What do you suggest for a simple PCX image editor?

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neviksti
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What do you suggest for a simple PCX image editor?

Post by neviksti »

I'm trying to find an image editor that can do the following:
- As for editting features, if it supports everything MS-Paint does, that's all I need
- PCX file support
- handles palettes images well (can easily edit palette and select colors from the palette, etc.)
- does not rearrange palette automatically (most programs don't anyway, but thought I'd mention this requirement)
- portable (can carry and run from a USB key)
- freeware

Considering I'm basically looking for a MS-Paint clone that handles PCX files, I'm hoping there is some little program out there that does this. Unfortunately I'm having trouble finding some good keywords for a google search and keep finding useless pages.

Any suggestions?

I used to use NeoPaint and it is perfect (I'd be willing to pay for that), except that I can't carry it with me and use at the university computer labs (it needs some settings or extra files or something). So if someone knows a way to make a program mostly portable, that would solve my problems too.
byuu

Post by byuu »

I haven't come across a good PCX editor myself ... maybe a Photoshop plugin? What about a simple PCX->BMP converter, edit the image, and then convert that back to PCX afterward?

PCX is mostly the same, it just treats 0xc0+ as RLE, where the low six bits represent the length. If you want to write one value from 0xc0 to 0xff, you'd just do 0xc0 <value>. If you can't find anything, I could write up a quick converter if you'd like.

MS Paint is, of course, terrible with palette order editing and preservation. What I usually do is store the images as 24-bit and use the dropper tool. We could use the old PCX file to create the new one from the BMP and preserve the palette order.
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Post by odditude »

IrfanView is an excellent lightweight image viewer supporting batch conversion as well, while Paint.net is an image editor that was designed as a more-capable replacement for mspaint. While neither alone would do what you want, the two together would take care of you nicely in the way byuu suggested.
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blackmyst
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Post by blackmyst »

Just to provide one more option, you might have a look at GraphicsGale, which was basically made for paletted images. It doesn't save as pcx, but like ottitude suggested, irfanview is pretty good for that. Irfanview does have its own paint-like drawing interface since recently, but I don't think it features palette editing.
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doktor_kris
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Post by doktor_kris »

Paintshop Pro 4.x is wonderful when it comes to drawing
tiles and sprites and stuff like that.

Neviksti: Is there any chance that you could release the
source code to PCX2SNES? It's a really good utility and
I really would like to be able to run it natively.
creaothceann
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Post by creaothceann »

doktor_kris wrote:Paintshop Pro 4.x is wonderful when it comes to drawing tiles and sprites and stuff like that.
The installed files can also be copied to an USB stick, and used as a portable version from there.
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Rashidi
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Post by Rashidi »

anything that do better clone of the Deluxe Paint functionality is good, i guess
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Post by Johan_H »

Checked out this?
powerspike
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Post by powerspike »

What about an editor like Grafix2? Sorry that it's like delux paint, but it supports the same stuff mspaint does. It works extremely well too for editing old images. It's in beta so I guess use it at your own risk like the application says. Though I use it for normal editing and haven't had any major problems. As for the pcx palette stuff you'd have to check it yourself because I have no idea.
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