PCE Pixel art tools?

[Jester82]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download? Thanks all

[Black Tiger]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download? Thanks all

Keep your RGB values in integers of 36.

Sprites of various sizes and 8 x 8 tiles each use a single palette of 15 visible colors.

16 palettes for sprites and 16 for tiles.

Best to base things around a 256 pixel-wide by 224-pixel tall screen size.

[Arkhan]

Tools? Grafx2 is free and can do PCX.

I like NeoPaint or PaintShopPro but they aren't free!

[TheOldMan]

If I wanted to take a crack at creating pixel art for PCE games, is there a tool for windows out there I can download?

Which version of windows?
Most of the suggested tools run under XP; not sure about anything later....

[elmer]

Tools? Grafx2 is free and can do PCX.

I like NeoPaint or PaintShopPro but they aren't free!

Most of the suggested tools run under XP; not sure about anything later....

Grafx2 runs Windows to at-least Win7 x64, and should (presumably) run under newer versions.

The project is still alive, so it gets compatibility-updates if nothing else.


NeoPaint is still sold, and works on the latest Windows.


PaintShopPro is still sold, and will work, depending upon to OS and the version of PSP.


And, once again, just to beat a dead horse, I'll mention what professional game-developers still use for pixel-based consoles ... Promotion. Which now has a "free" version.

[Arkhan]

I've been using NeoPaint and PSPX9 on Windows 10 and they both work great.

I've been using PSP since I was like 10, so I am most used to that one's interface.

Since I don't do a lot of actual graphics editing and mostly use it for palette diddling/cut/copy/etc., it does things I need.

ProMotion looks like it probably does good stuff for free, but the interface immediately makes me itchy.  It's got this weird flat-look to it that drives me nuts and doesn't seem to have a way to make it not do that. Everyone's mileage may vary there.    It might just be Windows 10's new GUI crap doing it.

I had to lol when I saw that "pixel perfect painting" was not part of the free package.  Makes it sound like it f*cks your art up while you move the mouse around.   It seems to do pixel jigglies fine though.


All of these options are better than Photoshop for PCE, btw.

Photoshop f*ckin inverts the damn PCX palettes, and screws life up, and causes earth to tip the wrong way, and people die.

[Gredler]

Photoshop 4lyfe

[Arkhan]

Photoshop 4lyfe

photoshop can't even spell PCX

[touko]

Gimp 2.6 (not above) .
grafx2 works fine on windows 8.1,it should works on win10 too .

[Galad]

Grafx2 is very straight forward and simple to work with and as was stated has PCX support.

[Punch]

Photoshop 4lyfe

The trick with the inverted palette export bug is to work preemptively with an inverted palette. Boolean logic 4lyfe...

[Gredler]

The trick with the inverted palette export bug is to work preemptively with an inverted palette. Boolean logic 4lyfe...

tbh it's not too hard to stick to specific colors, then use gimp to flip and order it.

I want to try promotion, but the tools I am familiar with in photoshop are such muscle memory it's hard to use anything else.

[Jester82]

Thank you everyone for the responses. Gonna check out a few of these programs and see what I can do.

[touko]

There is no better program for 8/16 bits pixels art,all is a question of interface and feeling .

[Siskan]

I recommend GraphicsGale. It became freeware last month too. It looks old on the surface but it's frequently updated and they even implemented a feature five days after I reqested it last year.

The main reason I like it is due to how the line tool and right-click works. They both sped up my work by quite a lot compared to other software. It also has convenient features for animation.

https://graphicsgale.com/us/