4 ms·

You must be kidding. It's a solid step back from Sketchpad developed in 1963: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREms

by stiff 13y ago

You must be kidding. It's a solid step back from Sketchpad developed in 1963: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint There were tens of better drawing programs meanwhile, for example I remember being able to do animations as a 5 year old kid using the fantastic Fanta Vision program under MS DOS (pity the editing isn't shown in the video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision Unfortunately the leading open source painting programs are remarkably uninspired, interfaces of Gimp and Inkscape are truly a mess, but then artists are hardly Linux users. On OSX there are a lot of great painting programs, for example: http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html

Sprint 13y ago
Try Mypaint or Krita as alternatives to Gimp and please do not bad-mouth FOSS painting tools if you do not know them.
- stiff 13y ago
  I have been using Gimp easily for 10 years now and Inkscape for at least 5, I know them decently well, and I appreciate they at all exist and the hard work that went into at all implementing the individual features. But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. The open source "bazaar" model of software development in general isn't the best at coming up with good interfaces, you need a coherent vision of a single person with some authority for that.
  - philh 13y ago
    > But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. This is not the only objective measure of UX.
    - cousin_it 13y ago
      Some people say a UI must be judged by experienced users, because newbies don't understand it yet. Others say a UI must be judged by newbies, because experienced users get desensitized to UI problems over time. (For example, every programmer can use their own program easily, but that doesn't mean the UI is good.) I think I trust the newbies more, because I've seen many bad UIs that experienced users like, but I haven't seen many bad UIs that newbies like.
    - boomlinde 13y ago
      What are the objective measures of UX? Isn't the USER experience inherently subjective?
  - hnha 13y ago
    So? Ever sat someone down to Photoshop? UX is mostly built upon previous experience. BTW you replied to a comment that suggested looking at alternatives to Gimp...
    - bpicolo 13y ago
      Photoshop has a lot more stuff, but when I just want to draw a circle or something I can actually find where to do it. Gimp is a real mess.
      - mkr-hn 13y ago
        The brush and pen tools are right there in the toolbox.
  - precisioncoder 13y ago
    Gimp yes, Inkscape no, everyone I sit in front of Inkscape loves it and it made me overcome my feeling of "I'm a programmer, I can't do art" thanks to it's great interface and smooth learning curve.
    - kghose 13y ago
      I feel Inkscape has a great UI, too. I never used Illustrator, which seems to be the benchmark for "semi-pro" use of such vector graphics tools. The GIMP I use because I'm used to it, but I find the interface a little annoying.
    - joe_the_user 13y ago
      I think Inkscape is basically the best open source graphics program there is. It's unfortunate to have it get a bunch "drive by insults". Even if someone doesn't like Inkscape, the issue of Inkscape's interface is completely different from the issue of The Gimp's interface.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- sspiff 13y ago
  Or Pinta, which is like Paint.net, although a little less polished.
ancarda 13y ago
>Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint Because Bill Gates wrote MacPaint. When Windows was in development, he likely wrote MSPaint, or at-least got a developer to make it similar.
- stiff 13y ago
  What? The very wikipedia page you're quoting says: The original MacPaint was developed by Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple's original Macintosh development team.
  - ancarda 13y ago
    Ah, my mistake. I could have sworn I had read something about Bill Gates developing for MacPaint. I think it was to do with editing text that had been placed on an image.
vidarh 13y ago
MsPaint only receives that kind of response from people because it was near universally available for a lot of people. Deluxe Paint is still my favourite, but there's a long list of much better paint programs for the Amiga too, but the vast majority of people who have used MS Paint have never seen any of them.
- tbirdz 13y ago
  If you like Deluxe Paint you might want to check out grafx2. It's a GPL licensed graphics program inspired by Deluxe Paint. I've been messing around with it a bit, and it's pretty cool. Would probably be useful for sprite art, or similar style art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrafX2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrafX2 http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
- Wintamute 13y ago
  Deluxe Paint single handedly got me into the animation industry! So great. I was 11 years old, pre-internet, never used a mouse before, and still could find my way around it easily. Animbrushes FTW!
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Deluxe Paint was an obvious extension of MacPaint for color work, but the ultimate version of it (written by the same people) was Studio/32 for the Mac (which also predates MSPaint). Let's not forget Photoshop and Fractal Painter predate MSPaint.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Deluxe Paint is not an extension/clone of MacPaint unlike most of the early paint applications of the era. Dan Silva (the creator of Deluxe Paint) worked at Xerox before he got to EA. While there designed an in house paint application for the Xerox Star based on inspiration from SuperPaint by Richard Shoup (at Xerox Parc). When Silva joined EA in 1983, he wrote a version of Doodle for MS DOS for in-house use at EA - this port was named Prism. Deluxe Paint started as an Amiga port of Prism. (Source: The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga, Jimmy Maher, The MIT Ppess Platform Studies series) So they have shared heritage, given that MacPaint too was largely inspired by work at Xerox, and it's possible Silva made adjustments to Prism/DPaint after MacPaint was released since its release predated the commercial release of DPaint, but the application was already in use before MacPaint was released, though only in-house at EA. If you look at the SuperPaint UI you can see its influence on some other painting applications too - Koala Painter on the C64 for example has a separate tools page that looks very close to SuperPaint. But they are fundamentally different in other ways too - DPaint was designed specifically as a tool for artists first, and turned into a product afterwards. You see the difference in the various painting tools and brush support etc. that means you can actually "paint" with DPaint in a way you most certainly can't with MacPaint. The workflow is very different - you can do great things with MacPaint (or MS Paint) too, but it is far more laborious because it's hard to do much freehand drawing with it. For me, when I moved from the C64, where I'd used Koala Painter - similar in capabilities to MacPaint - to the Amiga and started using Deluxe Paint, I first started drawing the same way I'd done on the C64: Laboriously placing pixel by pixel, with the occasional line draw or flood fill. Freehand was easier than on the C64 thanks to a mouse instead of a joystick, but the tools were not a good fit for that other than for large surfaces. But then I started experimenting with DPaints tools, like smear and blend, and my drawing style changed and got much more fluid and relaxed and it actually carried over to paper as well.

