Deluxe Paint
Encyclopedia
Deluxe Paint is a bitmap graphics editor series originally created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts
(EA).
The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985. It was eventually ported to other platforms, but only had industry standard
status on the Amiga.
development tool called Prism. As Silva added additional features to Prism, it was turned into a showcase product to coincide with the Amiga's debut in 1985. After release, it was quickly embraced by the Amiga community and became the defacto graphics (and later animation) editor for the platform. It was used almost ubiquitously in the making of Amiga games
, animation
and demoscene
productions. Amiga manufacturer Commodore International
later commissioned EA to create version 4.5 AGA for bundling with the new Advanced Graphics Architecture
chipset (A1200, A4000
) capable Amigas. Version 5 was the final release after Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994.
With the development of Deluxe Paint, EA introduced the ILBM
and ANIM
file format standards for graphics. Although widely used on the Amiga, they never gained widespread end user acceptance on other platforms, but were heavily used by game development companies. Dpaint was used by Lucasarts
to make graphics for their adventure games such as Monkey Island
, and is the source of the name of the main character in the Monkey Island series, Guybrush Threepwood
- the character's name derived from the file used to store his image data. Contrary to popular belief however, the original source sprite was not named "guy.brush" as the file extension used was ".bbm" and not ".brush". The file was in fact named "guybrush.bbm", the "brush" portion of the file name being included by the artist behind the character, Steve Purcell
.
Early versions of Deluxe Paint were available in both protected and non copy-protected versions, the latter retailing for a slightly higher price. This copy-protection was later dropped. Deluxe Paint was part of a series of products from the Electronic Arts Tools group—later moved to the ICE (for Interactivity, Creativity, and Education) group—which included such Amiga programs as Deluxe Music, Deluxe Video, and the Studio
series of paint programs for the Macintosh.
Unlike modern graphics editors, such as Adobe
Photoshop, most Amiga graphics editors were heavily oriented towards the bitmap
ped and bitplane
d display modes of the native Amiga chipset
, and in Deluxe Paint this was most prominent.
The Amiga natively supports indexed colour
, where a pixel's colour value does not carry any RGB hue information but instead is an index to a colour palette (a collection of unique colour values). By adjusting the colour value in the palette, all pixels with that palette value change simultaneously in the image or animation. Creative artists could use this in their animation
by using "colour cycling".
Deluxe Paint III added support for Extra Halfbrite
. It also added editing modes that allowed one to stencil certain colors, and perform blurs on the stencils in such a way as to produce an effect that with skill could be be made to look similar to light-sourcing in a 3D program. Deluxe Paint III also added the ability to create cel-like animation, and animbrushes. These let the user create cel-like animations, as well as the ability to pick up a section of an animation as an "animbrush", which can then be placed onto the canvas while it animates. Deluxe Paint III was one of the first paint programs to support animbrushes. These allow you to copy a section of the animation and paste it into another area of the screen and animation. Similar to copy and paste, except you can pick up more than one image.
Deluxe Paint IV, which did not feature Silva as the Lead Programmer, was significantly less elegant and crashed more often than its predecessors, though it did offer significant new features like non-bitplane-indexed Hold-and-Modify
support. Version 4.5 AGA
, which appeared the following year, addressed the stability issues along with providing support for the new A1200
/A4000
AGA
machines and a revamped screen mode interface. It appeared in both standalone and Commodore-bundled versions.
The final release of Deluxe Paint, version 5, had support for true 24-bit RGB images. However, using only the normal AGA
native chipset, the 24-bit RGB colour was only held in computer memory, the on-screen image still appeared in indexed colour.
The heavy reliance on an indexed colour model allowed for a rather different way of working, not generally found on many popular paint programs since. The intimate linking of palette and image data made DPaint an excellent tool for creating bitmapped icons, animation and game graphics in the days before true colour images became commonplace.
For example, transparency was as simple as selecting a background colour index (a single right click on the palette GUI
to change). Colours could be locked from editing by use of a stencil (a list of colour indexes whose pixels should not be altered in the image data). And simple colour-cycling animations could be created using contiguous entries in the palette. It was also easy to change the hue and tone of a section of the image by altering the corresponding colours in the palette. (The specific section would need to use a dedicated part of the palette for this technique to work.)
Brushes can be cut from the background by using the box, freehand, or polygon selection tools. They can then be used in the same manner as any other brush or pen. This functionality is simpler to use than the "stamp" tool of Photoshop or Alpha Channels as provided in later programs. Brushes can also be rotated and scaled, even in 3D. After a brush is selected, it appears attached to the mouse cursor, providing an exact preview of what will be drawn. This allows precise pixel positioning of brushes, unlike brushes in Photoshop CS3 and lower, which only show an outline.
