ME!!!!!! Huh, can't hear you...I'm pretty sure I ended up liking Briliance 2 better than DPaint 4/5, back in it's day...Now, nothing I've tried has come even close to PhotoShop with a tablet. If you haven't got a tablet then forget about even getting a paint program :) Fredborg |
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| DPaint 4 was the best. I use MSPaint. Most similar to DPaint. Although I would probably be using Photoshop if I could afford the ridiculously high prices. Actually this is an old topic. Aah. Can't be arsed to delete now. |
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| Fredborg, Any suggestions on a good tablet for using with Photoshop? ive always thought about getting one just a total n00b when it comes to them... |
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| Ooh, I want a tablet! I just test-drove my first one the other day... |
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| Keep taking the tables Anthony ;) |
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| I like PSP 5 i think they overcomplicated PSP 7 |
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| I have a Wacom Intuos2, and all I can say is that it is excellent. Wacom also does the Graphire2 tablets, which are a bit cheaper, but lacks some of the (less important) features of the Intuos2 tablets. A couple of my friends have Graphire2 and from what I've tried, I think they're just dandy. Wacom does some other ones as well, but they are more expensive and specialized. Genius makes one called Wizard Pen, though I've never seen or tried it. It looks similar to the Graphire2 in specs (only cheaper). They also make one called NewSketch, again I have neither seen or tried it. Trust and AipTek make some other ones, which I know nothing about, but they look competent. Dexxa used to make tablets, but now it seems like the company is gone? I would obviously recommend the Intuos2 (at least A5 size), but it depends on the amount of money you can afford to spend. For more info have a look at: www.wacom.com www.geniusmouse.co.uk www.trust.com www.aiptek.com I really recommend everyone to buy a tablet, as it will make your wrists much more comfortable, and help you prevent mouse injuries! It takes a few days to get used to using one, but once you get comfortable with it, it's much faster to use than a mouse. Fredborg |
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| It's my view that an integrated paint package has yet to appear on the PC (that I know of!) Animation Shops drawing tools are very limited and needs to be using in conjunction with another paint package, I find this annoying, inefficient and slow. Most animation packages are separate from the drawing packages and when drawing tools are implemented into the animation packages they are few in number and only done as an after thought. Does anybody else agree that there is a need for integrated paint/animation package? |
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| Try Idraw 3.XX, it's free. |
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| Brilliance is so far the best drawing program for me. 2D pixels are so yummy :) (photoshop-blurred "hey, I made a c00l picture in 2 seconds!!!1"-style garbage sucks big time. I rather put each pixel exactly where I want it than let a program do the creating. It's not creative to simply go through all the filters in photoshop and call it 'art'.) Besides, Brilliance has a nice animation system, so I can simply draw all the frames I need per animation, see it as an animation (as fast/slow as I want) before saving it as separate images. What is IDraw like btw? Where can I get it? I tried googling it but man, I had to give up after some frustration. DPaint IV is probably as good as brilliance - I switched to Brilliance back in the DPaint 3-times, and somehow I stayed (as I remember, DPaint 3 didn't support AGA, and I had just gotten Amiga 1200. When DPaint IV came, I was so familiar and accustomed to Brilliance already that it didn't seem worth the trouble to switch anymore). Hand-drawn pixels rule! They truly REVEAL the talent/lack of talent of an artist! With only the bare minimum it can truly be seen if you CAN or if you CAN'T. With Photoshop, you can always blur your lack of artistical vision/soul/energ/talent behind a lot of filtered effects, blurs, twirls, clonetool-usage and all that garbage (that was meant to actually touch up photographs anyway). Just my humble opinion.. :) - Monk |
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| I have many paint packages but i lack of "talents" (i'm a "monster" at drawing,so i use for all graphics a 3d package);for sprite and animated sprite i think the best is still Brilliance 2 on the Amiga1200(DPaint4&5 are ok but Brilliance are more "professional"). I've tried Photoshop but for my opinion is at its best in manipulating not drawing(but if u have talents u can draw with anything ^^),Gimp is essentially much similar to Photoshop but it takes some time to "master" it. I have tried PSP and ProMotion and for drawing i think is best ProMotion(is very similar to DPaint4). Keep in mind that most artist that works for many software house use the old DPaint on the MSDos.....i think that even IDSoftware made Quake texture with DPaint.... There's many opinion;some person like the low-end(pixel-pixel)graphics packages and some person like the top-end(photoshop and similar)style. For me......mmm....i think i return to make my graphics in LightWave o_O' |
