Grafx2 stupid noob questions
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=22464
Printed Date: 14 September 2025 at 12:08am
Topic: Grafx2 stupid noob questions
Posted By: Finlal
Subject: Grafx2 stupid noob questions
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 5:05am
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Hi there.
I decided to try grafx2 since I've heard many good words about it. I fooled around, got used to it a bit and then few questions emerged. I know there are many pjers who use grafx2 (i learned about it on this site), so maybe I can get answers here as well. 1) Does it have something like ps color picker? Or maybe like SAI color wheel? 
2)Is there some way to move working space to the center? 
3)Cyrillic names of folders turn into a mess. Why could it be and can it be fixed? 
4) After breaking down palette to uniques, default colors of the program itself changed. Is there some way to make them not change? Also, can I save the palette as default so next time I onen a programm it would be there? 5) In lasso mode something strange happens. One of the colors disappear from lassoed brush for some reason. How to make it to take that color as well? 
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Replies:
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 5:59am
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Thanks for numbering your q's, it makes replying easier 1) no, this is not possible because grafx2 runs in indexed mode: only the colors in your image are available to it. 2) .. I don't think so. I generally just use the magnified view for 99% of my pixeling, and of course you can adjust the location of that by moving the split. 3) auugh, filename encoding problems. Sorry, I don't know much about this one, except that http://pulkomandy.tk/projects/GrafX2/ticket/10 - this bug report was filed about a similar-sounding bug. 4) Default colors of the program did not change; as mentioned, Grafx2 uses indexed mode and so, can only use colors from your image; the GUI is therefore always using the best fit in your palette for the color it wants. 5) You have the color in question set as the background color. Choose a different background color by rightclicking in the palette on an appropriate color. (The background color is treated as transparent) ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: DawnBringer
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 6:07am
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1. Not really. The whole program and interface is using/sharing the same 256 color indexed palette. You'll have get used to tweaking the RGB/HSL sliders.
2. No, it's an outstanding issue. Best thing to do is to work in the center of a bigger picture and crop/brush-pick the final selection. 3. Don't know 4a. You can have "safety colors" turned on; it will set the last 4 colors of the palette to suitable grays. 4b. For custom start colors you can edit a skin and set it as default. But it's probably easier just to load or drop an image (with the desired palette) into the program when you start. 5. Brush grab will make the current BG color (2nd pen color) transparent. So make sure that color is either the image background (to pick up a sprite) or an unused color (to get everything). |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 6:15am
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(edit: gosh, beaten twice) 1) No, sorry, there are no color wheels because the program is still in a 256-color mode window. We've started a port to SDL2 which will make them possible to implement, but it's going to take a long time. 2) No, sorry again :(. You're not the first to ask for it, especially some people have reported that their screen has not very clean colors at edges (screen borders cast a shadow), so they would prefer to draw near center of screen/window. 3) The program reads file names from your operating system as 8-bit characters, and the Grafx2 8x8 fonts assume that characters above 127 are those of Windows-1252 codepage. From what I can see, the directory in your Dropbox has characters 208, 224, 231, 237, 238, 229. If it was codepage 1251, it would spell Разное. It looks like russian for "Misc", so it's possible to solve part of the problem by redrawing those characters in the Grafx2 font : it's a simple image file located in shared/grafx2/skins/font_Classic.png But it will not work for typing file names, because for this part I coded explicit conversion of known UTF-8 characters into Windows-1252 codes... Can you tell me which OS you're using, and which version of Grafx2 (and confirm if your system uses Windows-1251) ? I will see what I can do about cyrillic support. 4) After palette changes, hit "Backspace" while the Palette window is open : it re-creates 4 GUI colors in unused slots of your palette. 4b) Save as default : Not exactly, but the default palette is loaded with the skin file (icons, mouse cursors etc) If you convert the skin to this palette, this palette will be default when you open program. 5) The "background color" (the one of your right mouse button) counts as transparent for brush drawing. You can change this color by right-clicking in the botom-right palette, even after the brush is grabbed, so that you can see different pixels are transparent (or none, if you pick a color that the brush doesn't use) |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 6:46am
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Thanks for answers!
