I need an art program that doesn't suck.

[Nathan the Talkmaus]

I can't make custom graphics in SMBX because FireAlpaca is just fine with opening and editing GIF images, but refuses to save in that format. It's been giving me lots of trouble in other areas as well so I think I'm going to be getting rid of it soon.

Paint.net is no longer a good option because the new releases janked up the anti-aliasing disabling and the fill bucket (which is a MUST-HAVE for digital art). I don't know what version number I used to use which worked fine-ish (it's always had issues that prevented it from completely replacing MSPaint for me, even on Vista), I just know the version I tried a couple months ago was garbage.

Windows 7 MSPaint is super garbage. Older versions were adequate, aside from not allowing me to change the palettes of GIF or 256-color BMP images. I will not use any program with a setup more complicated than "download this and run the installer" so I don't care if there's some way of fiddling with my new software to make it somehow magically backwards-compatible with old stuff.

GIMP is and always has been unusable due to its terrible tool layout.

Photoshop, in addition to being an expensive piece of commercial software (so by definition outside my budget) is designed for doing things completely unrelated to images that are about as far divorced from my area of interest as possible and if it has any capacity for pixel art this can only be by accident while supporting its other features. I've never touched or even seen the program in action, but it gets mentioned in almost every discussion of art programs for some reason.

So...does anyone have a recommendation? I'm going to be using this thread to showcase my sprites once I start getting some going.

[momo]

You should check out the offline version of Piskel. It's free and can export to animated gif. It's still in beta though, so it is lacking some features (I think you still have to type in the file extension when you export).

If you're looking for a free general purpose art program you could check out Krita. You can also make sprites with it.

[Zha Hong Lang]

My mom uses PhotoFilter, which is her personal alternative to photoshop. Personally I use Paint.net because I've never had any lasting problems with it, (I don't have the anti-aliasing switching problem either, although I do know what that is) and I've never needed to do precise photo editing. However, on the few occasions that I have used it, it's a great pixel editing tool as well.

Krita is good for general art, (as is SAI) but it's best handled if you have a powerful system and are willing to accept bugs. I tolerate the latter, but I don't have the former, so I use SAI as a main tool and Krita as a side tool.

[Ivy]

Photoshop DOES have per-pixel features, most noticeably the grid that appears at 800% and higher zoom.

[Nabe]

If your budget is no budget, try Aseprite. You can build it from source on Github, or try http://simpson.center/aseprite for recent builds. Good program, good interface, free.

[Rixithechao]

Huh? I'm running the latest stable version of Paint.Net from the official website, 4.0.5, and it has:

- A button to toggle anti-aliasing for painting
- An option to switch between bilinear (blurry) and nearest-neighbor (non-blurry) scaling
- A brush/eraser hardness slider
- An option for changing between aliased and anti-aliased selection clipping



There's also a Tools tab in the Settings menu with more options related to AA that I haven't messed around with yet.

And I believe I posted this in the MaGLX2 thread, but you can use the deselect hotkey (Ctrl+D) after using the fill tool to stop it from affecting that selection when you change colors. Granted, none of this stuff is immediately obvious and the new fill operation is less intuitive, but the program is still not as messed up as you're saying it is.

That said, Paint.Net is not made for animation like GraphicsGale, and from the what I can tell Aesprite soundly trumps GraphicsGale. It looks like there's a lot of upcoming features you won't get unless you buy it, though, because the trial's only for version 1.0, but $10 seems like a fair investment for a pixel art animation program that'll have crash recovery in the next version.

EDIT: Misread Nabe's post, thought it linked to the official website.

[sonicspin]

GraphicsGale free is quite nice for pixel art, can't animate though
grafx2 is amazing if you manage to compile it prepare from amiga-like UI, though
asesprite is very good too
Cosmigo ProMotion is the best out there, it has to be bought, though
and for more info on pixelly things:
http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=3467.0

[ohmato]

GraphicsGale free is quite nice for pixel art, can't animate though

It can animate within the UI but, indeed, the freeware version can not export animated GIFs.

If it's SMBX though, where the frames are separated anyway, it's sufficient.

