grafx2

Layers are a late addition to Grafx2, so don’t be surprised if the functions seem a bit separate from the rest of the program. The concept of layers in Grafx2 is exactly the same as in Gimp, Photoshop etc. Here is a tentative introduction:   An image ... [More] is made of several images of same dimensions, placed on top of each others (the "layers"). The transparent parts in a layer allow you to see the layer directly below, and the complete image is what you see when looking down from the top.   As you can edit each layer separately, designing your image as layers will allow you to modify/displace an element in the foreground without having to redraw the background, since the background is memorized in its own unchanged layer. For more beginner explanations, try searching online tutorials on “using layers”.   An understanding of the concept of layers is assumed for the following sub-chapters. System of transparency Grafx2 handles layer transparency by marking a single color as transparent, for example color 0. All pixels drawn with this color are considered fully transparent; all other colors are considered fully opaque. No values in-between are possible, so no alpha channel is used. The result is like a 1-bit alpha channel, but it reserves a color from the palette, so you can only draw in 255 colors when using layers – except in the bottom layer, where this color is shown anyway in Grafx2.There is no eraser tool, because anything that paints with the transparent color will actually erase : you can erase with a monochrome brush of any size, with a filled circle, or with a polygon ! GIF transparency The GIF format allows you to mark a color as transparent, so the background shows through when it is displayed in a web page for example. PNG format has a similar feature, though it is less known. To use it in Grafx2 you can check the option \"Transparent background\", in Layer menu. This option controls if the \"transparent color\" of the layer system is also transparent in the GIF or PNG file. (This can be used even with images which consists of only one layer.) User interface The layer-specific tools are located in an optional toolbar that can be shown or hidden. To open the layer toolbar, left-click the button on the status bar. In the layer toolbar, you can see: how many layers you have : the numbered buttons which one is the active layer where you draw : white button which layers are temporarily hidden : black buttons. File formats Only GIF supports layers at this moment. If you use any other format to save your layered image, the layer data will be lost and only the flattened image will be saved. (Grafx2 reminds you when you do). [Less]

Customize the menu palette The little palette on the bottom right of the menu displays 64 colors by default. If you’re working on 16-color graphics, ¾ of the space is wasted. So, Grafx2 allows you to set the number of colors in this palette : less ... [More] colors will mean bigger buttons, which are more comfortable to use. To edit this setting, open the ‘Secondary palette menu’, by right-clicking the ‘Pal’ icon. You can set the number of rows, the number of columns, and if the colors are ordered from left to right, or from top to bottom. Less than 256 values in RGB components By default, Grafx2 allows you to set RGB values of palette with 256 levels of precision, but if you are drawing graphics for older technologies (or inspired by them), you may want a rougher scale: the relevant setting is “RGB scale”. To edit this setting, open the ‘Secondary palette menu’, by right-clicking the ‘Pal’ icon. Example values that you can use are 64 (VGA) 16 (classic Commodore Amiga, 4096 combinations), or even 3 (Amstrad CPC) A smaller scale means that the RGB sliders in the palette are more blocky, they move by bigger units, and they show numbers from zero to "scale" minus 1. In HSV mode, the palette sliders are not affected, however the program will really search the closest-match RGB by taking the setting into account. [Less]

Pixel scalers LCD displays look very bad when  using something else than their native resolutions, and low resolutions are very rarely supported or proposed. If you find yourself squinting at your screen because pixels are too small and too close ... [More] , Grafx2 can scale its own display to x2, x3 and x4, thus giving larger pixel units. This works as well in full screen mode than in a window. The whole display area of Grafx2 gets zoomed in: mouse cursor, menus, fonts. Since Grafx2 was designed in the era of MCGA, the minimum resolution for GUI windows is 320x200, so if you're running in 1024x768 you can scale to x3, You need at least 1280x800 to scale x4. The scaling is done in software, so you won't get any blurring (linear interpolation).   In addition, Grafx2 can propose some non-square modes where it zooms differently on each axis: Wide modes and Tall modes.   [Less]

