Looking for a modern alternative to DPaint

For those who are familiar with it DPaint, or Deluxe Paint is a very old paint program made popular on the Amiga, but also available on other machines, including the PC. I think it may have even been used by id back in the day when they were making Doom.

I have used it for a few bits and pieces for... well forever really. However, it is limited in a number of ways and I was wondering if anyone knew of a good, modern alternative?

One of the things I particularly liked about it was the way it handled and allowed you to modify custom brushes and I have yet to find another program that had perspective tools that are as easy to use and yet as powerful. And that, in particular, is what I am looking for.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint

I know this has been said a lot, but Paint.NET might be worth a shot.

I was going to suggest Project Dogwaffle, but the author of that software has done a total bit-flip and now wants you to put down your brush, and pick up Jesus.

Proof that artists are driven nuts.

I was about download Paint.NET for a look, but then noticed the site said that Win2k isn't supported.

DooMAD said:

I was about download Paint.NET for a look, but then noticed the site said that Win2k isn't supported.

from PAINT.NET:
Windows 2000 support was proving to be a constant tax on development and testing time. The time required to ensure Windows 2000 compatibility was increasing every month in proportion to the user base that would benefit from it.

We simply don't have any copies of Windows 2000 anymore, and so we were constantly having to either track down virtual machines or enlist community members to do specific testing for us. It just wasn't worth it, nor was it dependable -- we would have spent 15% of our time to support a platform that was shrinking every month. Also, we were planning to migrate to .NET 3.5, so this requirement would happen eventually anyway. Maintaining support for 2000 would have constrained us from a technology standpoint.

It's nothing personal. It's just that Win2000 doesn't have the updated APIs that Paint.NET requires.

I assume you've tried i.Mage? The wiki page you linked to describes it as an open-source clone of Deluxe Paint... I seem to remember using it in the past, but that was years ago.

Thanks, Paint.NET is quite nice, but it doesn't seem to do what I'm looking for.

david_a said:

I assume you've tried i.Mage? The wiki page you linked to describes it as an open-source clone of Deluxe Paint... I seem to remember using it in the past, but that was years ago.

I think that I may have tried it before too, but I don't remember much about it. I've just grabbed a copy, so I'll give it a go.

[edit] Hmmm, again, not bad. A bit clunky but it may be a decent pixel editong program. However, it is missing those advanced brush tools and perspectives that DPaint had. [/edit]

[edit2] Project Dogwaffle can be found here

http://www.dogwaffle.info/

Again, it looks quite good and definitely has some DPaint-like features. Still no perspective tools as far as I can tell. [/edit]

That site looks like a refuge from GeoCities! I wouldn't install anything from a page like that, let alone give them money.

Heh, yeah, it is a bit of a mess isn't it.

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this.

Enjay, if you're looking for a perfect alternative to Amiga's Deluxe Paint, then look no further. It's exactly like deluxe paint, but updated and more work-friendly. You'll feel right at home here.

Not to troll but holy shit I am glad my image editor of choice is Photoshop. Alternatives, finding something a bit like it, etc, never will be necessary.

Csonicgo said:
I was going to suggest Project Dogwaffle, but the author of that software has done a total bit-flip and now wants you to put down your brush, and pick up Jesus.
[/B]

This story is pretty entertaining.

Then there's always the GIMP...

NeoPaint?
Simple painting program. Still in development, give some oldshool feeling, supports all win32 OS'es - from Win95 to Vista.

Gez said:

Then there's always the GIMP...

He's looking for something similar to DPaint, which GIMP doesn't resemble at all last time I checked.

Dgon92 said:

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this.

Enjay, if you're looking for a perfect alternative to Amiga's Deluxe Paint, then look no further. It's exactly like deluxe paint, but updated and more work-friendly. You'll feel right at home here.

That does seem to have most of the DPaint features and a few more besides. The perspective stuff doesn't seem to be there, though the animation tools can be used to fake it (a bit). The brush handling is very much like DPaint though. The way it handles palettes looks a little... well odd I guess. Anyway, I'll have to give the trial version a thorough work out to see if it's worth stumping up the cash for. Thank you.


(re NeoPaint, I used to have the old DOS version of that but never really got into it. And, yes, I have the GIMP too but, as MoD said, it's not really like DPaint at all. )

I've never used Deluxe Paint. Could you explain what these "brushes" do? I'm curious, as it may be useful. What other features in it do you find convenient, and how?

I think he's looking for this sort of functionality, which makes sense if he's interested in oldskool graphics and sprites.

Deluxe_Paint:

The heavy reliance on an indexed colour model allowed for a rather different way of working, not generally found on many popular paint programs since. The intimate linking of palette and image data made DPaint an excellent tool for creating bitmapped icons, animation and game graphics in the days before true colour images became commonplace.

Interestingly, Doom's indexed palette graphics would benefit too from this sort of functions.

Dgon92 said:

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this.

Enjay, if you're looking for a perfect alternative to Amiga's Deluxe Paint, then look no further. It's exactly like deluxe paint, but updated and more work-friendly. You'll feel right at home here.

It's certainly not bad and I've been using it for years at work. But its 8-bit limitation is becoming more and more of a hindrance so I really need something that works similarly but supports true color.

I've messed with Deluxe Paint ][ a little bit and I can agree with what Maes quoted. I've read somewhere that this was the version that id used for all their artwork until Quake 3. It's shockingly easy to recreate the "Doom look" using stuff like the smudge tool, gradients, etc.

myk said:

I've never used Deluxe Paint. Could you explain what these "brushes" do? I'm curious, as it may be useful. What other features in it do you find convenient, and how?

The brushes themselves are really little more than, at their simplest, a section of an image that you copy and then it becomes what you paint with. So, you would select the brush tool and draw a "rubber band" around an area of the picture and when you let go of the mouse button, the cursor becomes a copy of the area of the picture you had selected. From that point on, you can paint with it. Stamping it down leaves a copy of the image. Dragging it across the picture leaves a trail of the image. Using the fill tool will tile the image over the area to be filled, or you can set it to expand or shrink to the area to be filled etc etc etc. Now, I know much of that can be done with copying and pasting in most image programs, but there are also other things that can be done to edit the brush, it can easily be bent horizontally or vertically, sheared horizontally or vertically, have a border added, be manipulated to use a perspective and so on. For example, this pic took me about 10 seconds to do with a custom brush that was made from FLAT3 and then shoved around a little to give it some perspective then painted on with the fill tool.



Walls and ceilings can be done just as easily, as well as... well, whatever you want really. I find these tools particularly useful for adding features to existing 3D pictures. eg, the BGPA flag on the side of the spaceship in my Burghead mod was added using DPaint.



If you have the Amiga version, or DPaint animator, brushes can also be animated. These are pretty cool. Click to stamp your brush onto the picture, skip to the next frame (or stay on the same one) and the next time you stamp the animated brush down, it had moved to its next frame. It make constructing simple animations a breeze. I used to do a small sideline making animations for a guy who sold advertising space on nightclub TV screens many, many years ago. In fact, I used the proceeds of that to buy my first 386. :)

That's the basics anyway. At it's simplest, it isn't much more than a copy/paste function and, I suppose, it is kind of the forerunner of things like PSP's "picture tubes" but it's the customisability of the brushes that I find particularly useful.

Graf Zahl said:

But its 8-bit limitation is becoming more and more of a hindrance so I really need something that works similarly but supports true color.

That was my first concern when trying it. I prefer to work in true colour and then reduce to 8 bit if I need to later. Not that DPaint supports anything over 256 colours.