A question I often hear is: What software should I use for pixel art?

In this article I will tell about my own experiences, how to get used to those new programs and more. As I am a windows user this article is most useful if you run windows yourself too, but some of the software might work on other systems too.

MSpaint

Believe it or not, but still one of the most easy and useful tools for pixel art is Paint. If you run windows it is already on your computer!

Pros

• Easy to learn
• Impresses people more
• 3 colors usable with your cursor (left click, right click, ctrl + click)
• From on winXP it saves PNG’s properly
• Easy moving around with parts of your image
• Color replacing

Cons

• No proper GIF file saving
• No layers
• 3 undos
• Nothing configurable
• No indexed palette support

I still almost always use paint at the start of my drawing. It is extremely useful for making your line art and such, because you can select things and move them around on your canvas easily. It can be useful for coloring as well, thanks to the color replacement feature, but there is better (free) software for that.

Things you should know

• View>Zoom>Miniature, this shows a 1x miniature version of your drawing when you are working zoomed in.
• Eraser – left click color = color to be replaced, right click color = new color. If you have the eraser colors right, you can replace colors by right clicking with it! This makes recoloring your work easy, but watch out for not leaving stuff behind. You can enlarge your eraser by pressing ctrl + ‘+’ .
• Select color using right click, in your palette or with the eyedropper, having the background color as right click color makes working really easy. Without having to switch colors you can now draw with your primary color and replace things with the background color (removing) by right clicking. This works as well as with the pencil as with the brushes, lines, anything. Your secondary color is also the color that appears if you delete things (select, press delete) or if you enlarge your canvas.
• Select, ctrl + drag, a fast way to duplicate things without having to copy and paste is by holding ctrl and draging your selection. The old thing will stay and you will have a new piece selected. You can do this as many times as you want. Similary you can hold shift, try out yourself to find out what that does ;)

Oh, and last but not least, NEVER save your work as GIF or as JPG in paint!

MTpaint

Yes, this is something different as MSpaint. It is not connected to paint at all. This is a free open source drawing program, perfect for pixel art! You can download it here

Pros

• Great indexed palette support
• Save gifs properly
• 2 colors usable with your cursor
• fast eyedropping (ctrl + click)
• zooming with scroll wheel
• Works on Linux & Windows

Cons

• Layers and animation support is not great
• Moving around part of your images is not easy

In my opinion MTpaint is THE best free program to color your pixel work. The indexed palette support is really great, thanks to functions for sorting your palette, changing colors etc.
The only thing I would like to see is better layer support. You can work with layers, but as far as I can remember (I only did once or so) it was really annoying, as every layer was a loose image. (And you had to save all loose images at the end)

Things you should know
Try out a lot of things! That is the only way to discover how to use a new program. Press alt, ctrl and shift whenever you want something to happen. A few things I figured to get you started: When you want a selection to be placed on the canvas, right click and switch back to the pencil or another tool. For drawing perfect vertical lines hold shift, just as in paint. However, when you want to draw horizontal lines hold shift and alt (or ctrl, dunno ;) )

Graphics Gale

Graphicsgale is a nice pixel art program, much used for sprites and it is a great animation program! I never found an easier to use one! Sadly the full version costs about 25$ (1,995 Yen), but you can already do a lot with the free version too. You will just have to put some more effort in saving animations, thats about all ;)
Website

Pros

• Indexed palette support
• Great animation support
• Great layer support
• Easy eyedropping
• Layout completely configurable

Cons

• Just one color to use on your cursor
• Full version not free

For animations it is just the thing I love most. I hardly use it for other stuff, as MTpaint does all I need, but for animations this is the tool! If you do not own the full version (I do, thank you internet!) you can still save animations when they are done image by image, and then put them together online on a website such as iaza.com or with unfreez.

Things you should know

• Open graphics gale, not the gale browser. They are 2 different programs, remember!!!
• Right click = eyedropper! Useful!
• Onion skinning. I wont explain much, but experiment with it while animating. It is the very bright green button of the running man!
• If you need to save transparant gifs, make the frame transparant, not the last layer! The frame only!

Other software

Pro motion is the software used by a lot of old-school pixelers because of its similarity to the old-school program Deluxe Paint. It is great for animation, pixel art, anything. It does cost some money (78$, 60€) and takes a lot of time to get used to if you do not know Deluxe Paint already. I hear a lot of people saying its worth it, but I did never try it extensively. The trial works fine for a lot of things, so if you are interested don’t hesitate to download!

Unfreez, as mentioned before it is a free gif animation tool. Put unanimated gifs in, get an animated gif out! Works great!

Photoshop. Hard to get used to, especially to find the settings to make it pixel art sutable, but once you are used to it (maybe you already are) it is quite workable. Layers, lots of undos, looks professional, enough reasons to use photoshop! Does cost you some money! (full version standard edition 700$)

Paint.net. Has nothing to do with windows MSpaint, but it is a nice free drawing program. If you don’t know what to pixel with or do your other cheap digital drawings with, choose this. Free, layers, just a lot better than a lot of other things! This program however is not  a pixel program. It is possible, but I believe other options are better for it.

Gimp. The free equivalent of photoshop. Hard to get used to, but it might be worth it for you! And another big plus is that it works on Linux, Windows and mac!

Grafx2. This is the only program in the list I did not try myself. However, it is again a program based on the old school deluxe paint, still in development.  I know some quite good artists that use it. Free

Pixen. (added to this list on 6-11-2009). This is free pixel art software for the mac.

Getting used to a program

Getting used to a new program takes time and effort. Check out the list of features, see if you think it could be worth it, try it extensively for at least 2 months before you descide it is too hard learning, not worth it or whatever. Things might seem easier after all.

The key to changing is by stopping to use other tools immediately, so you will have to find all your new solutions the hard way. Just search trough the help, randomly press buttons (on your keyboard as well) and with some luck you will find it a useful program at the end!

I can still see myself switching to Pro Motion someday. Or maybe photoshop, as I am going to learn that anyway.

Moving the mouse to draw is luckily the same in every program, and often zooming in and out as well. Saving is a floppy, filling is a bucket. Nothing can go wrong with this knowledge on forhand, you must be able to produce something from on the start! Success!

In the comments there is room for discussing the programs, or whatever you have to say about this article, switching from programs, making decisions etc.  I hope you enjoyed reading!