Animations stored in IFF ANIM format were delta compressed (only differences between current and previous frames are stored), making animations even smaller and faster on playback.
The most successful PC version was Deluxe Paint II Enhanced 2.0, which was compatible with ZSoft
's PC Paintbrush
PCX
image format file. It supported the CGA
, EGA
, MCGA and VGA IBM-compatible PC graphic cards, the Hercules
, Tandy
and Amstrad
proprietary video cards and the main of the first Super VGA video cards (manufacturer dependent) modes, enabling it to support up to 800×600 pixel screen resolution with 256 (from 262,144) colors and 1024×768 pixels with 16 colors.
The MS-DOS conversion was carried out by Brent Iverson
and its enhanced features were by Steve Shaw.
Its sister product Deluxe Paint Animation
(only for 320×200 pixels and 256 colors) was widely used, especially in the videogame industry.
" by Danish alternative dance
duo Junior Senior
was created entirely using the Amiga version of Deluxe Paint by the art collective Shynola
.
The webcomic "Unicorn Jelly" was completed over the course of three years using Deluxe Paint 2, one panel posted every night at midnight.
British author and artist Molly Cutpurse
used Deluxe Paint to create the video graphics for the 1989 film Murder on the Moon, starring Brigitte Nielsen
.
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
(EA).
The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985. It was eventually ported to other platforms, but only had industry standard
De facto standard
A de facto standard is a custom, convention, product, or system that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces...
status on the Amiga.
History
DPaint was the product of an in-house artArt
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
development tool called Prism. As Silva added additional features to Prism, it was turned into a showcase product to coincide with the Amiga's debut in 1985. After release, it was quickly embraced by the Amiga community and became the defacto graphics (and later animation) editor for the platform. It was used almost ubiquitously in the making of Amiga games
Amiga games
Amiga games are computer games compatible with the Commodore Amiga.The Amiga was an important platform for games in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of all the 16-bit home computers, it was the one to gain the greatest success as a games machine due to its graphic and sound subsystems, which were...
, animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and demoscene
Demoscene
The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
productions. Amiga manufacturer Commodore International
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
later commissioned EA to create version 4.5 AGA for bundling with the new Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
chipset (A1200, A4000
Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models, the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030....
) capable Amigas. Version 5 was the final release after Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994.
With the development of Deluxe Paint, EA introduced the ILBM
ILBM
ILBM is a subtype of the Interchange File Format used for storing picture data. ILBM stands for InterLeaved BitMap which refers to the way the pictures are stored. The image data is stored as a varying number of bitplanes, each storing one bit of data for each pixel in the image...
and ANIM
ANIM
ANIM is a file format, used to store digital movies and computer generated animations , and is a variation of the ILBM format, which is a subformat of Interchange File Format.-Anim FileTypes:...
file format standards for graphics. Although widely used on the Amiga, they never gained widespread end user acceptance on other platforms, but were heavily used by game development companies. Dpaint was used by Lucasarts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
to make graphics for their adventure games such as Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by the same company after its name was changed to LucasArts. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series...
, and is the source of the name of the main character in the Monkey Island series, Guybrush Threepwood
Guybrush Threepwood
Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood is the main character of the Monkey Island series of computer adventure games by LucasArts. The voice of Guybrush is actor Dominic Armato in the third, fourth and fifth games, as well as the enhanced remakes of The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's...
- the character's name derived from the file used to store his image data. Contrary to popular belief however, the original source sprite was not named "guy.brush" as the file extension used was ".bbm" and not ".brush". The file was in fact named "guybrush.bbm", the "brush" portion of the file name being included by the artist behind the character, Steve Purcell
Steve Purcell
Steve Ross Purcell is an American cartoonist, animator and game designer. He is most widely known as the creator of Sam & Max, an independent comic book series about a pair of anthropomorphic animal vigilantes and private investigators, for which Purcell received an Eisner Award in 2007...
.
Early versions of Deluxe Paint were available in both protected and non copy-protected versions, the latter retailing for a slightly higher price. This copy-protection was later dropped. Deluxe Paint was part of a series of products from the Electronic Arts Tools group—later moved to the ICE (for Interactivity, Creativity, and Education) group—which included such Amiga programs as Deluxe Music, Deluxe Video, and the Studio
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
series of paint programs for the Macintosh.
Functionality
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
Photoshop, most Amiga graphics editors were heavily oriented towards the bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
ped and bitplane
BIT plane
This article is about Natalie Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology's project. For the company, see Bitplane. For the digital information term, see bit plane....
d display modes of the native Amiga chipset
Original Amiga chipset
The Original Chip Set was a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities...
