bryface
Offline
vancouver, canada

Anybody have any recommendations for graphics programs that heavily support the keyboard as an input device?

Ideally i'd like to have something where i can
- nudge a pixel cursor around with the keyboard arrows
- hit a key to fill the current pixel with the desired colour or pixel brush (for instance, either a single pixel or a round 5px brush pixel)
- use keyboard macros to call up frequently- or recently-used colours
- supports some kind of layering functionality

bonus points++ for customizable keys.

if there's no such program / app, that's useful to know too - maybe that's something i could work on.

ui
Offline
Venezuela

What plataform?, because grafx2 actually can do that, as far as i remember, and it works in mostly any kind of OS.

ant1
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uhajdafdfdfa

maybe you'd like doing ansi art with acid-draw

bryface
Offline
vancouver, canada
ant1 wrote:

maybe you'd like doing ansi art with acid-draw

I USED TO:

that's why i'm asking smile.  a pixel art program that drives like an ANSI editor would totally make my day and i could get seriously cracking on some pixel art without resorting to my tablet and sucky penmanship.

ui: thanks for the suggestion.  i'll give it a try, though i think i have a very specific interface in mind -- maybe it's worth throwing together a flash or javascript app as a proof of concept.

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

awesome!!!

grymmjack
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US

@bryface, I am also questing for a keyboard driven pixel art editor.

Did you get grafx2 to work this way? I'm going to try that. I adore grafx2 but don't use it as much as other offerings that are easier to futz with these days.

One thing I was considering, ANY program can be keyboard driven with the accessibility options in windows called Mousekeys? I think you can move the cursor by individual pixels, and then there is left click and right click keys you can use too. This would allow any existing software to do it. Granted it's not going to be like our old trust ANSI editors smile

That said, I did find something kind of in-between called teletext, and here is an editor for windows:
http://teastop.co.uk/teletext/wxted/

I'm quite fond of this editor. It lets you plot teletext using keyboard, just like our ANSI - the reason I mention is because while we don't have access to the full pixel palette of colors, the minimalism will force creativity.

I share this example screenshot:

(and yes before you ask, that's a sloth smile)

Also you probably already know this, but PabloDraw is an excellent windows ANSI editor that will let you use any colors you want, if you save in XBin mode.
http://picoe.ca/products/pablodraw

Text Formats: ANSI, ANSI/24, ASCII, ADF, Avatar, BIN, CG, IDF, Tundra, CtrlA, XBIN, Animated ANSI
Vector Formats: RIPscrip

Also not to spam the entire thread, but this is an example of me using pablo recently (as well as some modern techniques) perhaps you might enjoy this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNEjb-dbvqg

grymmjack
Offline
US

@bryface, grafx2 works. You need to hold CTRL and then arrows move the cursor. While holding CTRL press SPACE for left click. While holding SHIFT press SPACE for right click.

grymmjack
Offline
US

Also @bryface, if you press F9 you can hide your cursor. I would recommend these settings to get a good text-like/more definition setup:

(left click Settings) Quadruple size pixels.
(right click PAL) Palette Cols: 64, Lines 4, RGB Scale: 8

Then some hotkeys that are handy: [ select previous color, ] select next color, ` pick color

This gets a good way towards setting up sort of like ANSI but with higher definition.

GL!

spinach
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hey @bryface

my english is bad, so i don't understand everything the programm should be able to do.
But i really recommed you the programm "Aseprite"! (which costs about 15 dollars)

Keys are fully customizable and there are a lot of nice features like:
- replace all pixels of a choosen colour with another colour.
- symetric drawing (horizontally and vertically)
- original colour pallets of c64, gameboy and a lot of other old game consols
- infite using of layers
- you can also animate and export gifs by using frames (which can also be sorted by layers)
- the programm surface is really neat and the programm isn't hard to learn.

but i think it isnt possible to move the cursour with your arrow keys :-/