Graphics Tool Preference discussion

[Born Acorn]

Splittedationatederised as it's completely irrelevant to the task at hand.

[wallyweb]

GraphicsSorcerer Mk II

Where was that when I entered that avatar competition a year or two ago?

I use MSPaint for the grid. I find it very helpful for pasting what I steal .. erm ... cut from other graphics. Anybody know which of the other apps use a similar grid system?

[uzurpator]

Paint sucks.

Actually, paint sucks so bad, it's not even funny, its sucks so much, that, geez, there is no word to express the suckage of Paint.

Photoshop, PaintShopPro, PicturePublisher anything that can do palette management is fine.

MsPaint FTL.

This was a retired TTD artist public service announcement.

[Purno]

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

regards
Michael

Any noob can draw, huh?

Paint sucks.

Actually, paint sucks so bad, it's not even funny, its sucks so much, that, geez, there is no word to express the suckage of Paint.

Photoshop, PaintShopPro, PicturePublisher anything that can do palette management is fine.

MsPaint FTL.

This was a retired TTD artist public service announcement.

Three words: Color... pick... tool...

Photoshop and PaintShopPro are way too heavy for just TT sprites, and besides, they cost moneys. MS Paint will do the job fine, the missing palette management feature will be no problem once you're used to the color pick tool. (Actually, I'd prefer the color pick tool, rather than a palette of 256 colors.).

EDIT:

I use MSPaint for the grid. I find it very helpful for pasting what I steal .. erm ... cut from other graphics. Anybody know which of the other apps use a similar grid system?

Any image editing tool probably has a grid, you just need to find the option in the tons of other options in the endless drop down menus

[uzurpator]

Three words: Color... pick... tool...

Photoshop and PaintShopPro are way too heavy for just TT sprites, and besides, they cost moneys. MS Paint will do the job fine, the missing palette management feature will be no problem once you're used to the color pick tool. (Actually, I'd prefer the color pick tool, rather than a palette of 256 colors.).

Palette management != color picker.

Palette management allows me to apply different palettes (ie - colorsets) to an image with indexed and color-matching modes. This gives a host of tricks that automate the task of making multiple liveries or colorsets.

Anyhow - do you really think that after drawing hudreads of sprites I do not know color-picker??

Also - Paint does not allow non-rectangular copy.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Photoshop and PaintShopPro are way too heavy for just TT sprites, and besides, they cost moneys.

But if you have some of them already for other uses, they are best tool IMO. Of course nobody will pay loads of money for drawing sprites only. (or maybe will? )

Also - Paint does not allow non-rectangular copy.

That's main reason why I don't use it.

[michael blunck]

Paint does not allow non-rectangular copy.

Well, no. It does.

regards
Michael

[wallyweb]

I use MSPaint for the grid. I find it very helpful for pasting what I steal .. erm ... cut from other graphics. Anybody know which of the other apps use a similar grid system?

Any image editing tool probably has a grid, you just need to find the option in the tons of other options in the endless drop down menus

Probably and they do. But they are usually dots that are difficult to see. They also have an adjustable pixel size that is difficult to set to 1 pixel and is usually way out of whack even when sufficient zoom is used. The MSPaint grid is made up of constant 1 pixel boxes that clearly surround the pixel. So, let me rephrase my question:

Are there any other paint apps where the grid is made up of constant 1 pixel boxes that clearly surround the pixel?

[m3henry]

Paint does not allow non-rectangular copy.

Well, no. It does.

Ah good ol' lasso,not he beset of lassos I admit, but it can get the job done with a steady hand and a stable mind.

[FooBar]

Are there any other paint apps where the grid is made up of constant 1 pixel boxes that clearly surround the pixel?

Photoshop's raster is just fine. It allows you to choose between continous lines, dotted lines or those nasty '1 dot at raster line intersection'.

But if I didn't already have photoshop, I'd probably use MS Paint too...

[wallyweb]

Photoshop's raster is just fine. It allows you to choose between continous lines, dotted lines or those nasty '1 dot at raster line intersection'.

Thanks FooBar.
And now for the hidden invisible part two of the question:

Are there any FREE ones out there?

You see, I'm a poor old boy living on a very limited income.

[FooBar]

What second part of the question? I don't see nothing.
Oh, wait, it's probably hidden and invisible...


Ameecher just taught me that 2 + 2 = 5. Maybe that can be of any use to you.


There probably are free versions out there, as with every commercial software product.

[AndersI]

Are there any FREE ones out there?

I was about to suggest the free and very much touted Paint.NET, but after downloading and checking it out there are two big drawbacks:

- no .pcx support
- no palette support

but you can always try a Google search - thousands of hits for "pcx editor" but I don't know anything about them. You could try for an old version of PaintShop Pro, around version 5 the 30 day limit of the demo was only a registry entry away.

[michael blunck]

You could try for an old version of PaintShop Pro, around version 5 the 30 day limit of the demo was only a registry entry away.

PSP up to 4.12 doesn´t need any "registry wizardry" to run forever:

psp4.png (1.51 KiB) Viewed 1762 times

OTOH, PSP isn´t much more usable than M$-Paint, except from a bit more of palette management. I only really used it for setting up the color translation tables for the transparent roofs in NewStations.

Personally, I like to have a program as lite as possible if it´s only for pixel art. And using a program w/o .pcx output isn´t a drawback, because converting any graphics´formats can be done easily by irfanview.

regards
Michael

[AndersI]

http://www.oldversion.com/

[Spaceball]

I use Paint and Photoshop. Paint is just fine for drawing sprites. The reasons why I use Photoshop 6 are simply a) I own a legal copy, b) I know how to use ist and c) I can zoom up to 1600%. Therefore I use Paint at work and Photoshop at home. It always bothers me that you can't really zoom much in Paint. I tried i.mage but I didn't like it very much. It was to different to use for me. Same with The Gimp. I never got into that one.

Photoshop is just much more comfortable if you know how to work with it. If someone can't draw sprites which would look good, the most powerfull program can not fill that gap.

[m3henry]

- no .pcx support PCX support Plugin
- no palette support palette customization

[AndersI]

[Paint.NET]
OK, so it can load (and maybe save, some question marks about the palette there...) the .PCX format, but without palette handling for real, not just simulated in 32bpp, it's still not helping very much.

[PSP]
My favorite program is PaintShop Pro. It *knows* about palettes (and transparency), lets you read, write and apply them. There's absolutely no possibility to insert a colour that doesn't exist in the palette, etc. And the mouse wheel is zoom in/out - very handy.

What about the 'Sprite Editor' in the Graphics thread? Is anybody using that one?

[mph]

What about the 'Sprite Editor' in the Graphics thread? Is anybody using that one?

I do a bit. Ive only ever drawn buildings-I tend to draw a basic model of the building in photoshop- but when i start to add a bit of texture- i use that sprite editor. i like the pallettes and the fact that you can fill an area with several colours (I dont know if i can do this in photoshop or anything else)- anyway i sort of move between the two programmes. It can be pretty slow though- when you do fill an area it often takes a while to do it.

[DaleStan]

What about the 'Sprite Editor' in the Graphics thread? Is anybody using that one?

I quit using it about when it decided to consume over half an hour of processor time for a flood-fill operation.