, and in Deluxe Paint this was most prominent.
The Amiga natively supports indexed colour
Indexed color
In computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers...
, where a pixel's colour value does not carry any RGB hue information but instead is an index to a colour palette (a collection of unique colour values). By adjusting the colour value in the palette, all pixels with that palette value change simultaneously in the image or animation. Creative artists could use this in their animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
by using "colour cycling".
Deluxe Paint III added support for Extra Halfbrite
Halfbrite mode
Extra Half-Brite mode is a planar display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses six bitplanes . The first five bitplanes index 32 colors selected from a 12-bit color space . If the bit on the sixth bitplane is set the display hardware halves the brightness of the corresponding color...
. It also added editing modes that allowed one to stencil certain colors, and perform blurs on the stencils in such a way as to produce an effect that with skill could be be made to look similar to light-sourcing in a 3D program. Deluxe Paint III also added the ability to create cel-like animation, and animbrushes. These let the user create cel-like animations, as well as the ability to pick up a section of an animation as an "animbrush", which can then be placed onto the canvas while it animates. Deluxe Paint III was one of the first paint programs to support animbrushes. These allow you to copy a section of the animation and paste it into another area of the screen and animation. Similar to copy and paste, except you can pick up more than one image.
Deluxe Paint IV, which did not feature Silva as the Lead Programmer, was significantly less elegant and crashed more often than its predecessors, though it did offer significant new features like non-bitplane-indexed Hold-and-Modify
Hold-and-Modify
Hold-And-Modify, usually abbreviated as HAM, is a display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses a highly unusual technique to express the color of pixels, allowing many more colors to appear on screen than would otherwise be possible....
support. Version 4.5 AGA
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
, which appeared the following year, addressed the stability issues along with providing support for the new A1200
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 , was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market...
/A4000
Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models, the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030....
AGA
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
machines and a revamped screen mode interface. It appeared in both standalone and Commodore-bundled versions.
The final release of Deluxe Paint, version 5, had support for true 24-bit RGB images. However, using only the normal AGA
Advanced Graphics Architecture
Advanced Graphics Architecture is the third generation Amiga graphic chip set, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. AGA was codenamed the Pandora chipset by Commodore International internally....
native chipset, the 24-bit RGB colour was only held in computer memory, the on-screen image still appeared in indexed colour.
The heavy reliance on an indexed colour model allowed for a rather different way of working, not generally found on many popular paint programs since. The intimate linking of palette and image data made DPaint an excellent tool for creating bitmapped icons, animation and game graphics in the days before true colour images became commonplace.
For example, transparency was as simple as selecting a background colour index (a single right click on the palette GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
to change). Colours could be locked from editing by use of a stencil (a list of colour indexes whose pixels should not be altered in the image data). And simple colour-cycling animations could be created using contiguous entries in the palette. It was also easy to change the hue and tone of a section of the image by altering the corresponding colours in the palette. (The specific section would need to use a dedicated part of the palette for this technique to work.)
Brushes can be cut from the background by using the box, freehand, or polygon selection tools. They can then be used in the same manner as any other brush or pen. This functionality is simpler to use than the "stamp" tool of Photoshop or Alpha Channels as provided in later programs. Brushes can also be rotated and scaled, even in 3D. After a brush is selected, it appears attached to the mouse cursor, providing an exact preview of what will be drawn. This allows precise pixel positioning of brushes, unlike brushes in Photoshop CS3 and lower, which only show an outline.
Animations stored in IFF ANIM format were delta compressed (only differences between current and previous frames are stored), making animations even smaller and faster on playback.
MS-DOS version
ZSoft Corporation
ZSoft Corporation, founded by Mark Zachmann, was a Marietta, Georgia software company in the 1980s known for the PC Paintbrush software and its PCX graphic file format. ZSoft first merged in 1989 with Mediagenic. When Mediagenic went bankrupt in 1991, Zachmann was able to regain his independence...
's PC Paintbrush
PC Paintbrush
PC Paintbrush was graphics editing software created by the ZSoft Corporation in 1985 for computers running the MS-DOS operating system....
PCX
PCX
PCX is an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS imaging standards, although it has since been succeeded by more sophisticated image formats, such as GIF,...
image format file. It supported the CGA
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
, EGA
Enhanced Graphics Adapter
The Enhanced Graphics Adapter is the IBM PC computer display standard specification which is between CGA and VGA in terms of color and space resolution. Introduced in October 1984 by IBM shortly after its new PC/AT, EGA produces a display of 16 simultaneous colors from a palette of 64 at a...