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| Frankly, if you can afford them, the pro tools are hard to beat: Photoshop 6/7 (preferably with Illustrator or Freehand as well) I find a good 3d modeller/renderer indispensable for creating 2d graphics these days. Usually I use 3D Studio Max, but Carrara, Strata, Amapi, etc. are far cheaper (and probably easier to use). Paintshop Pro is a poor relation to Photoshop as an image-processing application, but its pixel pushing tools are ok. For actual pixel pushing (where anti-aliasing is actually annoying rather than helpful) I love Studio/32 -- although it doesn't run well under OS X. (Studio/32 is a Mac program by the folks who did DeluxePaint -- except it was fully 32-bit with alpha channel support.) The lack of really good pixel pushing tools today is quite disheartening, most of the programs I see today don't "get it". Studio/32 and DeluxePaint had awesome keyboard controls and incredibly powerful masking tools. |
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| I can send you IDraw, it is about 450 Ko. It's very simple and powerfull. I can send it to you if you want to try it. The name is "IDraw3 32e.zip" |
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| Monk_ Totally agree about the 2d pixels being yummy and supposed Photoshop filter users calling their stuff art :) |
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| There's these wacky Japanese Java apps called "Oekaki", or "PaintBBS".. These are usually for making images to be posted to an attached website, but I find that they're really reminiscant of the old pixelly art programs like DPaint. Some people can do jaw-droppingly good art with them (take a look at www.oekakicentral.com), and they're certainly good enough to make quickie textures. Plus, using them for free is 100% legal. You can screen-capture images you make without posting them, or, if you do post them, they're usually saved in PNG format, convieniently non-lossy and natively supported in Blitz. |
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| > Ooh, I want a tablet! I just test-drove my first one the other day... If ya got the cash, get a Wacom Tablet like Fred mentioned, I've got myself a Wacom Intuos2 9x12" tablet, costed $450 (USD), and I say, its worth every (American) penny... > There's these wacky Japanese Java apps called "Oekaki", or "PaintBBS".. These are usually for making images to be posted to an attached website I use them alot for doodlin on, there's many kinds, theres the OekakiBBS, a more fancy\buggy\harder-to-use version of the good ol' PaintBBS, and then theres my fav, PaintChatBBS, doodle with friends and chat at the same time. (too bad Japanese peeps use the paint-chats as well, and i'm a slow translator atm....maybe I outta pull Antony into 1 o' them next time I encounter a non-english peep there)(on another note, startin my Japanese course this comin Monday =D ) Anyway, without a tablet or good experiance in art stuffy, its gonna be hard for most to get nice stuff with those Java programs, especially in the pixel-art depot...hard to get the right colour most of the time...as for me, I just grab the watercolour brush and go crazy.. Is there a Promotion demo anywhere by any chance? I'd like to try it out, like i have done with Photoshop7 (own it), PaintShopPro7 (trial ran out), OpenCanvas (both older version is free, so I have them), and ImageReady (comes with Photoshop7, good animation utility..). |
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| Réno: would you be willing to send it to me, please? (email addy in profile) |
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| iDraw....hmm...I remember downloadin a program named that from Don Miguel's (the Russian who translated it to English..) site, aint it that program thats useful for Pixel art and such? Hmm...tried findin it again...but that portion of his site where you d\l the program (translated, as its originally in Japanese) from seems dead... |
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| [quote] If ya got the cash, get a Wacom Tablet like Fred mentioned, I've got myself a Wacom Intuos2 9x12" tablet, costed $450 (USD), and I say, its worth every (American) penny... [quote] I most certainly do not have the cash! |
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| There is a special aniversary bundle edition promotion right now for Paint Shop Pro 7 : http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005U2EP/ref=sr_aps_software_1_1/026-6608736-6485239 I bought it, and for 37,57 £, it is a bargain : I don't regret it ! :-) |
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| I use PSP v5 - Got it off a coverdisk. :) |
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| > Ooh, I want a tablet! I'm sure someone can get you an Ecstacy tablet if you're off raving. |
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| I am surprised that I did not see anyone mention Ultimate Paint for the PC. I like it lots more than Paint Shop Pro. Now, if only Brilliance for the Amiga were ported over to the PC... http://www.ultimatepaint.com/ |
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| I'm currently writing the best Pixel tool on the PC, coming from the Amiga coding scene, and only ever liking DPaintIV AGA and PersonPaint 6.1 from Cleonto I intend to make Pixel art fun again... oh and Tablets work spot on with it. :) Current Screenshot (WIP) Currently undergoing a cosmetic change. Slowly ditching the old wood effect buttons. |
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| Cool. Can you add copy & paste for selected chunks of palette? It was one of the most useful features of Apex Media on the Falcon030, and the main reason I held onto that machine for as long as I did... |
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| The saving and loading of palettes should cater for that nicely, there are 10 user definable palettes, and the spread function is handy. I'll think about adding a copy function though, would'nt be hard to do. |
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