[TaviTurnip]

Vista Paint is the best program I've ever used. *pets laptop affectionately*

[spittySynthyHands]

I haven't used mtPaint very much, but It definitely seems to be good for pixel art.

[Zha Hong Lang]

I haven't used mtPaint very much, but It definitely seems to be good for pixel art.

You mean this?

I guess it looks pretty useful, though personally I'd prefer Paint.net.

[Picochilla]

many japanese people using SAI. Maybe that would be a option for you. Probaly use the Demo first.

[Nathan the Talkmaus]

Huh? I'm running the latest stable version of Paint.Net from the official website, 4.0.5, and it has:

- A button to toggle anti-aliasing for painting
- An option to switch between bilinear (blurry) and nearest-neighbor (non-blurry) scaling
- A brush/eraser hardness slider
- An option for changing between aliased and anti-aliased selection clipping

It used to have all those things in the older build I used, but was a lot easier to turn off. And when I complained about the change to the fill tool (below) I was recommended FireAlpaca...which claims to give me the option to turn these sorts of nonsense horrible features off but actually doesn't do so.

And I believe I posted this in the MaGLX2 thread, but you can use the deselect hotkey (Ctrl+D) after using the fill tool to stop it from affecting that selection when you change colors. Granted, none of this stuff is immediately obvious and the new fill operation is less intuitive, but the program is still not as messed up as you're saying it is.

It is absolutely messed up for my purposes because of that one change. Besides which it would never let me flip/rotate only whatever things I had selected and always do that for the whole picture, which is another frustrating thing for anyone who wants to do sprites.

So I guess before I was mostly just tolerating Paint.net in spite of its many shortcomings even comparing only to XP/Vista MSPaint because of the added utilities of layers and saving my palette.

[Rixithechao]

https://www.humblebundle.com/

Paying over the current average ($11.05 as of writing this) will get you a DRM-free version of Cosmigo's Pro Motion.

Pro Motion is an image editing and animation package, ideal for creating clean pixel precise graphics. Use it to create modern and retro styled game graphics for handheld systems, mobile phones or the web (Flash, animated GIF).

Besides creating graphics you can build tile based level maps. You can even draw around in your level maps and modify or create new tiles realtime without the need to separately define tile sets and map.

Some features:
- Optimized tools for high speed real-time pixel editing
- Simple and alpha transparency
- Advanced masking
- Supports Sprite Sheets/AnimStrip (BMP, PNG)
- Onion skinning
- Realtime tile map creation engine
- Grid engine (isometric, octagon, box, any shape)
- Symmetry drawing
- Creation of seamless tiles for infinite patterns
- Wide range of color palette editing and management tools

[Nabe]

https://www.humblebundle.com/

Paying over the current average ($11.05 as of writing this) will get you a DRM-free version of Cosmigo's Pro Motion.

Whoa. :D Thanks, I had passed this bundle over without noticing. Instantly grabbed.

[sonicspin]

https://www.humblebundle.com/

Paying over the current average ($11.05 as of writing this) will get you a DRM-free version of Cosmigo's Pro Motion.

Pro Motion is an image editing and animation package, ideal for creating clean pixel precise graphics. Use it to create modern and retro styled game graphics for handheld systems, mobile phones or the web (Flash, animated GIF).

Besides creating graphics you can build tile based level maps. You can even draw around in your level maps and modify or create new tiles realtime without the need to separately define tile sets and map.

Some features:
- Optimized tools for high speed real-time pixel editing
- Simple and alpha transparency
- Advanced masking
- Supports Sprite Sheets/AnimStrip (BMP, PNG)
- Onion skinning
- Realtime tile map creation engine
- Grid engine (isometric, octagon, box, any shape)
- Symmetry drawing
- Creation of seamless tiles for infinite patterns
- Wide range of color palette editing and management tools

HOLAHHHHH AAHHH

[Hoeloe]

It is absolutely messed up for my purposes because of that one change. Besides which it would never let me flip/rotate only whatever things I had selected and always do that for the whole picture, which is another frustrating thing for anyone who wants to do sprites.

So I guess before I was mostly just tolerating Paint.net in spite of its many shortcomings even comparing only to XP/Vista MSPaint because of the added utilities of layers and saving my palette.

