I would like to improve my workflow, especially with animations. I'm currently using Paint Shop Pro 7 and Animation Shop 7.

On PSP 7's side, I created frames by having heaps upon heaps of layers -> show/hide relevant layers -> merge visible layers -> copy/paste final image from PSP to AS. Not very efficient.

While PSP 7 isn't all that bad for non-animated work, I'd really like to let go of at least AS 7. It doesn't understand layers, it always works in truecolor mode, copy/paste is silly (when you copy a 10x10 chunk into a 128x128 image, it resizes the 10x10 as 128x128), pen auto-antialiases if it's larger than 1 px, pen shape is always a circle, etc.

Essentially, my workflow feels really inefficient, and it breaks down if I have to modify the animation later. Hence, I've been looking into other software.

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Pro Motion

I noticed that there are some actions that can't be undone. I also don't quite understand the layer implementation in Pro Motion. If I define multiple layers and point them all to frame 1, when I edit the image all the layers change. It feels more like having multiple links to same source image data than actual layers - layers composed of frames instead of frames composed of layers. The way I would have expected it to work was that layers are, well, layers - when I have multiple layers pointing to frame 1, the contents of frame 1 would be determined from the layer stack.

I looked at the layer primer and it suggested that this should be possible, but I just couldn't make it work. Yeah, it's been a while since my Amiga/DP days, I've been spoiled by intuitive user interfaces. ;)

* For a more direct question: I would like to have a background layer, foreground layer, and a sprite layer on a single frame. All frames are independent of each other, and modifying one layer does not alter other layers. Can this be done?

* Is there a way to select an area without copying it as a brush? For ex. select a rectangle, then move the selected stuff left one pixel. At least copy/paste brush ("selection") seems to be available, but it doesn't work on the trial version.

* Is there a way to do multiple selections for one selection? For ex. first select a rectangle somewhere, then reduce it with magic wand. In Paint Shop Pro, this would simply be: select rectangle, activate magic wand, hold CTRL and click on areas to drop from the selection (or SHIFT to add areas to the selection).

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Graphics Gale

Quite easy to pick up, seems to have just the features I was expecting to enhance my workflow with; multiple layers per frame, per-frame disposal settings, configurable keyboard shortcuts. I'm currently leaning towards this one. There's one annoyance - it's possible to add to selection with selection tools like magic wand (just like in PSP, hold SHIFT), but it seems impossible to reduce the selection (in PSP this would've been possible by holding CTRL). I have pretty much only one question left, everything else was found from PJ's and Pixelation's boards. :)

* Is there an eraser tool somewhere? I checked the help and found out that I can activate eraser mode if I create an alpha layer, but even then it doesn't really erase anything, it just sets the alpha to zero. When the alpha layer is destroyed, all "erased" pixels return.

edit: Pen with a transparent colour seems to work as an eraser just fine.

Edited by inphy - 13 December 2009 at 7:28am