Keyboard shortcuts Don’t hesitate to change the keyboard shortcuts to ones that are easy to use and remember for you. The default configuration is a lot like Deluxe Paint, but not many people are used to it. Settings Some general program settings ... [More] are available in the Settings screen. A few other, less-used ones can be defined in the file gfx2.ini, that you can check and modify with a text editor. This file is located in %appdata%\\Grafx2 (Windows) or ~/.grafx2 (Linux), and self-documented with comments. This file, as well as gfx2.cfg which contains for example the keyboard shortcuts, are defined for each user of your computer and automatically re-created with default values when they are missing.   (Windows) You can carry Grafx2 on a flash drive and use it on any computer by simply copying the program’s directory on your flash drive, and adding the two files gfx2.cfg and gfx2.ini with the executable. In this case, Grafx2 will not read or write configuration files on the computer’s hard disk when running, leaving no trace. Bookmark directories The file selector windows have little icons with stars in them. They are used as bookmarks, to quickly change to a directory. This is useful to memorize the usual places where you need to read and write images. Left-click a bookmark to use it, Right-click (and hold) a bookmark to open a dropdown menu to set it (store the current directory). Skinability Several sets of icons are available, and you can make your own (or only modify the icon or mouse cursor that you find annoying). The skins and the fonts are stored in the program’s directory under “skins”. They are plain image files, so you can edit them…in Grafx2 for example. (You can reload the skin without leaving Grafx2) There are many graphical constraints, such as using only 4 colors for GUI elements; but don’t worry, Grafx2 will check everything before loading, and if there’s something it doesn’t like, it will cancel the loading and display a very verbose message, telling you exactly what pixel is the problem. [Less]

Contextual help There are extensive help screens for all drawing tools and all windows. By default, the associated key is F1. If a specific window was open, it will show the explanations about this window. When no window is open, and your mouse ... [More] cursor is positioned over one of the buttons of the toolbar, it will show the help for this tool (and/or the related options window) The help screens also show the current keyboard shortcuts, and allow you to change them immediately. Keyboard shortcuts There are more than a hundred actions which can have a shortcut key. As soon as you have found the functions you use a lot, it’s recommended to check the associated shortcut key, this can save you a lot of back-and-forth between the toolbar and the drawing area. If the default key combination doesn't suit you, redefine it. To view a shortcut, open the relevant page of contextual help: the highlighted key names are the actual shortcuts with your current configuration. Click the name to edit the shortcut.   Some shortcuts which are often useful: Scroll picture : cursor arrows Magnifier : M Zoom in/out when magnified : + and - Grab brush : B Choose single-pixel brush : DEL Color picker : ~ Swap pages : TAB The keys SHIFT, ALT, CONTROL, and META (on Mac) can be used to make more combinations – so you can’t associate anything to “just Shift”. With a wheel mouse, you can also associate shortcuts to the third button (“Mouse3”), and to WheelUp and WheelDown. Again, Control, Shift etc. can be used to make more combinations. You can set at most 2 key combinations for the same shortcut, so for example you can associate both ~ and Mouse3 to the Colorpicker tool. Use the spare page to store parts you will need later The spare page is very handy to store pieces of your main image. For example you can pick a part of your image with the rectangular brush tool, paste it somewhere in the spare over a solid color background, clean out the background (still on the spare) until it has just the contour you need, then grab it again, and switch back to the original Main page: you will have a clean brush with no leftover pixels, that you can paste anywhere. Use the color picker There is a color picker tool (also called pipette) to pick a color from the picture. By default the shortcut is the easy-to-reach ~ key. Using it can spare a lot of time, especially when your palette has more colors than can be displayed in the toolbar’s palette. While the tool is active, you have a specific mouse cursor, and the status bar displays both the color you’re currently highlighting and its RGB values. Click with left mouse button to pick Magnifier (Zoom) A magnifier is available to zoom in on your picture. It’s very useful to draw on