GrafX2
Encyclopedia
GrafX2 is a bitmap graphics editor inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint
and Brilliance (graphics editor)
. It is free software
and distributed under GNU General Public License
.
. It was distributed as freeware, and was one of the most used graphics editor in the demoscene. However, the development stopped due the lack of time of the developers, and lack of interest, because no one was running MS-DOS anymore. So they released the sourcecode under the GNU GPL license.
A Windows port was done by the Eclipse demogroup and presented at the State of the art party in 2004, but the sourcecode for this version does not seem to be available anywhere.
In 2007, a project was started to port the sourcecode from the original MS-DOS version to the Simple DirectMedia Layer
library. The goal was to provide a pixel art editing tool for GNU/Linux, but SDL also allowed easy ports to many other platforms, including Windows. The project development continued on this new version to add the features missing from the original opensource release and the first Windows port.
settings. The SDL port generally runs on platforms which use high resolution screens, so it can use software scaling to emulate low resolutions. The scaling options include several non-square pixels
, this allows editing of pictures for displaying on old 16- or 8-bit microcomputers, which have such video modes.
All the versions of the program are designed for drawing in indexed color
mode, up to 256 colors. A palette editor allows very precise operations on the image and its palette. These functions are precious for console or mobile game graphics where some specific color indices in the palette are required for special effects : Palette swap
, Color cycling, transparent color for sprite
s.
The user interface is mouse-driven with a toolbar for common tools, and some modal dialog windows. For increased productivity with frequently used functions, an extensive system of keyboard shortcut
s is available.
The user can split the editing area in two : normal size on the left, zoomed-in view on the right. Drawing in the zoomed area allows finer mouse control.
The basic drawing concepts are clearly inspired by Deluxe Paint, they involve :
The SDL port currently runs on a lot of computer systems, tested on common systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS X, and on less common ones such as AmigaOS
3.x on 68k, AmigaOS 4.0 on PPC, BeOS
and Haiku
, MorphOS
on PPC, AROS
on x86, SkyOS
. It is even ported on the Handheld game console GP2X, and the Windows version can be used on MS-DOS thru HX DOS Extender
.
.
This explains the presence of features specific to old computers, because demosceners often use this kind of hardware.
Today, the program is also used by pixel artists, to do simple pictures or work on sprites for mobile phone or handheld consoles games.
Deluxe Paint
Deluxe Paint is a bitmap graphics editor series originally created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts .The original version was created for the Commodore Amiga and was released in November 1985...
and 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...
. It is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and distributed under GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
.
History
GrafX2 was a DOS program developed by Sunset Design from 1996 to 2001. It was distributed as freeware, and was one of the most used graphics editor in the demoscene. However, the development stopped due the lack of time of the developers, and lack of interest, because no one was running MS-DOS anymore. So they released the sourcecode under the GNU GPL license.
A Windows port was done by the Eclipse demogroup and presented at the State of the art party in 2004, but the sourcecode for this version does not seem to be available anywhere.
In 2007, a project was started to port the sourcecode from the original MS-DOS version to the Simple DirectMedia Layer
Simple DirectMedia Layer
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms' graphics, sound, and input devices....
library. The goal was to provide a pixel art editing tool for GNU/Linux, but SDL also allowed easy ports to many other platforms, including Windows. The project development continued on this new version to add the features missing from the original opensource release and the first Windows port.
Features and specificities
What made GrafX2 interesting when it was released in 1996 was the ability to display pictures in most of the resolutions available on Amiga. This allowed the use of the program as a picture viewer for PC users. This was done by low level programming of the video card, using X-Modes combined with VESAVESA
VESA is an international standards body for computer graphics founded in 1989 by NEC Home Electronics and eight other video display adapter manufacturers.VESA's initial goal was to produce a standard for 800×600 SVGA resolution video displays...
settings. The SDL port generally runs on platforms which use high resolution screens, so it can use software scaling to emulate low resolutions. The scaling options include several non-square pixels
Pixel aspect ratio
Pixel aspect ratio is a mathematical ratio that describes how the width of a pixel in a digital image compares to the height of that pixel....
, this allows editing of pictures for displaying on old 16- or 8-bit microcomputers, which have such video modes.
All the versions of the program are designed for drawing in indexed color
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...
mode, up to 256 colors. A palette editor allows very precise operations on the image and its palette. These functions are precious for console or mobile game graphics where some specific color indices in the palette are required for special effects : Palette swap
Palette swap
A palette swap is a practice used in video games, whereby a graphic that is already used for one element is given a different palette, so it can be reused as other elements. The different palette gives the new graphic a unique set of colors, which make it recognizably distinct from the original...
