I thought it'd be fun to have a thread just for pixel art software and the pros and cons of each.  I use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe ImageReady for everything because of the power, but sometimes it's a bit overwhelming.  I'd really like to find a good animation program to replace ImageReady.

Photoshop Pros:
Powerful tools especially for adjusting Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation and everything else in your palette.  "Replace color" is very handy for pixel art. Layers and layer sets help keep things tidy.  Export options are very flexible.  Slices allow some nice workflow options for a single file.  Grids and rulers make it easy to keep pixel art in order. Industry standard software so there's a good chance other designers and illustrators will have it installed.

Photoshop Cons: 
Overly complicated interface. Expensive. Need to adjust settings to make Photoshop appropriate for pixel art.  Sometimes pixels along the borders of images don't respond to eraser or pencil. ImageReady is really hard to work with and you can screw up the whole animation if you're not careful.

Alright, this is a good topic. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro (which is now owned by Corel).

Paint Shop Pros (Get it?)
Strong and underestimated program. Has lots of effects and features that were once unique to Photoshop. Of course, Photoshop will always be ahead of little old Paint Shop, but it is rather popular with the Newbie croud since Jasc offers a 30 day trial with each version of Paint Shop Pro. Very easy to get into and my favorite feature is the easy zoom, using the mouse roller to zoom in and out without touching the magnifying tool.

Paint Shop Pro Cons
Not very popular with professionals, expensive if you want to buy it. Photoshop will always be better. The newer versions take a long time to load, just as any Adobe program would, but everything from Paint Shop Pro 7 and down is instant (I use both PSP 7 and PSP 9 respectively).

The program I always make pixel art in is Multimedia Fusion.
It's actually made for making games, but I've gotten so used to its picture editor that I always use that... It doesn't have many 'special features', but that's what I like about it: it's simple and fast.

GIMP
PROS:
Essentially a free Photoshop. With even more roundabout ways to get stuff done. It's said that it can animate, but I never figured it out. I couldn't even figure out how to mix my own colors. I only ever used it for tracing scanned drawings.
CONS:
Developer's wet dream, artist's nightmare. AKA one hell of a confusing program.

Paint.NET
PROS:
I've never used it, but I hear it's less powerful than Photoshop, but better than most programs out there. My guess is that it's somewhere around Graphics Gale level.
CONS:
Never used it, never heard any complaints. Mustn't be too bad.

Graphics Gale
PROS:
Layers, animation and little stuff like right click as an eye dropper and palette indexing, I think. Basically a better version of MSPaint.
CONS:
Scrilla for registering.

Giffy
PROS:
Really simple .bmp/.gif converter. It's pretty helpful to have if you're like me and pixel in MSPaint only. Supports transparency, which is always a good thing to have.
CONS:
None.

EZtoon
PROS:
A simple animation program that's good for sketching up rough animations. Has flood fill dithering too.
CONS:
1bit, hard to find (exactly why I'm hosting it...).

UnFREEz
PROS:
Easy to use drag and drop animator. Just grab each .gif file and put it in.
CONS:
If you want to edit the animation, you have to remake the sequence, each frame has to be the same timing, you need a seperate .gif file already in existance for each frame.

MSpaint
PROS:
Bundled with Windows, easy to use, pretty much perfect for pixel art with the grid, up to 10x zoom (click the lowest responding line of pixels under 8x and it'll go to 10x), grid for those that can't tell if they're placing pixels evenly or not, optional preview window.
CONS:
Can't save to .gif very well, doesn't have: layers, opacities, alpha transparency (or any form of transparency for that matter). So basically just good for making static bitmaps.

yeah these all sound as if they could be interesting... i already have unFreeze but i prefer microsoft gif animator...

although i now use macromedia fireworks Mx to do my work also paint :P

-ollie

I too am shocked by this free Microsoft utility. I've never heard of it and I'm suprised it's not installed on the newer Microsoft operating systems. I'll have to give it a spin.

It's Microsoft indeed. This was my first animation problem, and it's pretty much how I got into pixel art in the first place. Totally forgot about what it was called, thanks for uniting us again.

Edited by Dejital

i need a nice program i can download for a newb like me but not ms paint 

You dont actually need anything other than MS Paint for static pixel art. I use Graphics Gale for animations and sometimes to spruce up colours or mess around different schemes or number of colours.