, MCGA and VGA IBM-compatible PC graphic cards, the Hercules
Hercules Graphics Card
The Hercules Graphics Card was a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. which, through its popularity, became a widely supported display standard. It was common on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor . It supported one high resolution text mode and...
, Tandy
Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store, and acquired RadioShack in 1963. The Tandy name was dropped in May 2000, when RadioShack Corporation was made the official name.-History:Tandy began in 1919...
and Amstrad
Amstrad
Amstrad is a British electronics company, now wholly owned by BSkyB. As of 2006, Amstrad's main business is manufacturing Sky Digital interactive boxes....
proprietary video cards and the main of the first Super VGA video cards (manufacturer dependent) modes, enabling it to support up to 800×600 pixel screen resolution with 256 (from 262,144) colors and 1024×768 pixels with 16 colors.
The MS-DOS conversion was carried out by Brent Iverson
Brent Iverson
Brent Iverson is a programmer best known as a simulations game developer. Among his credits are the PC-DOS version of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, LHX Attack Chopper, and Jane's US Navy Fighters, all published by Electronic Arts.-Background:...
and its enhanced features were by Steve Shaw.
Its sister product Deluxe Paint Animation
Deluxe Paint Animation
Deluxe Paint Animation is a graphics editor and animation creation package that is an MS-DOS adaptation by Brent Iverson of Deluxe Paint, with additional animation features by Steve Shaw, released by Electronic Arts.-Features:...
(only for 320×200 pixels and 256 colors) was widely used, especially in the videogame industry.
Uses
The music video for the 2003 single "Move Your FeetMove Your Feet
"Move Your Feet" is a song by Danish pop duo Junior Senior. The song, recorded in 2002, was Junior Senior's biggest hit, reaching #3 in the United Kingdom and #20 in Australia, and played at dance clubs the world over. The song appears on the album D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat along with a live...
" by Danish alternative dance
Alternative dance
Alternative dance or indie dance is a musical genre that mixes rock subgenres with electronic dance music...
duo Junior Senior
Junior Senior
Junior Senior was a pop musical duo from Denmark. The duo consisted of Jesper "Junior" Mortensen and Jeppe "Senior" Laursen ....
was created entirely using the Amiga version of Deluxe Paint by the art collective Shynola
Shynola
Shynola is the collective name of a group of, then, four visual artistsbased in London who have collaborated on a variety of projects,most notably a number of acclaimed music videos for several pioneering artists....
.
The webcomic "Unicorn Jelly" was completed over the course of three years using Deluxe Paint 2, one panel posted every night at midnight.
British author and artist Molly Cutpurse
Molly Cutpurse
Molly Cutpurse is an English transgender author. She was born in Stratford in the East End of London in September 1952 and raised in nearby Leyton...
used Deluxe Paint to create the video graphics for the 1989 film Murder on the Moon, starring Brigitte Nielsen
Brigitte Nielsen
Brigitte Nielsen is a Danish model, actress, musician and reality television personality who began her career modelling for Greg Gorman and Helmut Newton and several years later made appearances in the 1985 films Red Sonja and Rocky IV and is also known for her marriage to Sylvester Stallone...
.
See also
- Deluxe Paint AnimationDeluxe Paint AnimationDeluxe Paint Animation is a graphics editor and animation creation package that is an MS-DOS adaptation by Brent Iverson of Deluxe Paint, with additional animation features by Steve Shaw, released by Electronic Arts.-Features:...
- Brilliance (graphics editor)Brilliance (graphics editor)Brilliance is a bitmap graphics editor for the Amiga computer, published by Digital Creations in 1993. Although marketed as a single package, Brilliance in reality consisted of two separate applications. One was a register-based package also named Brilliance...
- GrafX2GrafX2GrafX2 is a bitmap graphics editor inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance . It is free software and distributed under GNU General Public License.- History :...
- Photon PaintPhoton PaintPhoton Paint is a Hold-And-Modify based bitmap graphics editor for the Commodore Amiga, first released in 1987. It was programmed by Oren Peli, Eyal Ofek & Amir Zbeda at Bazbo Soft and published by MicroIllusions....
- Project DogwaffleProject DogwaffleProject Dogwaffle is a raster graphics editor with animation capabilities.The program, written by Dan Ritchie, runs on the Windows platform and has both freeware and commercial versions. The commercial version, PD Pro Digital Painter, is updated frequently while the most recent freeware version is...
- List of raster graphics editors
- Comparison of raster graphics editorsComparison of raster graphics editors- List :- General information :Basic general information about the editors: creator/company, license etc.- Operating system support :The operating systems on which the editors can run natively , meaning which operating systems have which editors specifically coded for them - List :- General...