by stiff 13y ago

Sprint 13y ago

Try Mypaint or Krita as alternatives to Gimp and please do not bad-mouth FOSS painting tools if you do not know them.

stiff 13y ago
I have been using Gimp easily for 10 years now and Inkscape for at least 5, I know them decently well, and I appreciate they at all exist and the hard work that went into at all implementing the individual features. But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. The open source "bazaar" model of software development in general isn't the best at coming up with good interfaces, you need a coherent vision of a single person with some authority for that.
- philh 13y ago
  > But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. This is not the only objective measure of UX.
  - cousin_it 13y ago
    Some people say a UI must be judged by experienced users, because newbies don't understand it yet. Others say a UI must be judged by newbies, because experienced users get desensitized to UI problems over time. (For example, every programmer can use their own program easily, but that doesn't mean the UI is good.) I think I trust the newbies more, because I've seen many bad UIs that experienced users like, but I haven't seen many bad UIs that newbies like.
  - boomlinde 13y ago
    What are the objective measures of UX? Isn't the USER experience inherently subjective?
- hnha 13y ago
  So? Ever sat someone down to Photoshop? UX is mostly built upon previous experience. BTW you replied to a comment that suggested looking at alternatives to Gimp...
  - bpicolo 13y ago
    Photoshop has a lot more stuff, but when I just want to draw a circle or something I can actually find where to do it. Gimp is a real mess.
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      The brush and pen tools are right there in the toolbox.
- precisioncoder 13y ago
  Gimp yes, Inkscape no, everyone I sit in front of Inkscape loves it and it made me overcome my feeling of "I'm a programmer, I can't do art" thanks to it's great interface and smooth learning curve.
  - kghose 13y ago
    I feel Inkscape has a great UI, too. I never used Illustrator, which seems to be the benchmark for "semi-pro" use of such vector graphics tools. The GIMP I use because I'm used to it, but I find the interface a little annoying.
  - joe_the_user 13y ago
    I think Inkscape is basically the best open source graphics program there is. It's unfortunate to have it get a bunch "drive by insults". Even if someone doesn't like Inkscape, the issue of Inkscape's interface is completely different from the issue of The Gimp's interface.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
sspiff 13y ago
Or Pinta, which is like Paint.net, although a little less polished.

