Deluxe Paint is a well designed bitmap graphics editor from the 80s that ran on the Commodore Amiga.
To this day, we still find it the best package out there for its purpose and we have yet to find anything close to it in terms of usability and design. We have tried other pixel editors but still keep coming back to an old copy that we still use every now and then for our games.
However, as times goes by, we find an increasing need for an actual replacement that is not only up-to-date but more importantly, multi-platform. We've retained the best bits of Deluxe Paint (shortcuts ftw!) but we've also added many other features to support modern workflow. So here is our attempt at recreating a swankier version of our favourite paint package for today's generation of pixel artists.
It should be noted that this is currently in active development so will contain bugs.
These are some of the features that are already included in the current version. We are still adding more during development.
- Runs on Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windows & Mac
- Deluxe Paint shortcuts
- Escher modes: Hexels, non-Euclidean, strange geometry
- Bloom shader options
- Full resolution background image for tracing & referencing
- Multiple layers support
- Simple animation frames
- Spritesheet support
- Animation exports to GIF and APNG
- GIF and APNG import to frames
- Popular colour palettes: C64, Spectrum, NES, Gameboy, MSX, AppleII, EGA, Swanky16, Swanky32
- Manual PDF that includes one-page shortcut pullout
- Support for Lua scripting
- Support for UV mapping preview on to low poly 3D model
Chopping and joining a spritesheet into layers for animation editing
Brush modes, flip and rotate using shortcuts for quick editing of pixels
Our latest update supports a UV mapping preview mode
UMON is a game we made for Ludum Dare 33
Mass X is a game by Charlotte Gore for Ludum Dare 32
The bloom shader was the killer feature for Charlotte during games development
Truck loves making fonts with Swanky Paint
Our latest game, Big Trouble, is all about the scanlines and bloom, within 32 colours
Swanky Paint is all about the shortcuts.
Get the Shortcuts PDF. You wouldn't want to use Swanky Paint any other way after you've memorised the keys!
On International Amiga Day 2014, we released Swanky Art, a pixel art community based on daily challenges that restricts your palettes, dimensions and filters.
With the idea of getting better by practising, our aim is to fully recreate the restrictions of the past, teaching attribute clash to a new and terrified generation.
Swanky Paint is 1 Dime per download.
Alpha+9a (v16.434)
Fix home dir sniffing which got borked in switch to SDL2.
Added GUI Scale option and display main paint area under cropped GUI.
Updated 3D view widget so you can move/scale the object (badly).
Added 3D bump mapping, 2nd frame of texture is optional height map.
Added 3D sliders, to control lighting in preview.
Alpha+9 (v15.953)
Smart centering of zoomed window using occlusion of preview window.
Switch to SDL2 as default input/window manager.
Alpha+8d (v15.496)
LuaJIT version bump
Scroll wheel patch on Raspberry Pi
startup script for Raspberry Pi
Alpha+8c (v15.376)
Show layer size in checkerboard background of image
Frame and layer panels with key list setting
Fixed bug layer loading crash (Thanks, Truck!)
Made exiting with error a last resort (so probably less user data loss)
Added resize knob to 1:1 preview and changed how the positioning works
UV mapping preview mode
Windows now has icon and removed the forced doswindow (terminal)
Copy brush palette to image
Alpha+8b (v15.184)
Fixed trace shaders so they compile on more hardware
App ICON in alt-tab and task bar (linux only so far)
Trace alpha slider can cause it to draw over the main image
Individual settings for each image buffer
Load and save settings inside PNGs (inside a JSON text chunk)
Animated PNGs added and now the prefered animation format
Rechop layers using last brush pickup size
Spritesheet to new anim using brush pickup location and size
Swap frames and layers (produces a strip layout only)
Alpha+8a (v15.145)
Bleed pixel filter
Fixed scroll wheel on non linux builds
Image to brush and brush to image
Image "strip" from anim for simple flat export
Mousewheel works in more GUI places file request scroll
Background trace mode and change of how things render
Alpha+8 (v15.093)
Add current dir to history on startup.
J now does a copy to spare
New layer menu with chop/join
New frame menu with add/del and shortcuts of shift+2/shift+1
Brush handle with auto corner when you pick one up
Brush pickup with right mouse cuts pixels clearing to background color
Added rechop menu for quick layer setup/fiddle
Flatten layers option in menu
Added close image to image menu
Added close all/other to file menu
Fixed remap image to work with animations
New and improved menu gui (we now have sub menus)
Alpha+7 (v14.852)
New swanky palettes, mostly just rearranged
Outline/inline now works as expected
Simple remap menu actions
Snap gui (previously it was stuck on 8x8)
Zoom window size and edge snap config
Display less empty color buttons on main tools
Press f for fill mode
Added history to file panel for fast directory changes
Allow multiple images to be opened at the same time
Switch between images using 5 6 keys or menu
Added "thumb" menu for faster android use
Added layers use keys 3 4 to switch and key e to toggle show all/one
Added layer/frame control and info topbar
Added zoom scrollbar to topbar
Smarter scrollmode
Spacebar or middlemouse for quick scrollmode
Alpha+6 (v14.775)
Attribute clash modes added for emulating the ancient Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64 screen mode colour restrictions
We now have actual drop down menus which should make things a bit easier
Trixel and Scanline render filters available for display and export
New swanky mascot - the Swan King
Please do not use the hackmode it is for 3d cubes and renders a horizontal strip of slices as point voxels, Best used with 64x8 image for display on an 8x8x8 cube
Some bugs fixed, some bugs added (sorry), some bugs hidden
Alpha+5
Secret stuff
Alpha+4
Basic animation (keys 1 and 2 to flick through frames) along with loading and saving of GIF files
Animations are stored in GIF files
Images belong in PNG files
You may export to JPG or PNG since these are 24bit
Use the filename to choose a format
Alpha+3
Pretty icons and bloom special effect
Export mode for saving out fat pixels with pixel filters applied
Filters are applied by the GPU so hardware restrictions may limit output file sizes
Alpha+2
First batch of Escher filters and Android finger painting is now mostly working
Alpha+1
Load save edit pixels, YAY!