Best Atari ST Paint Program(s)?

[griz]

I think the ST version of Deluxe Paint is somewhere around Deluxe Paint 2 featurewise on the Amiga. Although it is the ST's first version, it came out a long while after the Amiga original so has a lot of the features from the later Amiga versions.

 

I remember the ad announcing the ST version : "He who laughs last laughs longest" - or something like that.

[ggn]

Right, sorry for taking so long to reply but here goes. All replies apply to Dpaint ST:

 

Well, something I use a lot on Paintworks for the IIgs is what they termed as "slippy colors", the ability to select certain colors for the lasso tool to avoid when it "slips around" and selects an object made of all other colors. This is helpful for selecting an oddly shaped object, and fast, to copy/paste, move, flip, remove, etc.

Well I tried a few ideas but I couldn't achieve this. Then again I never had the manual for it so it might be there, just obscured somewhere in the UI. Anyone else know something about this?

 

Another is stretching, warping, skewing of objects and perspective alterations.

After you cut a region using paintbrush icon, right click and click "distort". Also note that you can also select lasso mode there by pressing "carve".

 

Then, there's the masking ability, to select certain colors in the image to be left alone or "fixed" so that work can continue around or even behind them for layering abilities. DeluxePaint versions that I've used have had some ability, like "Fix Background" but that only goes so far.

Just right click on the S (Stencil) button that brings up the menu. Select your the indices you want to mask against and press "colors". I wasn't ever sure what the "foreground" and "fix/free" buttons do so I never bothered with them. Anyway this does what you describe. Not sure what the "ohat only goes so far" remark refers to, what else is missing?

 

P.S. Well, it might lack in features compared to Paintworks but it sure beats the crap out of it in terms of speed - that thing on the video is sloooow .

Edited July 31, 2016 by ggn

[nicholas042893]

Right, sorry for taking so long to reply but here goes. All replies apply to Dpaint ST:

 

 

Well I tried a few ideas but I couldn't achieve this. Then again I never had the manual for it so it might be there, just obscured somewhere in the UI. Anyone else know something about this?

 

 

After you cut a region using paintbrush icon, right click and click "distort". Also note that you can also select lasso mode there by pressing "carve".

 

 

Just right click on the S (Stencil) button that brings up the menu. Select your the indices you want to mask against and press "colors". I wasn't ever sure what the "foreground" and "fix/free" buttons do so I never bothered with them. Anyway this does what you describe. Not sure what the "ohat only goes so far" remark refers to, what else is missing?

 

P.S. Well, it might lack in features compared to Paintworks but it sure beats the crap out of it in terms of speed - that thing on the video is sloooow .

 

No problem! Thanks for exploring again.

 

The distort tool works, and skew is fine, but I do like being able to warp and use perspective changes which is harder to do this way by combining skew and rotations as well as repainting certain object "poses".

 

And although the stencil feature allows me to mask colors, such as what's in the background, when in combination with using the carve tool to select an object and work with it without selecting the background, it tends to get confused. I haven't figured out what it wants from me. A test of this is creating a solid gray background, masking the gray color, painting a red number two, and then carving out the number two. Sometimes the background is including in the carving making things difficult, and sometimes it omits the background. This may have something to do with the "fix / free" background, I have more experimenting to do. If I can figure out what it wants, I can make this work for replacing slippy colors.

 

YES, the IIgs is VERY slow without an accelerator!! Just while doing most things lol.

Don't worry, Paintworks and DeluxePaint and just about any software releases are equally slow on that lethargic 2.8mhz beast lol.

That is part of the reason I have put mine aside for now and adopted an ST to see what I can do with it. More speed at a low price!

Edited July 31, 2016 by nicholas042893

[tedpabon]

On 7/28/2015 at 1:58 AM, OldSchoolRetroGamer said:

I grew up a Commodore kid loving programs like Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. What would be consider the equivalents on the Atari St machines? All info, details, opinions appreciated thanks!

First, sorry for the almost decade late reply.

Second, Brilliance (Amiga, Digital Creations) was basically the sequel to Deluxe Paint ST.    Both were made by many of the same programmer/developers. (Stephen White, Anthony Pabon, Troy Gillette, myself, etc.).  
 

We, (ArtisTech Development), went to work for Digital Creations after we made DaVinci Designer, which we sold to Electronic Arts and they rebranded as Deluxe Paint ST. 

 

Edited May 7 by tedpabon

[tedpabon]

On 7/28/2015 at 3:40 AM, fedepede04 said:

exxosuk is right.

there was a Deluxe Paint for the ST. but it was not in any way as good as the Amiga version, as i recall (maybe i remember wrong) it was very unstable.