ancarda 13y ago

>Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version: >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint Because Bill Gates wrote MacPaint. When Windows was in development, he likely wrote MSPaint, or at-least got a developer to make it similar.

stiff 13y ago
What? The very wikipedia page you're quoting says: The original MacPaint was developed by Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple's original Macintosh development team.
- ancarda 13y ago
  Ah, my mistake. I could have sworn I had read something about Bill Gates developing for MacPaint. I think it was to do with editing text that had been placed on an image.

vidarh 13y ago

MsPaint only receives that kind of response from people because it was near universally available for a lot of people. Deluxe Paint is still my favourite, but there's a long list of much better paint programs for the Amiga too, but the vast majority of people who have used MS Paint have never seen any of them.

tbirdz 13y ago
If you like Deluxe Paint you might want to check out grafx2. It's a GPL licensed graphics program inspired by Deluxe Paint. I've been messing around with it a bit, and it's pretty cool. Would probably be useful for sprite art, or similar style art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrafX2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrafX2 http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
Wintamute 13y ago
Deluxe Paint single handedly got me into the animation industry! So great. I was 11 years old, pre-internet, never used a mouse before, and still could find my way around it easily. Animbrushes FTW!
Tloewald 13y ago
Deluxe Paint was an obvious extension of MacPaint for color work, but the ultimate version of it (written by the same people) was Studio/32 for the Mac (which also predates MSPaint). Let's not forget Photoshop and Fractal Painter predate MSPaint.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Deluxe Paint is not an extension/clone of MacPaint unlike most of the early paint applications of the era. Dan Silva (the creator of Deluxe Paint) worked at Xerox before he got to EA. While there designed an in house paint application for the Xerox Star based on inspiration from SuperPaint by Richard Shoup (at Xerox Parc). When Silva joined EA in 1983, he wrote a version of Doodle for MS DOS for in-house use at EA - this port was named Prism. Deluxe Paint started as an Amiga port of Prism. (Source: The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga, Jimmy Maher, The MIT Ppess Platform Studies series) So they have shared heritage, given that MacPaint too was largely inspired by work at Xerox, and it's possible Silva made adjustments to Prism/DPaint after MacPaint was released since its release predated the commercial release of DPaint, but the application was already in use before MacPaint was released, though only in-house at EA. If you look at the SuperPaint UI you can see its influence on some other painting applications too - Koala Painter on the C64 for example has a separate tools page that looks very close to SuperPaint. But they are fundamentally different in other ways too - DPaint was designed specifically as a tool for artists first, and turned into a product afterwards. You see the difference in the various painting tools and brush support etc. that means you can actually "paint" with DPaint in a way you most certainly can't with MacPaint. The workflow is very different - you can do great things with MacPaint (or MS Paint) too, but it is far more laborious because it's hard to do much freehand drawing with it. For me, when I moved from the C64, where I'd used Koala Painter - similar in capabilities to MacPaint - to the Amiga and started using Deluxe Paint, I first started drawing the same way I'd done on the C64: Laboriously placing pixel by pixel, with the occasional line draw or flood fill. Freehand was easier than on the C64 thanks to a mouse instead of a joystick, but the tools were not a good fit for that other than for large surfaces. But then I started experimenting with DPaints tools, like smear and blend, and my drawing style changed and got much more fluid and relaxed and it actually carried over to paper as well.