detailed parts of picture, without needing extreme mouse precision, and easier on your eyes. Activate it or disable by clicking the magnifying glass icon. While active, your editing area is split in two, with the normal view on the left and the zoomed-in part on the right. You can drag the separator bar to adjust the proportions. You can draw in either areas, both update in real time. If the mouse cursor is over the picture when you use the keyboard shortcut of the magnifier (default: M), Grafx2 instantly zooms and centers the zoomed part on the place where your mouse cursor was. By default, the cursor arrows are used to scroll the zoomed area around. I made a mistake: Undo / Redo Your drawing actions are memorized, so you can easily Undo any number of drawing steps, and Redo them if you go too far in history. A single step is generally all the changes you do from the moment you click on the picture, to the moment you release the mouse button. To Undo or Redo, click the “Oops” with the left mouse button and the right mouse button, respectively.   The maximum number of steps that can be recorded is in the settings, you can go up to 99. The system uses a circular buffer, so it behaves a bit different from usual: When you Undo until you reach the oldest step and then Undo once more, you’re back on the more recent step. [Less]

By default when you run Grafx2, it starts a new image as large as the program’s window, with a default 256-color palette. To change the canvas dimensions, click the Resolution icon, then click the image Width or Height to change it and click OK. When ... [More] an image is bigger than the editing window, you can use the cursor keys to scroll the view. To load or save an image, use the Load/Save icon To exit the program, press the ‘Quit’ icon, on the right edge of the tool bar. Grafx2 will propose to save your changes, if you have not saved yet. Indexed colors Grafx2 is made for drawing with a system called indexed colors. This means that your image defines a palette of colors, 256 at most, and when you draw with “red”, or “black”, in fact the program remember which color number you used. The big difference with a program like MS Paint or Gimp is that you can later alter your image’s palette, and this will affect all the places where you used the modified colors. A typical file format for indexed colors is GIF.   See the chapter ‘Palette manipulation’ for useful palette actions. Grafx2 can import 24bit images from a few file formats such as Jpeg, creating a custom palette by selecting 256 colors using a mathematical method (Median cut in the RGB color space) Be aware that the result can never be good with photographic images and the like, it’s mostly useful to convert screenshots of computer applications. Grafx2 saves only indexed colors formats: for example it uses the PNG variant which keeps the palette. Two-button drawing Usually, clicking on the image with the left mouse button paints with the foreground color (FG), and clicking with the right mouse button paints with the background colors (BG). Some other tools will use left click for confirm and right to cancel/stop. In any case, it’s rare to get the same effect from left-clicking and right-clicking, and the right mouse button is as useful as the left one. The current FG and BG are shown next to the palette, and clicking on the palette itself with the left and right mouse button will set the FG and BG colors, respectively. Setting two useful colors can save you a lot of time when drawing, as you won’t need to change the active color so often.   If you have a third mouse button, it’s not used for drawing. You can assign a shortcut to the button and to wheel movements to perform punctual actions, for example to activate the color picker or the magnifier. Brushes The program allows you to draw using single pixels, of course. You can also use one of the built-in monochrome shapes, like circles, squares, horizontal lines etc. They are called monochrome because they automatically use your foreground and background colors when drawing. To select a monochrome brush, open the Paintbrush window and click the button with the shape you want to use. Note that the single pixel is proposed, top left.   The last type is the Color Brush, often called simply “brush”. It’s a group of colored pixels that you get by grabbing with the rectangular grab tool, or the freehand grab. You can use a color brush to draw a texture, or displace part of a picture for example. Note that the current Background color acts as transparent for your brush: pixels of this color will not be drawn. Drawing with the right mouse button will paste the background color only, in the shape of your brush.   In the toolbar, the paintbrush icon shows which brush you’re currently using. A special symbol indicates when you’re using a color brush.   