Hey Folks,
I'm into Pixel Art since a few weeks and the first thing I did was looking for a good Editor to do this.
The community seems to be very divided about which editor to use: there are some people who say that Pixelart works even with MS Paint (which is totally true, but... erm... no ^^) and the other ones are using mostly (illegal) Photoshop or Gimp.

The last two editors are very mighty - especially Photoshop, which I'm using at work every day, but they are not concepted for Pixelart. Just to mention the Antialiasing everywhere *shudder*

So when you come down to the real Pixel Art Tools there are just very few. I like "Pixen" on the Mac because of it's cool Concept and the very cool Tiling-Feature, but every Windows User is leaved out by this tool.
On the Windows Side GraphicsGale looks not bad (I've never tried it), but its a bit very Win95-like...

So overall there was no tool I really liked for Pixelart. Due to my work I'm able to write my own programm, so I sat down and began to code (that was about two weeks ago) in Adobe AIR, that works directly on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Here is a List of Features that I've implemented so far, plus a Screenshot of the Tool, with a 64x64 Sprite File at a Zoom Level of 1000%

Screenshot: http://parastudios.de/labs/ultra_iso1.jpg

Allready Implemented Features
Load/Save in own File Format
Export as PNG
Pen Tool
Line Tool (with Snapping to Isometric Degrees)
Rectangle Tool (Filled / Unfilled)
Isometric Wall Tool (Filled / Unfilled)
Isometric Floor Tool (Filled / Unfilled)
Ellipse Tool (Filled / Unfilled)
Paint Bucket
Eraser
Magnifier
Color Manager (very raw)
Switch between different Background Shapes at the Transparency Level
Fullscreen Ability

There are a bunch of features left in my notebook:
Drawing custom ISO base raster in the document to draw upon.
Tileable View like in Pixen
Rulers
Guidelines
Isometric Guidelines
Layers (allready implemented in Code and File Format, but not in GUI).
Object Library (like in Adobe Flash.)
Generic ISO Objects (like resizable Cubes and Planes and Stuff)
Infinite Tile Plane as a Ground Object
Vectors?

These are my Ideas so far. I'm a few steps away from releasing a first test version, so please be patient.
My Question for you, the more experienced Pixel Artists is now:
What features did you miss in current drawing tools for ages? I'm looking for basic pixel art features as well as for isometric pixel art features. Any ideas?

And: what do you think about my editor at all?

greetings,
Christian aka Paratron 

Edited by Paratron - 01 November 2009 at 9:55am

Thanks for sharing your opinion!
Of course, Hotkeys are a have-to. I'm using Photoshop up to 80% via Hotkeys because I really hate moving my mouse away from the document. I allready implemented Hotkeys for all Tools and functions like increasing and decreasing Tool size because this is very important for me.

Yeah, about the colors... sadly at the moment I have no real concept for fast color swapping (especially with multiple colors), but I will do some concepts to make using colors in my tool fast and intuitive.

probably software piracy, illegal copies... not having a bought photoshop...
damn, i'm glad my agency got me cs4 :D

Hi Chris

I'd like a more attractive GUI, what  would be amazingly new would be self-customizable GUI's (changing fixed images yourself as user and having your own mixed theme) like changing the Tool-bar to something that has lots of plants and trees or so and the icons being above

its so empty right now



Pixelized filter effects would be more appropriate ;)


Edited by Elk - 02 November 2009 at 6:43am

1. If you look at the coming updates to GIMP, they're going to have a floating, view-only snapshot that can always be on top - this would be great for when pixeling from a reference.
2. An automated total colour count
3. An automated palette that always shows exactly all the colours in the document regardless of the current user palette (for chasing down stray pixels from old edits)
4. Animation features would be cool (a time line as in video editing software?) even if it's nothing more than a series of canvases that can show a ghost of the previous frame
5. Layers are a must, even if only for non-destructive editing and tests
6. Zoom with the mouse wheel (centered on cursor of course!)
   