, Color cycling, transparent color for sprite
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
s.
The user interface is mouse-driven with a toolbar for common tools, and some modal dialog windows. For increased productivity with frequently used functions, an extensive system of keyboard shortcut
Keyboard shortcut
In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a finite set of one or more keys that invoke a software or operating system operation when triggered by the user. A meaning of term "keyboard shortcut" can vary depending on software manufacturer...
s is available.
The user can split the editing area in two : normal size on the left, zoomed-in view on the right. Drawing in the zoomed area allows finer mouse control.
The basic drawing concepts are clearly inspired by Deluxe Paint, they involve :
- a brush : It's one of the built-in monochrome shape, or a piece of colored bitmap grabbed by the user. The brush appears 'stuck' under the mouse cursor, it gives an accurate preview.
- a tool that pastes the brush on the image at several places : Freehand drawing, straight line, circle, curve, airbrush...
- optionally, a number of Effects that change the way pixels are drawn: For example the Shade mode ignores the brush color, it lightens or darkens the picture depending on the mouse button used (and depending on user-defined color ranges). Some of the effects are classic for a 24bit RGB drawing program (Transparency, Smoothing, Smearing), but their effectiveness in GrafX2 is limited according to the colors pre-defined in the palette.
The SDL port currently runs on a lot of computer systems, tested on common systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, MacOS X, and on less common ones such as AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
3.x on 68k, AmigaOS 4.0 on PPC, BeOS
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing...
and Haiku
Haiku (operating system)
Haiku is a free and open source operating system compatible with BeOS. Its development began in 2001, and the operating system became self-hosting in 2008, with the first alpha release in September 2009, the second in May 2010 and the third in June 2011....
, MorphOS
MorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
on PPC, AROS
Aros
Aros may refer to:*Aros , a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium*AROS Research Operating System, a free software implementation of AmigaOS* Aros, the original Viking name of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark...
on x86, SkyOS
SkyOS
SkyOS was a prototype commercial, proprietary, graphical desktop operating system written for the x86 computer architecture. As of January 30, 2009 development has halted and no plans to resume its development have been announced.- History :...
. It is even ported on the Handheld game console GP2X, and the Windows version can be used on MS-DOS thru HX DOS Extender
HX DOS Extender
The HX DOS Extender is a free DOS extender with built-in Win32 PE file format support. Usually the purpose of a DOS extender is to make protected mode features, especially large memory and 32-bit addressing, available for DOS applications. HX fully supports this goal, but goes some steps further...
.
Relation to the demoscene
The first release of GrafX2 was done at the Wired 96 demoparty. The tool was primarily made for demomakersDemoscene
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...
.
This explains the presence of features specific to old computers, because demosceners often use this kind of hardware.
Today, the program is also used by pixel artists, to do simple pictures or work on sprites for mobile phone or handheld consoles games.
Supported file formats
- PKM (Sunset Design) (This is a custom format used only by GrafX2. It was done in the first version as an easy way to save pictures, before the gif format was managed perfectly.)
- BMP (Microsoft, BMP file format)
- CEL, KCF (K.O.S. Kisekae Set SystemKisekae Set SystemKisekae Set System is a blending of art with computers originally designed to allow creation of virtual "paper dolls". Kisekae is short for "kisekae ningyou"; a Japanese term meaning "dress-up dolls"...
) - GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
(Compuserve) - IMG (Bivas)
- LBMILBMILBM 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...
(Electronic Arts) - PAL
- PCXPCXPCX 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,...
(Z-Soft) - PI1, PC1 (Degas Elite)
- PNG (Portable Network Graphics) (only in the Windows and SDL ports)
- SCx (Colorix)
- NEO (NeoChromeNeoChromeNeoChrome was an early bitmap graphics editor for the Atari ST computer family. It was written by Dave Staugas, a system programmer at Atari and co-author of the ST's operating system....
) - JPEGJPEGIn computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
(only loading) - TGA (Truevision TGATruevision TGATruevision TGA, often referred to as TARGA, is a raster graphics file format created by Truevision Inc. . It was the native format of TARGA and VISTA boards, which were the first graphic cards for IBM-compatible PCs to support Highcolor/truecolor display...
only loading)
See also
- 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...
External links
- The Official GrafX2 Homepage
- GrafX2 for Windows (this is an old port of the original DOS code and should not be used anymore)
- Linux packages: Debian, Ubuntu