The monochrome brushes are resizable, you can use shortcuts . and , to increase and decrease your current brush’s size. This allows you to pick sizes that are not available in the Paintbrush screen. A very useful shortcut sets the paintbrush to single-pixel: DEL. (actually it’s a circle of size 1) Many actions can be performed on the color brush, see the Brush FX menu. You can use your color brush in monochrome mode by right-clicking the Paintbrush icon. It does not alter the brush contents, only the way it’s displayed and drawn. Right-clicking the ‘pick brush’ icon recovers the last color brush you had. This is useful after using a built-in monochrome brush, or after turning your brush monochrome. Drawing tools (general) A lot of drawing tools work by pasting your brush repeatedly at several positions: at all the mouse positions (freehand drawing),   in straight lines from one position to the next, outlining a circle, etc. While such tool is active, the current brush is shown “stuck” under your mouse cursor, as a preview. The current brush is not shown when you’re using “Flood fill” and other tools that don’t use your current brush.   A more in-depth description of drawing tools is in Drawing tools (detailed), but feel free to experiment. Some tools work by single click, or while dragging the mouse and releasing; but a few ones use a more complicated series of clicks. If the usage or effect of a tool is not clear, use the contextual help on its button to get immediate information. Spare page Grafx2 keeps two different images open at the same time. The image you see is called the “Main page”, and the one you don’t see is called the “Spare page”. You can exchange them by clicking the icon or using the shortcut TAB : The Spare becomes the Main (and visible), the Main becomes the Spare (hidden). When editing a single image, the spare is often used as “rough paper”, to save pieces of your main image or brushes, for future use. The program keeps track of them independently: file name, modified since last save, history of modifications for undo/redo, etc. Their palette can be different, but then a brush that you grab in an image will look different in another. Drawing effects Grafx2 has a system of  Effects, allowing you for example to darken a piece of picture, or protect some colors against drawing on them. If drawing doesn't seem to give the right colors, maybe it's because you have accidentally activated an effect : Check the Effects screen. When an effect is active, the "FX" button appears pressed, though it's not very noticeable. This guide will describe some of the effects, when they are most relevant [Less]

GRAFX 2.6 (11/01/2018) New features -size option on command line to set the picture size Underline keyboard shortcuts in button labels (easier to use grafx2 with a keyboard) Generic "rasters" drawing mode for CPC Much better support for C64 ... [More] fileformats (files from various C64 paint programs are recognized and loaded) Load and save Thomson MO/TO pictures (raw files and MAP with some of the well known extensions) Drawing modes that automatically apply constraints of several 8bit computers and consoles (C64 including FLI and Multicoor, ZX now with brightness check, Thomson, Game Boy, Apple II). Auto set palette, grid, etc for ease of use Loading WIN and SCR files from Amstrad CPC, and saving them with palette (separate PAL file in Advanced OCP Art Studio format) Load Apple II HGR and DHGR files Clipboard support: you can copy/paste images and brushes to/from other software in GrafX2 now Load/save TIFF files Improvements Only allow panning when it is safe to do so (not in the middle of a drawing operation) In addition to SDL, support SDL2, Win32 GDI, and X11 backends "tall 3" (1x3 aspect ratio) pixels are properly saved and loaded in GIF files Better management of aspect ratio in PNG files Show the appropriate icon for network drives in the fileselector Better support for NetBSD and OpenBSD More system information in the statistics screen Restoring the lasso brush does not erase the current brush if there is nothing to restore URL in inline help are now clickable Mode 5 and raster mode now show ink colors under the cursor in the statusbar Configuring the menu colors in the ini file works again Load a default palette (default.pal) at startup automatically (no need to edit the skin files anymore) Improve loading of Neochrome and IFF images (color cycling, etc) When spare and main pages filename start the same, display the end of the names instead More complete support for BMP files (OS/2 variants, embedded PNG in BMP, etc) Fixes For some operations, the cursor would not be visible or be corrupt Color clash enforcing now works as expected Fix crash when loading images or restoring backups to spare page Saving of CPC images and PI1 images could be corrupt or crash