7. Select by colour
8. Hide pixels by colour (turning off and on all pixels of the same colour, perhaps by selecting the colour from the automatic global palette)
9. Works with WinXP ('cos that's what I have ;P)
   

I use GIMP because everything else (free) seems under-powered, but GIMP is too over-powered for just pixeling (not to mention I have to leave tool settings for painting, so when pixeling always have to turn off anti-aliasing, or smooth eraser, or switch from brush to pencil).
So far you have something with solid usable features (frankly, things like GraphicsGale tend to be overwhelming) so I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more!

I definitely would like right-click as second colour. It's the only reason I stay on MS Paint instead of Photoshop or Gimp.

...and I'd like right-click to select the colour which you clicked on to draw with (like GraphicsGale)  :D

And it would be nice to be able to save stuff as [animated] gifs....that is if you can animate with this program :)

Good palette management is really important. For indexed images, you have to be able to adjust the 256 color palette. This means if you change the color on the palette, it updates the entire picture. Check out how graphics gale and grafx2 manage palettes.

omg! that would be heavenly!

Don't be afraid - I personally won't use the tool without layer groups, so this will be definitely build in! ^^

I think 4 Palettes are just too much.
I allready have 3 Palettes:

A custom palette, where you can create "Color Cards" (more about them later) and single colors to use them as your color palette.

A palette that shows the colors, used in the document. This CAN be edited, which will affect your image directly.

The speed palette where you can drag colors in from your custom palette or your document palette to have fast access. This palette only references colors from the other palettes.


What do you mean with an automated global palette?
I think a user palette that is identical in every document you open is unneccessary. You don't create all your pictures in the same colorscheme and mood, so you would change this palette from document to document anyway.

Yes, it supports transparency (didn't you see the screenshot at the beginning of the topic?). The programm is actually capable of full 32bit images with 256 levels of transparency, but I limited it to full opaque and full transparent at this moment.

Whoa, a timer? Maybe at a very very far point in the future, because I'm developing a graphic tool and no time capturing tool :D
But if many users here would appreciate such a feature I would consider it.

I've allready added the eraser tool for "drawing transparent". :)


This sounds interesting. Hmm...
Okay, I will bring up something like this at a future point, but until then I want to develope all the other features, first :)

considering vectors use math, not pixels, I'd think it'd be a lot harder to implement :P. But then, I also know nothing about programming.

Oh, here's some ideas:

Can we get a 'fullscreen' mode like Photoshop's? I use that an awful lot so I can see a piece without any distractions.

being able to toggle the tools/information panels on and off would be neat too. As i said, I like it just being me and the pixels

another suggestion - let the tool pallet be able to float, or better yet, let us drag and drop our own or something. I really liked that idea in PS CS4, because that program has WAY too many tools (especially Extended, with all its 3D tools), but they don't give any way to add the color selection to the custom tool palettes so its pretty freaking useless ><

Alternatively, make an optional pallet that has just the pencil, eraser, and color chooser that can float.

Just some ideas I'd personally enjoy :)


Edited by Zeratanus - 12 November 2009 at 2:25pm

If I add vectors, of course they won't be AAed... ^^

@Zeratanus
The Toolbar won't get much bigger than now, so I won't make it customizable.

@Ninja Crow
See a Screenshot of my raw Color Manager here
As I sayed: This part isn't finished. ;)

The other feature means, that you can change the background pattern that's used for transparency. The standard pattern is that grey/white chess pattern like in photoshop. But if you take a look at the screenshot in my first post you can see the button where you can change the pattern to an isometric one.


By the way: Fullscreen Mode is allready built-in. And without any taskbars ;)


Edited by Paratron - 14 November 2009 at 10:27am

Oh, I totally forgot to talk about the animation thing...
See, the first thing we need for animation is:
A good pixeling tool!

If everything fits for painting still pixel images, then making animations will be just a small step from there. The only thing what could become a problem there is that I don't have any clue how I create an animated gif file (I mean the file format itself)
But I think there is some time left to figure this out ;)


About the Shading Ball:
Acutally the Shadow and Lightness Areas of the Ball are not customizable. The only thing that you can pass to the ball is a custom color value.
I will add at least a third control to this window to adjust the lightness of the color (at the moment there is only hue and saturation).
Maybe I will add two more controls to change the shadings of the ball.

Other background transparency patterns? Sure, if you have more ideas.
At the moment there are only two patterns (see screenshot).