Just want to make a point here. The fill tool is far from a necessity with sprite art. I've made hundreds of sprites in my time, and never once used the fill tool (I use Photoshop to make mine, by the way, and it has very good support for pixel art).

The thing is, when working with pixel art, a lot of the time you're working in very small spaces (particularly if you're making game graphics. For SMBX, to keep things at the x2 resolution you're working at 16x16 pixels per block, which is not much). The majority of the time it takes only a second or two longer to fill something in by hand (which is often balanced by the time taken to select the fill tool in the first place), or, in most cases I've found, the spaces you're filling are so constrained by surrounding pixels that you only fill a handful of pixels at a time.

It's perfectly possible and feasible to make pixel art without the fill tool, and even if it weren't you seem to be awfully dismissive of software based on rather minor things. Whatever happens, you're not going to find perfect software, and short of rolling back to an older version of Paint.NET, you're going to have to learn a new interface.

[Rixithechao]

So having messed around with Aesprite a bit (v1.0), I have to say it's definitely leagues better than GraphicsGale. The hotkeys are actually intuitive with this app and the timeline works similarly to Adobe Flash. The only issues I have with it are fairly minor gripes -- it uses it's own save/load dialog instead of the default Windows one so I can't rename or delete files directly through that, and the entire UI is restricted to a single window so you can't, say, keep the canvas window small and drag the toolbar, timeline and preview box off to the side.

Pro Motion's interface is intimidating as heck so I'm not going to dig into that just yet.

[Duvi0]

I've never had a problem with GIMP's tool layout. Anyone willing to offer an explanation as to why it's awful?
Maybe it's because I'm using the GIMP 2 version of GIMP, but yeah, it's fully usable to me.

[Zha Hong Lang]

I haven't touched GIMP in years, but most of the stories I've heard from others say that it's just a really unintuitive interface. Not even a really different one, just hard to use off-the-bat, and it takes a long time to wrap your head around it.

[Nathan the Talkmaus]

I've downloaded a couple of the programs here but not actually drawn much with them yet.

Anyway, here is an older page featuring sprites I made with the in-game sprite editor for my RPG engine of choice.

[TheNecroswanson]

Would PaintShop work for that? Last I remember it was still free.

[sonicspin]

So having messed around with Aesprite a bit (v1.0), I have to say it's definitely leagues better than GraphicsGale. The hotkeys are actually intuitive with this app and the timeline works similarly to Adobe Flash. The only issues I have with it are fairly minor gripes -- it uses it's own save/load dialog instead of the default Windows one so I can't rename or delete files directly through that, and the entire UI is restricted to a single window so you can't, say, keep the canvas window small and drag the toolbar, timeline and preview box off to the side.

Pro Motion's interface is intimidating as heck so I'm not going to dig into that just yet.

i-m just replying to say that GG has no hotkeys, you have to set them all under file > preferences

[Rixithechao]

So having messed around with Aesprite a bit (v1.0), I have to say it's definitely leagues better than GraphicsGale. The hotkeys are actually intuitive with this app and the timeline works similarly to Adobe Flash. The only issues I have with it are fairly minor gripes -- it uses it's own save/load dialog instead of the default Windows one so I can't rename or delete files directly through that, and the entire UI is restricted to a single window so you can't, say, keep the canvas window small and drag the toolbar, timeline and preview box off to the side.

Pro Motion's interface is intimidating as heck so I'm not going to dig into that just yet.

i-m just replying to say that GG has no hotkeys, you have to set them all under file > preferences

It doesn't?
Well then... I guess I'm just kind of an idiot.

[Alice]

Gimp IS usable, I don't know what problems you can have with it. Well, I remember back in the days I was searching menus for half a hour, trying to find how to crop image. But I don't have these problems today, I'm used to gimp now.

So because you've gotten used to it that makes it no longer a problem? Gimp's interface is atrocious last I tried to use it. There's nothing remotely intuitive about it.

Personally I'll just stick to Photoshop which is not only powerful but actually usable. Or Paint.net if I need a free image editor, which isn't nearly so powerful last I used it but is actually usable which kinda makes up for not being as powerful.