the program Problems with unicode filenames GRAFX 2.5 (07/05/2018) - Pixels not dead! New features Ability to draw ellipses and circles corner-to-corner, rather than from the center (allows to draw them with an even width or height) New sample factory scripts: ThomsonConstraints, FontConverter, CodenetSend, various picture converters taking color clash constraints into account Allow factory scripts full access to our widget/window system, for more comple UIs: sliders, textboxes, and more. Android and GCW Zero platforms now supported. New file format: PCH for Amstrad CPC "Perfect Pix" editor (load only) Implement saving of palettes in GPL format (GIMP compatible). New 3:4 pixel aspect ratio Gamma-correction of palette (when using less than 256 steps, for example to replicate the Thomson palette) Support for more constrained drawing modes: Thomson, ZX spectrum, "EGX" modes for Amstrad CPC. Fast zoom in/out shortcuts (default: shift + mousewheel or shift +/-) Support ICO and CUR files (Windows icons and cursors). Ability to load/save palettes directly from the Palette window (no need to use the spare page and then copy/remap anymore). When saving and reloading a brush from disk, the transparent color index is autmatically restored. Support loading of more fileformats using the RECOIL library (optional) Improvements Fileformats Autodesk FLI/FLC loading Amiga icon (in .info files) loading PI1/PC1 format now can save color cycling information More complete support for IFF files in several formats Better color matching algorithm for C64-multicolor and FLI converters. Don't save *.C64 pictures in FLI format, use plain C64 format instead. C64 file saving will tell which cell has a color clash when it cannot convert the picture. Ability to save "fullscreen" CPC/SCR pictures (more than 16K of video RAM) Optimized GIF file compression: use less than 8 bits per pixel when possible, store only changed parts of the canvas for animation frames. New algorithm for reducing true color images to 256 colors. Support OS/2 and Windows CE BMP files. Support CGA and 3-plane PCX files. IFF: support CAMG, TINY, DPPV, SHAM (Sliced-HAM), CLUT, ANNO (file comment is saved/loaded here), PCHG (Palette Change), BMHD, ANIM/ANHD,DLTA (animated ILBM), DPAN (Deluxe Paint Animation), BEAM (multi-palette), DYCP, CTBL, RAST chunks, set aspect ratio when loading images, support 24bit images, support ACBM subtype, EHB palette, various unusual file formats, better compatibility with malformed files. Use the ILBM thumbnail if there is one, instead of doing our own preview. Set a default greyscale palette for IFF files without a palette. More compact saving of XPM files when few colors are used. Proper preview for "Mode 5" Amstrad files. Scripting Factory scripts only create a backup step when they actually modify the picture matchcolor2 in lua script has better accuracy. API to get the count of layers in main and spare page User interface Reworked palette look to make the transparent color visible. Right click on "add layer" duplicates the current layer. Added "sort by histogram" in palette editor. Reworked layout of effects and palette windows. Right click on drawing mode button now has a menu to directly select the new mode. Animation bar shows total number of frames. Right click on a layer toggles between SOLO and previous state. Other On X11 based platforms (Linux, *BSD), use fontconfig to get ttf fonts instead of the X11 API. (issues 305 and 525) Limited unicode support (handle cyrillic and extended latin characters in filenames and text clipboard) Fixes Loading of IFF files from Atari ST version of Deluxe Paint (#38) Freeze when palette is vertical and number of rows isn't a power of two (issue 539) PC1 files saved in GrafX2 were not loadable in Degas Elite (issue 535) Improve choice of colors for the XOR highlight on low-color images. Crash when saving CPC pictures in SCR format. Possible crash when opening the file selector. Crash when using contour fill and grid at the same time. On Haiku, the status bar text was not working as expected. On OS X, sometimes the native cursor would not be hidden. BMP loading was broken on big endian systems. Fix cursor glitch and palette corruption when there was an error while previewing a file. When trying to load a bookmark that doesn't exist, the filename would be lost. Program would crash if the file format dropdown would be larger than the available space on screen. GRAFX 2.4.2035 bugfix release (19/10/2012) Palette changes that modify the pixels can't be undone (issue 514) Opening a 24bit image in command-line gives wrong mouse cursor (issue 515) On some non-x86 platforms, some changes can't be undone on animations > 32 frames (issue 516) GRAFX 2.4 (01/10/2012) svn revision: r2024 Improvements Support for animation : load, edit and save animated GIFs. (issue 31) Tilemap