Does anybody know of a good pixel-based image editor?

[Allen Kapusta]

I am looking for an image editor to edit icons and drawings down to
the pixel level. Photoshop is costly, Microsoft Paint doesn't handle
transparency, and GIMP (an open source editor) cannot select based on
transparency and doesn't allow direct entry of transparency values,
only percentages. I have started using Pixelformer, but have not used
it enough to know if it fits my needs. One thing I would like to see
is a global replacement of pixels (in a region or the entire drawing)
of a specified range of colors and transparency with a single color
and transparency (an "ungradient" tool?).

[Carl Karsten]

from #gimp chat on freenode IRC:

(05:23:33 PM) Billiard: CarlFK: you can transfer the alpha channel to
a layer mask to directly modify it
(05:24:53 PM) pgimeno: CarlFK: also, Selection to Alpha allows you to
"select based on transparency"

Don't ask me anything about it - join the #gimp channel.
I can help with IRC.

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--
Carl K

[John Bratt]

You can try paint.net. http://getpaint.net

It is not as feature-rich as Photoshop or Gimp, but it is better than MS Paint, and it is easy to use.  I use it for a lot of icons and simple drawings.  The magic wand tool can probably do what you want.  Just google around, you can find lots of tutorials.

--John

On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Allen Kapusta <kapu...@acm.org> wrote:

[stanchat]

When I made games for Gameboy we used a tool called Pro-Motion.  It was hands down the best pixel editor since it was based on the old school tool called dpaint..

 

http://www.cosmigo.com/promotion/index.php

[Allen Kapusta]

After using Pixelformer, I found it useful for setting pixel values, including the alpha channel, in one operation, and specifying alpha values in hexadecimal rather than percentages; however the move, copy, and resize operations do not appear to work properly, and the export operation does not store the modified file under the same directory that it was read from.  I am still using GIMP to move or copy parts of an image, resize or scale images, and set an entire selected area to the same value (Pixelformer will only change those pixels that match the one under the fill cursor).  This requires using two programs to make changes to the same image.  The "ungradient tool" that I asked about would change all of the pixels in the image (or a selected area) that have a value in a specified range to a single value; I still have not found anything to do this.