Being one of the developers of Deluxe Paint ST, this is a bit hard to hear.  I remember it being very stable.  And, Dan Silva, (developer of Amiga’s Deluxe Paint), was very impressed with our features and innovations (I.e. unlimited undo buffer, etc.).

Edited May 7 by tedpabon

[+DarkLord]

I'm no artist by any stretch of the imagination but I've played around with DPaint a bit on my ST's and never had a stability issue.

 

Just sayin'.  

 

[snarkdluG]

I used deluxe paint for hours back in the day. I never had any problems or stability issues that I can recall. Used on 520/1040 STfm. 

[Zogging Hell]

I never had a problem with Deluxe Paint stability either. I think it was the best art package on the ST, although none of them were perfect and you had to use several of them to get all the best features. Having used Deluxe Paint (1) on the Amiga, Deluxe Paint ST is definitely an big improvement (the first Deluxe Paint is probably about equivalant to Neochrome). At the time the ST version of DP was said to be parity wise with the Deluxe Paint II on the Amiga. I think the 3rd Amiga one pips it but it is two iterations higher so not really a surprise. It is a shame the ST version never got a sequel.

[thedocbwarren]

Spent a lot of time with Neochrome Master, Spectrum, Degas Elite, and PhotoChrome.  At the time I was not thrilled by 16 color limits of the ST and STe so looked for high color paint programs to handle this.  Didn't 100% appreciate the heavy lift due to hardware limits (even though I wrote asm to do it with palette changes per line.)  

 

That said, there is a lot of nice artistic work (even work I've made now) with 16 colors and dithering.  It just looks great vs trying to make "photo-realistic" ugly vertical blank smearing to attempt to push the hardware limit.  Not that I haven't made and seen amazing work doing that.

Edited May 8 by thedocbwarren

[tedpabon]

On 5/8/2024 at 3:06 AM, Zogging Hell said:

It is a shame the ST version never got a sequel.

We, ArtisTech Development, did beef it up for the TT, but then we got the gig to make Brilliance on Amiga for Digital Creations.  By the time that was done the ST market was shrinking so fast here in the US that we all move onto other things … some of us made Snappy Video Snapshot for the PC. Others went into console gaming Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Dexter, Uncharted, Pokémon Go, etc.  

[TheNightOwl]

I was a HUGE fan of Deluxe Paint ST! NeoChrome was my first paint program on the ST and I really like the half screen UI over Degas Elite's menu screen. Deluxe Paint adopting a UI style like NeoChrome made it an easy choice to move to.

 

The tools in Deluxe Paint really made me feel like I could be productive faster and I had a lot of fun using it... though I might have used the gradient fill more than I should have and even now I can spot all of my pics that used it. 🤣

[thedocbwarren]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:12 AM, TheNightOwl said:

I was a HUGE fan of Deluxe Paint ST! NeoChrome was my first paint program on the ST and I really like the half screen UI over Degas Elite's menu screen. Deluxe Paint adopting a UI style like NeoChrome made it an easy choice to move to.

 

The tools in Deluxe Paint really made me feel like I could be productive faster and I had a lot of fun using it... though I might have used the gradient fill more than I should have and even now I can spot all of my pics that used it. 🤣

For some reason I never liked DP for the ST.  NeoChrome Master is wonderful!  Spectrum was great too.  I used something called Quantum Paint that wanted to give 4096/32768 colors with interlace.  It's UI was terrible. 

[prog99]

1 hour ago, thedocbwarren said:

For some reason I never liked DP for the ST.  NeoChrome Master is wonderful!  Spectrum was great too.  I used something called Quantum Paint that wanted to give 4096/32768 colors with interlace.  It's UI was terrible. 

And (QP)had no tools for manipulating all those extra colours. It was absolutely awful!

Spectrum512 + digispec gave you a desktop accessory that integrated it into Degas elite. Not well known but could downscale to 16 colours into Degas elite.

[thedocbwarren]

4 hours ago, prog99 said:

And (QP)had no tools for manipulating all those extra colours. It was absolutely awful!

Spectrum512 + digispec gave you a desktop accessory that integrated it into Degas elite. Not well known but could downscale to 16 colours into Degas elite.

It's funny, the last time I used an old program to create a simple pixelart icon, I used MacPaint (original) to draw it and degas Elite to color it.  MacPaint was a fantastic pixel painter.  If that were combined with Neochrome Elite for colors and VBI, it would be an amazing program! 

 

Spectrum was neat for sure.  I'd love a version with that kind of ability with the graphics modes created by PhotoChrome.  I wrote a bunch of asm viewers that VBI-ed a lot to display spectrum-like graphics with interlace and 4096 colors.  Neat times.