effect (issue 195) Mouse panning when holding 'space' key by default (issue 233) Preview layers when the image has several layers and you hover the layer buttons Support for saving actual LBM files for Deluxe Paint 3. The previous format is renamed to PBM. (issue 505) Improved brush rotation using rotsprite algorithm (r1789) Lua bindings: matchcolor2(), getfilename(), run()... Saving a layered image or animation in non-GIF format now prompts the user to save flattened copy or current layer/frame. Can paste text in any text field (from system clipboard. not available on all OSes at the moment) Palette reduction: use DawnBringer's improved color selection Grid size limit is now 999*999 (up from 80x80) Improved the color reduction algorithm. New one also consumes less memory and has 24 bits of precision instead of 19 Skins window: font preview (issue 450) Flood-fill icon now has a specific mouse cursor, (issue 457). Add XOR-line helper when drawing circles and ellipses Can load RIFF palette file format Lua script selector displays current directory Support for Lua 5.2 Specialized editing mode for Amstrad CPC Mode 5 (In Effect menu: 8-bit) C64 file formats Virtual keyboard can be enabled on all platforms, useful for Tablet PCs (issue 453) Right 'Windows' key can be used as a keyboard modifier for shortcuts, unless reserved by your OS. Fixes Fix crash when browsing drives that have no 'parent directory' entry (issue 477) Fix crash when loading 24bit images as brushes Crash when activating magnifier while hovering layer bar (Issue 480) Fix a crash that happened in Palette screen when right-clicking near top of screen (r1938) Fix a memory corruption in Lua's 'setpicturesize' when using multi-layered images. Fix an error when loading layered image that used a transparent color different from zero ,which resulted in corrupted image. Fix disappearing cursor when using brush rotation tool (issue 473) Resizing not precise enough on small pictures/brushes (issue 435) IFF (ilbm/pbm) loading: fix a slight imprecision in loading the palette (last 2 bits of the RGB channels) Default 'load' directory was the program's directory instead of the one from loaded image (issue 448) Lasso-ing a brush with right mouse button wouldn't erase cleanly (visual) Inconsistent directories in file selectors for image and brush. (issue 462) Fix a graphical mouse bug that happened when toolbar was hidden and you moved the mouse from layer button to image. Loading a GIF animation as a brush now loads first frame, instead of all images piled on each others Previewing a GIF animation now displays first frame instead of all images piled on each others Fileselectors: 'Parent directory' inserts the parent directory string (slash or ..) in filename (issue 498) In file selectors, 'parent directory' was sometimes missing in some drives or subdirectories (issue 506) After rotating a brush with the 180-degree button, following rotations and flips occurred as if the 180-turn never took place (issue 460) Fix a bug in brush distort that often caused the brush to disappear entirely after distort (all color zero) GRAFX 2.3.1781 bugfix release (19/04/2011) Fixed: Mouse cursor deadzones in fullscreen mode, especially if you change the program's mouse sensitivity (issue 428) Fixed: Removed a source of mouse cursor lag while drawing (issue 269), especially on X11, by speeding up the graphic redraw. GRAFX 2.3.1778 bugfix release (16/04/2011) Fixed: Graphical glitch in Options screen (issue 432) Fixed: Menu colors changed on reload, causing very often the cursir lines to be black over black (issue 433) GRAFX 2.3 final (09/04/2011) svn revision: r1770 Improvements Added 2 virtual keyboards for portable console ports - one to easily enter filenames or text for text tool, another one for all numeric input. Magnifier settings for Main page and Spare page are now synchronized, if the images have same dimensions (issue 327) Many new Lua functions for scripting Lua scripts can now be located anywhere on your disk (the window allos browsing). Improved the color matching formula used in 'Copy to Spare' and 'Recolorize brush' Rotating a brush while holding 'Shift' key now snaps to the closest 22.5° multiple) Added color cycling animation (issue 365). Animation can be active even when drawing. Color cycles (or gradients) are now saved in PNG and GIF formats. Paintbrush window can be customized with your own brushes (issue 345). It also highlights the selected one. The colorpicker cursor, (in zoomed view) no longer displays a preview pixel. Fixed the bottom line of pixels in the magnifier: The bottom row can no longer be too thin. Redesigned Settings window. Now contains all settings that were only available in gfx2.ini Safety backups (after a crash or power failure) now remember the original file name and directory. File sorting in file