GrafX2 is billed as the ultimate 256-color bitmap paint program. This software includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse.
This is a bitmap paint program that allows you to draw in more than 60 video resolutions (from 320×200 to 1024×768, including most of the standard Amiga resolutions: 320×256, 320×512, 640×256, 640×512, and more, provided your videocard knows how to handle them).
This program is dedicated to everybody who knows what a single pixel is. Its layout is not very different from the famous Deluxe Paint or Brilliance, so it will be quite easy to handle it if you know at least one of these programs. If you aren’t used to the art of drawing with up to 256 colors, it will be a little more difficult for you, but you should give it a try (or more, because most of the power of this program won’t show up on the first try).
Key Features
-
- Image editing in indexed colors (with palette), up to 256 colors.
- Classical tools: lines, circles, text, multiple undo/redo, built-in brushes, …
- Less classical tools: airbrush, splines, gradient-filled shapes, custom brushes.
- Dual-view mode, you can see and draw both zoomed and actual size views at the same time.
- Extensive palette editor: RGB and HSL color systems, editing group of colors, define and create color ranges.
- Palette control: reorder colors without altering picture, common palette generation for merging two images.
- Shading mode: helps you to antialias with your own gradients.
- Grid mode: draw tile and easily assemble and copy them to create a screen mockup.
- Patterned mode.
- Transparency, smoothing, smearing, and other advanced effects.
- Extensive and customizable shortcuts. You can control everything with the keyboard and disable the menu to draw fullscreen.
- Unusual screen modes : wide and tall pixels, constrained palettes. Very useful for pictures dedicated to 8 and 16-bit computers.
- Supported file formats:
- PKM (Sunset Design) (This is a custom format used only by GrafX).
-
- BMP (Microsoft, BMP file format).
-
- CEL, KCF (K.O.S. Kisekae Set System).
-
- GIF (Compuserve).
-
- IMG (Bivas).
-
- LBM (Electronic Arts).
-
- PAL.
-
- PCX (Z-Soft).
-
- PI1, PC1 (Degas Elite).
-
- PNG (Portable Network Graphics).
-
- SCx (Colorix).
-
- NEO (NeoChrome).
-
- JPEG (load only).
-
- TGA (Truevision TGA – load only).
Website: grafx2.chez.com
Support: Blog
Developer: The Grafx2 Project Team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
GrafX2 is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Painting Tools | |
|---|---|
| Krita | Edit and paint images; part of the KOffice office suite |
| MyPaint | Paint program with dynamic brushes for graphic tablets |
| GIMP | GNU Image Manipulation Program |
| Drawpile | Draw, paint, sketch and animate |
| AzPainter | Full color painting software |
| Pinta | Mimics the usability of Paint.Net |
| GrafX2 | Inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance |
| Photoflare | Cross-platform image editor |
| LazPaint | Image editor with layers and transparency |
| Tux Paint | Drawing and painting software designed for children |
| CinePaint | Tools for painting, manipulation and image processing |
| dibuja | Simple to use paint program like Paintbrush for Mac or classic MS Paint |
| VPaint | Experimental prototype based on the Vector Graphics Complex |
| Milton | Infinite-canvas paint program |
| Drawing | Basic raster image editor similar to Microsoft Paint |
| Vara | Minimalist digital painting tool |
| Textual Paint | MS Paint in your terminal |
| CorePaint | Paint app for C Suite |
| InfiniPaint | Collaborative, infinite space, infinite zoom, canvas note-taking/drawing app |
| Brushshe | Simple and user-friendly raster graphics editor |
| BlockPaint | Terminal-based painting tool |
| KolourPaint | Easy-to-use paint program by KDE |
| Alchemy | Non-orthodox painting tool experimenting with alternative ways of drawing |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |