Graphics Tool Preference discussion

[athanasios]

Come on guys, who uses MSPaint? It sucks. GIMP, PhotoShop, PaintShop. I often use an older version of the latter.

[BobDendry]

Come on guys, who uses MSPaint? It sucks. GIMP, PhotoShop, PaintShop. I often use an older version of the latter.

Come on guys, who uses a stupidly overpowered program for such a simple task? Paint will do fine.

[DaleStan]

Um.... No, it won't. Not my copy of paint, anyway. Paint can't write PCX files.

[Wile E. Coyote]

But you can convert BMP-PCX-PNG with, for example, Irfanwiew.

I personally use Photoshop, besides.

And I.mage is good program too, it can handle all formats.

[Ben_K]

I used photoshop initially as I use for everything else. I found it a pain for the simplicity of pixel art. I then started using Paint and it is more than adequate for pixel art. No question.
Nowadays I actually use GIMP as its simple enough if you need it to be, yet has enough functionality should I want it for any other tasks.

[athanasios]

Come on guys, who uses a stupidly overpowered program for such a simple task? Paint will do fine.

...PaintShop. I often use an older version of the latter.

= not so big (a bit over 40MB), not so heavy.

[BobDendry]

Come on guys, who uses a stupidly overpowered program for such a simple task? Paint will do fine.

...PaintShop. I often use an older version of the latter.

= not so big (a bit over 40MB), not so heavy.

interesting that you've extracted "big" from my quote above, considering I never mentioned nor insinuating as to the disk space taken up by such programs.

[athanasios]

But you used the word "overpowered". This implies that a program has a lot of functions that are not needed for your job. But to have these functions the program usually is big nowadays. (Wasting many MBs, and a lot of memory. We are not in the era of assembly anymore.) So I mentioned what I use: a moderate program that doesn't load thousands of functions that are useless for our job and doesn't lack the basics (well till recently, because I need something more for OpenTTD).

[Ben_K]

In the words of Athanasios himself:

Back in topic gentlemen...

[Born Acorn]

Come on guys, who uses MSPaint? It sucks. GIMP, PhotoShop, PaintShop. I often use an older version of the latter.

I do. I always have. I find anything else stupidly overcomplicated for the task at hand. If I need to load or save in PCX I'll use I.Mage.

But how big those sprites have to be?

Anyway, the sizes for TTD sprites are stated on this page.

Is it possible to make big model and then decrease its size to fit to the TTD?

In simple terms; no, it's not worth the effort unless it's either a ship or a plane.

[Purno]

Come on guys, who uses MSPaint? It sucks.

A dude once called "TT-forums most active graphics artist" uses it. I never had any troubles with it. Don't tell people MSPaint sucks, it got all the features you need for drawing, except converting to .pcx. But any image convertor, like the free and small tool IrfanView, can covert bmp/png to pcx. Besides, GRFMaker can read .bmp straight away, which makes converting to .pcx unnecessary.

[Dave]

Bloody hell...

Gentlemen please...

Let the man choose for himself rather than bickering.

[michael blunck]

Well, IMO, using Photoshop or anything comparable for merely setting a couple of pixels from a 256 colour palette would be like using a machine tool centre instead of a handsaw if it comes to cut a strip of wood.

It´s a common fault to confuse tool and product, i.e. don´t expect the unavoidable outcome of a marvelous result by using a sophisticated tool, and don´t talk something down simply because it got produced by a most simple hand tool.

In any case, what matters isn´t the tool, but it´s the hand and brain using it.

regards
Michael

[George]

Well, IMO, using Photoshop or anything comparable for merely setting a couple of pixels from a 256 colour palette would be like using a machine tool centre instead of a handsaw if it comes to cut a strip of wood.

I use photoshop

[athanasios]

To calm the spirits: Use a 386/486 PC, use DOS, and use Neopaint. Why to waste power and your resources for drawing TTD sprites? I am not kidding: I have really used that in the past for TTD sprites. Pity my 170MB HD was cooked one day and lost those sprites.

[Aegir]

Or, I don't know, this may sound like a RIDICULOUS idea, but how about everybody just uses the tools they are COMFORTABLE with?

No? Didn't think so.

Carry on.

[Badger]

Or, I don't know, this may sound like a RIDICULOUS idea, but how about everybody just uses the tools they are COMFORTABLE with?
No? Didn't think so.
Carry on.

Nah, thats too simple!

[michael blunck]

Or simply use "GraphicsSorcerer Mk II" which would only need you to input a simple sketch of your locomotive and it spits out a complete TTD-compatible .pcx file, ready to use in your .grf file.

GS_Mk2.png (3.1 KiB) Viewed 2994 times

regards
Michael

[Wile E. Coyote]

..."GraphicsSorcerer Mk II"...

You picked great name. I suppose you first tried to Google for it?

[FooBar]

Or simply use "GraphicsSorcerer Mk II"...

Excuse me, sir, where can I buy that?