One more question - can I set color picking on alt+click, not right click? @yrizoud, you're right, it's Разное (misc). This issue appears on both Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and OSX Yosemite 10.10.3. Where can I find grafx2 version? I'll try to draw cyrillic letters, see if it works. About skins - how do you change it? |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 7:08am
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Originally posted by Finlal Thanks for answers! One more question - can I set color picking on alt+click, not right click? I don't think so. But if you are involving the keyboard anyway, why not just hit the colorpicker shortcut and then click the mouse. This is usually what I do, IMO it's quite easy and comfortable. By default, the colorpicker shortcut is ` (grave), but like all other shortcuts, you can change this. I have mine set to Numpad 6, because it's closer to the tablet, FWIW. (BTW, GrafX2 calls color picker tool 'Pipette'. If I18N is implemented at some point we should probably take the opportunity to fix that, it's inconsistent with most other paint programs) I'm not sure how well yrizoud communicated about the skin. What I believe he is saying, is that the skin is just an image file, which naturally has its own palette. If you want to change that palette, then you can do so, and this will become 'default' for that skin. However, I think maybe he misunderstood you? I didn't understand you to be asking how to change the default, but rather, asserting that the default -was- being changed (which, as I stated, is not true). I think there is also maybe some confusing terminology being used, as there are two separate 'skin' options, one which controls font and one which controls icons, splash screen etc. If I understood your situation correctly, you were aiming to modify the font (whichever one matches your current font setting -- eg. share\grafx2\skins\font_Classic.png). ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 7:16am
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Grafx2 version number is at top of the splash screen window. The skin files are also images, called skin_something in share\grafx2\skins. In your case you can: - open the skin in grafx2, - switch to spare (TAB), - open a file which uses your preferred palette, - right-click the Page button and select "copy to spare - palette and remap". - TAB again, - save. |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 7:27am
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@neota, thanks! Good method.
@yrizoud,changed letters in font (it was not Classic, but DPaint). It worked both on folders and files (windows). Can't test it in OSX right now. Versions - it's 2.4. About default colors - tried few things, now it hets the palette from load file, which is good enough. Tried thing with spare, it worked at NO_NAME2.GIF, but when I did it again it returned to default. But it's ok, nevermind. I got a solution. Another problem appeared. I changed skin and this happened. 
Maybe it's because I changed to skin_scenish and there was no font_scenish. Anyways, even after I changed it back, it is still rubbish instead of font. What could it be? UPD. Re-installing with saved settings helped, but only for the first launch. Then it got back to weird symbols. UPD2. It doesn't work even after re-installing with deleting settings! My computer is cursed! |
Posted By: DawnBringer
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 8:06am
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Here's a script that generates another script that will set the current palette. Assign a key to that 2nd script and load your fav palette with a keystroke.
-- fil_db_SavePalette.lua by DawnBringer -- Makes a script (pal_zz_SetPalette.lua) that sets the current palette maxcol = 255 f = io.open("pal_zz_SetPalette.lua", "w"); txt = "pal={\n" comma = "" for n = 0, maxcol, 1 do r,g,b = getcolor(n) txt = txt..comma.."{"..n..", "..r..", "..g..", "..b.."}\n" comma = "," end txt = txt.."}\n" txt = txt.."\nfor n = 1, #pal, 1 do\n setcolor(pal[n][1],pal[n][2],pal[n][3],pal[n][4])\nend" f:write(txt) f:close() |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 8:16am
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@DB, thanks!
But after I deal symbols issue. Can't do a thing with grafx2 right now. |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 8:38am
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User settings are in Application Data. Open an explorer window and in address bar, type (or paste) %appdata%\GrafX2 |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 8:46am
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@yrizoud, thanks a lot, deleting it helped.
Also, if I want to make my own skin, I just have to draw png of skin and font like the others? |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 9:02am
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Yes. Safest is to duplicate an existing one under a new name, and start editing it within Grafx2. |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 10:40am
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Ok, thanks.
One more thing - where in OS X can I find fonts and skins? |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 12:23pm
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I've never used OSX, but I think heard it's possible to use the Finder to look inside (and modify files in) the "application bundle. Here's a tentative cyrillic font  (Save as font_Cyrillic.png) |
Posted By: Finlal
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 12:43pm
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Wow, thank you!
Though, small letter Я (the last one) is a size of a capital. It should be smaller. 
UPD. Somehow cyrillic doesn't work on mac if I choose font with cyrillic. But it's ok, my folders here are latin-named anyway. |
Posted By: yrizoud
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 1:56pm
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Your OSX machine must use yet another character encoding when Grafx2 asks the system for content of a directory. If the files selector displays the correct number of characters, it's a 8-bit encoding, so it can be fixed by creating the font in the right order. But if it shows more characters, it's probably UTF-8, and in this case I can't do anything as it's really system-specific... |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 17 April 2015 at 8:49pm
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@yrizoud : Do you mean http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6153345/different-utf8-encoding-in-filenames-os-x - this issue ? As far as I can tell, that means just that there are 'composed' (single UTF8 codepoint) and 'decomposed' (multiple UTF8 codepoints) forms of the same accented character, and that on certain filesystems like HFS, accented characters are required to be decomposed. I'm not sure what part of that is system-specific, as both the composed and decomposed forms are a standard part of UTF8. Though I could certainly understand that dealing with the decomposed forms was much more complicated than dealing with the composed forms. ------------- absolutely. |