What drawing program

Laura Bravo

Member
SO I had to re-boot windows thanks to game maker no longer working and I lost Photoshop. The new photoshop does not sell you photoshop and I am not paying 30 bucks a month for it so I need a good drawing program that I can use to make graphics for Game Maker. Any Ideas on what to use? Will need to be able so save alpha channel of course.

Also I use a tablet to draw with.

Thank you.
 

hogwater

Member
I am also against the sub-only model of Photoshop, but it's only $9.99/mo when you pay for a year. I like ArtRage and Sketchbook pro as well, although Sketchbook went sub-only a while back. (I snuck in at the last minute, what up)
 

Coded Games

Member
I've gotten into Affinity Photo. It basically has everything Photoshop does at a lower price.

I use the iPad version but it's available for Mac and Windows.
 
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NostalgicLorikeet

Guest
Paint.NET is pretty good on it's own, but also allows addons.
 
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Falconsoft-Industries

Guest
3d paint comes with Windows 10 if you already have Windows 10 you should find it in your start menu however if you don't have Windows 10 you can buy it for a reasonable price depending on where you live and you should get 3d paint bundled with Windows Defender so you will not need obtain a antivirus program for your computer and as long as you don't download anything risky or anything like a free full version of software you should be safe. However I highly advise you scan your files immediately after downloading anything and making sure they are safe before opening them and regularly updating Windows Defender
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
It depends on what you are looking for.

Tablet drawing(hand drawn, not pixel art)-Krita is probably the best free offering. GIMP is also available and is more like photoshop(and not like Krita is).

Pixel art-I own Cosmigo Pro Motion(though I haven't gotten good at pixeling just yet). It has got to be the best overall program for pixel art. The only catch is that it isn't free. But I really like the most recent version, which added "clean line drawing" so you don't have to clean up your lines nearly as much.

Vector Art-The little bit I've done, I've used Inkscape. It is free, and does just fine, just doesn't have animation support, so you have to do things frame by frame, combining them later.
 

hogwater

Member
Thanks for the Krita recommendation! I've been looking for a good 2D animation program, and I found an animation test someone did on twitter with Krita that looks amazing. Looking forward to trying it out soon.

I've been using Pencil2D which is functional, but very limited and not ideal.
 
Graphics Gale is the best for pixel animation. Pyxel Edit is the best for tiles. Pro Motion does both, but I've never loved it for either. Still a great program.

Open Canvas, Paint Tool Sai, and Krita are all good for painting.

Gimp and PS handle basically everything else.
 
H

heshang

Guest
SO I had to re-boot windows thanks to game maker no longer working and I lost Photoshop. The new photoshop does not sell you photoshop and I am not paying 30 bucks a month for it so I need a good drawing program that I can use to make graphics for Game Maker. Any Ideas on what to use? Will need to be able so save alpha channel of course.

Also I use a tablet to draw with.

Thank you.
PaintTool SAI , Krita ,GIMP, MediBang Paint ,clip studio paint Art Software for drawing / Painting is good .

I use my drawing tablet XP-Pen Star 06 With Krita / PaintTool SAI for drawing anyway . My current Drawing tablet has a 10 x 6 inch work area. I must zoom in for more precise work, but I got used to it.
 
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Lonewolff

Guest
I still can't go past PaintShop Pro 5 as my primary go to (not even joking). And when I need to do something more serious I work between that and Photoshop CC.

Main reason I don't use Photoshop all of the time is that it is a dog to do pixel art with. The hoops you have to jump through to colour a single pixel is mind-boggling.
 
W

Walky

Guest
I still can't go past PaintShop Pro 5 as my primary go to (not even joking).
Old PaintShop Pro versions are awesome, I also used 5, then 7 and settled at 9. It's perfect for quick edits since it opens insanely fast!
Animation Shop was nice too but current pixel animation editors are much better.
 
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noto

Guest
I use Sai and I can't imagine using anything else. Just don't ever use it for animation!
 
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MikeDark_x

Guest
I still use the same one I started with (Good Ol Macromedia Fireworks 8)... I should upgrade I guess, I'm just a tad too used to this one...
 
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Lonewolff

Guest
@Carnivius Yeah PSP was kept itself pretty standard until PSP8. Went downhill fast after that.

PSP 7.x was good. It handled alpha channels much better. Which were pretty much non-existent in 5.

I actually got 5 free off a cover disc on a mag. Best mag ever, that issue was.
 
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ethian

Guest
Krita is probably the best drawing and animating program i had tested to nowadays...
 
D

debleb

Guest
Not sure if it'll be exactly what you're looking for, but I use FireAlpaca. Pretty much fully-featured drawing program that's completely free as well as supporting tablets and drawing with a mouse on it (while not fun) is certainly possible
 
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