What paint program do you like best?

[Weasel Fierce]

For basic painting and NOT photo manipulation, what is your preference on the Amiga? Especially with a mind towards a beginner?

I only really have experience with Dpaint IV (the AGA version) but liked that one rather a lot.

[Daedalus]

PersonalPaint took over from DPaint IV AGA as my pixel art tool of choice many years ago. Many of the functions are similar to their DPaint counterparts so you won't find it difficult to get going with PPaint. There are a couple of functions that DPaint has that PPaint could do with (anti-aliasing for example, and support for HAM modes), but for me these aren't a great loss compared with the benefits. For example, PPaint has excellent support for pretty much all mainstream image formats (even though it's limited to 256 colours), and has very good colour reduction tools and algorithms to manage conversions. The ARexx support is excellent, allowing things like import and export of AnimGIFs as anim brushes as well as many other useful functions, and it has decent RTG support, so even though it's limited to 256 colours, it can use very large screenmodes.

[nikosidis]

From what I heard DPaint is still the king on Amiga but PPaint is very close. At least for pixel gfx that is the 2 progs. you would like to have.

[Thorham]

Brilliance 2. Comes with two versions. One for regular Amiga color modes and one for 24 bit using HAM.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Brilliance 2. Comes with two versions. One for regular Amiga color modes and one for 24 bit using HAM.

TrueBrilliance (the 24 bit version) is where i started to do some real painting, but never got the gist of it - by the way do TB work even on OCS/ECS or just AGA?

[Korban]

Brilliance 2.
It has features that are useful for pixel graphics that other similar programs on the Amiga dont have.
Its also somewhat faster than PPaint and DPaint.

[kamelito]

IIRC Brilliance is written in assembly hence it’s speed.

[gimbal]

I wish it was as simple as writing something in Assembly to make it fast. But no, you have to know what you're doing as well.

[Weasel Fierce]

Thanks gang. I should say my interests are specifically just 256 color pixel stuff, in case that makes a difference.

Also what was the deal with Dpaint V?

[arcanist]

I liked Brilliance after I'd hacked in a dark mode. Can't be dealing with white interfaces while painting.

Edit: I also like the manual. It has a nice musty smell!

[onkelarie]

I am using Personal Paint for years now, whenever I need to do some gfx editing and/or converting. Pretty close to Dpaint as far as its interface goes. I never tried Brilliance though, so I can't compare the two.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Weasel Fierce

Thanks gang. I should say my interests are specifically just 256 color pixel stuff, in case that makes a difference.

Also what was the deal with Dpaint V?

DPaint 4.5 was my go to paint app. Very stable release. Dpaint V had some new nice features but it was buggirr and felt slower.
Brilliance2 is really good, but if youre already used to DPaint, Id stick with that as Brilliance is a fairly different user experience.

[BigD]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

DPaint 4.5 was my go to paint app. Very stable release. Dpaint V had some new nice features but it was buggirr and felt slower.
Brilliance2 is really good, but if youre already used to DPaint, Id stick with that as Brilliance is a fairly different user experience.

Brilliance 2 feels too different for me though I can see it is snappy and has some interesting features. DPaint V has some great upgrades on IV including a 24-bit memory buffer and really good graphics tablet sensitivity support (if you can get the right tablet and drivers). Also, DPaint is king for flick-book style animation and I don't think the others have a lightbox function either. If you have an 040/060 speed AGA machine I'd recommend DPaint V. The Anim files DPaint V generate are also compatible with AnimWebConverter whereas the ones Brilliance 2 creates by default seem to glitch! Maybe I haven't configured it right but with DPaint V I don't need to and my workflow just works.

[Weasel Fierce]

I should clarify my system is an 030/56 with AGA only.

[Havie]

I mainly use Personal Paint for graphic conversion and loading formats other than iff but also keep Dpaint on hand too as it wasy first love and sometimes I find things easier to do (possibly due to familiarity). I can't get on with PC packages at all - so what is this layer nonsense!

[Jope]

Still with DPaint ECS

[Korban]

Originally Posted by Havie

I mainly use Personal Paint for graphic conversion and loading formats other than iff but also keep Dpaint on hand too as it wasy first love and sometimes I find things easier to do (possibly due to familiarity). I can't get on with PC packages at all - so what is this layer nonsense!

There's plenty of PC packages that are as simple/basic as things like ppaint/dpaint and Brilliance that don't have layers. You also have no need to use them in packages that do.
While I like the main 3 Amiga packages that people are discussing in this thread I'll use Paintshop Pro over them any day of the week for making pixel art.
To each their own and whatnot though.

[Snoopy1234]

Dpaint II back in the day. Photon Paint brush manipulation was awesome too. ImageFX today v3. I have v4 but that's sealed. v3 isn't running atm with my ACA 1231 giving Wait for Disk activity to Finish despite correct MaxTransfer settings etc.

[Predseda]

Dpaint 4.02 for OCS and 4.6 for AGA painting, I love its keyboard shortcuts layout. Unfortunately, DPaint doesnt work properly with P96

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by saimon69

TrueBrilliance (the 24 bit version) is where i started to do some real painting, but never got the gist of it - by the way do TB work even on OCS/ECS or just AGA?

HAM6 and HAM8 work in the same way, so it probably works on OCS/ECS.

Originally Posted by onkelarie

I never tried Brilliance though, so I can't compare the two.

The main difference is that the interface is horizontal and at the bottom. Also has it's own palette that's independent of the rest of the screen.