Fullscreen mode means: The program will go fullscreen - there won't be any Windows-Taskbars or Window-Headers.
Of course your working palettes will remain visible ;)

I have to do a bit of research how to get such a result. Actually I'm creating the sphere out of multiple layers (see my photoshop file):
Base is the solid color.
The Layer above has the Shadow gradient and its mode is set to "Multiply".
The Layer on Top has the Lightpoint gradient and its mode is set to "Screen".
The little Shapes on the Sphere (see on Screenshot of ColorManager - not in the PSD) just pick the color that lies directly underneath them and make it selectable for a color card.
Important: The Layer "Color Match" must fit the base color on the bottom layer.
You may adjust the PSD file to show me what you mean.

Good news: The Layers are almost working.
I bought myself a new laptop yesterday and have now more time to continue developement while I'm travelling by train between my home and working place

Erm, I wasn't able to get it working right in my head from your file, so I just made this one: Hue Shifted Shade

It works pretty much as Ninja Crow explained.

@ ekobar:  thanks, that's better than what I was trying to explain.  I don't know if what I'm seeing on GIMP is exactly as from Photoshop, so if this sounds weird, feel free to shrug it off:  to get a really close match to what I was thinking of, I had to change the black gradient layer to a black-to-white gradient, and set its layer blending to grain merge, and the circle I filled with a colour (e.g. blue) though it wasn't big enough to see it blent with the full range of yellow/purple, so I filled the layer completely to test the colours.
The problem is that, even though the hues are what I was looking for, they are very desaturated, and I'm not enough of a PS wizard to know if this can be fixed.

@ Paratron:  but it's okay if it's too much of a pain to get it working, with the saturation problem worked out, because it's probably better for me to learn to do my own hue shifting, anyway! 
Thanks for the Adobe Air info.  I looked around their website, but nothing told me whether their programming language is more like Javascript, GML, BASIC (the ones I'm familiar with), or like C++, etc.  And is it good for programming games (as unprofessional as that may sound)?

Thanks!

Ouch.


Wow, I was under the impression that you had to download and buy some expensive professional software to make flash applications.  Now I wish there was some kind of how-to manual I could get my hands on to see what the commands are like, etc.  Does good documentation come with the SDK download?  (ps, if this is too off topic, I'll try to rein in my future curiosity!)

Thanks!

@ ekobor:  the middle one is nice and creamy, but I think the last one has a better hue range for the purposes.  The purple gets lost though - any way to fix that?

@ ekobor:  On my monitor (an old CyberVision CRT, which shouldn't have any contrast issues) the red diagonal band, that stretches fully between the corners, transitions to purple in the top picture (in the last quarter of the square) and directly to black in the other two, with no visible purple at all.
I also changed to a darker theme, and that didn't help, either.
If it really does look as you describe, that'd be perfect, and I'd be bummed if it was just me  .

@ Zeratanus:  If you can see real purple (or purply-red)next to the central band of red, then that's correct (I wonder what's wrong with my monitor?).  Thanks for the info about Actionscript 3 - I'll look it up.  (ps, going to do any more sword slash spriting? :) )

Darn, my monitor just won't show the purple , but from what I can see, the mid tone colours and colour ranges are best in the top row.  I don't think the yellow has to be more intensified (centre row), just made into a wider band before it blends back into the other colours (in the bottom row the intensity simulates this state, with 'spring' or yellow-green finally showing up - but unfortunately, by then the cyan in the blue has disappeared).

But to actually directly answer the question, yes that's the path I was thinking of - hope it hasn't detracted too much from the rest of the programme!

Cool!  I secretly pride myself on creating the handling behaviour of the programmes I make (not so secret now...) and would be very interested in the philosophy you use, and the types of improvements your girlfriend suggested.

(I'd also love to help test it, but I don't know if my habits are indicative of the average user...)

Sounds like great advice.

A good move, and a show of excellent project management.

That's wonderful, and makes a geeky guy like me very happy (nothing's better than a new bit of kit or piece of software to play with, but one that promises to also be so useful puts it over the top)!


Edited by Ninja Crow - 28 November 2009 at 2:16pm