Ive used MS GIF Animator before...its not very good.

Ive also fiddled with EZToons. Its not bad if you only want black and white, but compared to GG theres no real point in using it as far as Im concerned.

I wouldnt mind getting my hands on Paint Shop Pro or this Animation shop, but only for colouring my hand drawn art. You're really only limited by your brain with pixel art. The best way to learn is by taking advice and looking around at other artists.

Yeah, I used to use a combo of Gamemaker and MSpaint to do graphics/animations.

Now, however, I use Gimp, and I really don't find it all that confusing. If anyone honestly wants to know, send me a PM, I'll seee if I can help.

*Off-Topic note on gamemaker* Gamemaker is actually a very good program to use for making any kind of games, there are basically two ways to make games, in code, or drag-and-drop the commands. It would work very well for a collab game, in fact, I'm gonna go to that topic and post a link :P.

Where exactly do I do that in Photoshop?  I use it every damn day and just hit Ctrl+H to ditch extras which gets rid of most of the snapping. It'd be nice if there was a way to just leave off snapping.

does any 1 know  a program 2 make colour animations(& transparent,if possible)???because my easytoon software only does b&w*

 

 

 

*black & white

is fireworks any good? thats all my computer has

If it is an animated GIF you can post it just like any other image.

QUOTE
"" MSPaint
easy to use, pretty much perfect for pixel art with the grid, up to 10x zoom "

How do you u get up 2 10x zoom in ms paint all i get is x1 x2 x4 x6 and x8 =/"


Do so! :)


Edited by kankki

That's great. Thank you.
I know there are a few bugs in the undo-system. But for the main things it works. Doesn't it?
Maybe if you tell me the bugs in particular, I could release a patch.

Sure. It says "Access violation at address 0040923C in module 'PixelStudio.exe'. Read of address 00000004."

I know these have already been covered but I'll do it anyway.

Photoshop (and ImageReady for animations)

Positive
Wand tool, oh sweet juju I love that wand tool. Especially in pixel art, it's just so useful.
Layers. Although they're not always that important it's always nice to have.
Folders. I often keep earlier revisions in folders in case I want to go back to them.
Such an awesome zoom.
So many, many shortcuts.
Long history
Better .gif support
Easy to keep track of colours
Transparency

Negative
Er, nothing really.
(The animations are slower in the browser for some reason so maybe not an accurate preview?)

Paint

Postive

CIRCLE TOOL- I rely on this even with Photoshop
Line tool
The diagonal brushes

Negative
Hidden zoom (why?)
I don't like the colour picker as much
No shortcuts besides the obvious ctrl+a/c/x/v/o/n/s

There's probably a LOT more but these are the most prominent IMO.


Edited by Vidd

In my opinion, Gimp is the best...

- Free and GPL software
- Running under Linux or Windows
- Available in many languages
- Possible to parameter shortcuts
- Possible to make scripts (in python) (for Gimp-hackers only, but many scripts are downloadable...)
- Quite-easy to make animations (but not preview)
- Manage many formats
...

Gimp rocks !

Pro Motion V5.1 for me.  Nothing else compares to it terms of spriting, tiling and animation in my opinion.

Pros:
It's pretty much Deluxe Paint for Windows... that reason alone should be enough for most people, especially us Amiga veterans.

Cons:
It ain't free (but I won it)
Suppose sometimes its 256 color palette thing can be a lil restrictive when yer used to the 32-bit color in PSP and PS and those kinda things.  Ya learn to live with it and excel with it in time.


Edited by Wolverine

Has anyone ever tried ArtGem? I haven't yet but would like to know how it is (oh well I could give it a try myself...).

Edited by Niss

If I weren't braindead, I'd try scripting. Thanks for the circle-theory, but I figured out a way to do it myself. Just fill a circle with black, shrink the selection a pixel, and erase the selection.

 

Ooo! Didn't know that existed. 'Course I have nooo idea how to make it work. Mind giving me a hand, oh wise and informed gimper?

Saboteur:
You should have the VCR navigator up most of the time.
Everything relating to gimp-gap is in the Video menu.
For anything else, read the docs if you must.

jujucece:
do you write gimp scripts yourself? Hardly anyone seems to, and even less people who pixel.