selector is case insensitive New drawing workflow allowing to use right click as a colorpicker instead of drawing with the secondary color where it makes sense Allow skins to redefine the "selected" button graphics Real alpha transparent mode. Allows to properly use antialiased-text on a multicolor background Copy and paste in the palette using ctrl C/ctrl V or right-click sub-menu. Cleanup of the palette screen and added a way to input colors in hexadecimal. Palette screen : Added a button to tag used colors Palette screen : Added a color histogram Palette screen : Reducing color count now removes duplicates Palette screen : Added a merge tool New shortcuts for brush resize and calling factory scripts directly New algorithm for palette sorting Support fonts in 'bitmap Font Writer' format. Drag-and-dropping a file into Grafx2's window now opens it. Drive list (in Load/Save? screen) now has icons for media type: HDD, CD, etc. Allow saving XPM images Hold Control and Click to perform a right-click : handy for tablets and similar devices. An option allows you to pick different keys (issue 400) Text tool : With bitmap fonts, you can now enter carriage returns using Alt+Enter Fixes Keyboard shortcuts are now exclusive by default (you can change option if needed). This avoids the need to unset a shortcut when you need the key for something else. Fixes aevere image corruption when scrolling image while some layers are hidden (issue 417). Palette screen: Undo is now much more reliable (issue 354) Better control of brush palette (issue 362) Text tool with bitmap font now works much better with colored fonts, especially if you use 'Get brush colors'. Fix the Saturation slider in HSL mode that would make greyscale colors red (issue 396) Menu size (depending on UI scale) doesn't change when Pixel Scaler changes, when it's possible (issue 338) Fix a bug where closing the Magnifier moved the view to random place (issue 380) Lua : too many fixes to list Fix important bug where resizing an image or using any transformation resets transparent color to zero Fix imprecise RGB sliders when RGB scale is lower than 256 (issue 384) Skin DPaint: Fix the icon 'unslected layer 6' Skin DPaint: Fixed the hotspot of the standard mouse cursor, it was not in top left corner. Skin Modern: Fix the button for palette scroll arrows The image preview in Load/Save? window now uses a web-safe palette, if the previewed image has a low color count. Fixed the 'Copy to Spare / palette and remap' : It wasn't fully undoable. Improved mouse handling. Should fix many cases mouse cursor was choppy or lagging for no reason, taking lots of CPU. Modified the method for picking GUI colors in the current palette. This solves many cases where the menu was difficult to read. Fix using fullscreen mode with a tablet (issue 317). Fixed the format of gfx2.ini, which was sometimes causing the loss of the "scroll up" shortcut. Fixed a few typos in Keyboard Shortcuts help. Fixed crash on loading PNG24 pictures if they contain transparency data. Fixed inaccurate picking of color in the menu palette and improved its ergonomy (issue 340) The gradient rectangle tool can no longer leave construction lines (issue 339) Fixed the "Zap unused colors" funtion, in some cases it would affect wrong colors. Fixed compilation problem for Linux (Issue 336) F1 key in settings screen didn't open the right help files Better compatibility in the GIF file loader (1bpp GIFs and other things) Trying to use a font bigger than 99 and some bitmap fileformats would crash the program Keyboard click emulation was broken since 2.1 GRAFX 2.2.1430 bugfix release (27/03/2010) Fixed Text window which never closes when opened by 'T' (Issue 333) GRAFX 2.2 final (22/03/2010) - Dragon's Layers Edition New features Layers Lua binding to generate and alter picture and brush with scripts Two new skins by Jamon and iLKke GIF and PNG transparency Shortcut keys can be bound to multiple actions Load more image formats when SDL_image can handle them (jpeg, tga, ...) Show number of pixels used by colors in the selected range in palette window Preview skins in the skin dialog. Move more settings there. Load prefered menu colors from the skin. Fix changing to a screen that use different color indexes for its menu colors Save Amstrad CPC pictures in .SCR format. Menu toolbars can be separately shown or hidden Safety backups are made automatically about every minute, and reloaded after a crash or program halt Improvements Zoom-on-mouse, also when changing the zoom factor More zoom levels are available for the magnifier (up to x32) Help message when running in console with /? or similar switch show some more options and a readable list of fullscreen modes Only show recognized file extensions and not all files by default in save/load screen Shade window selects the foreground color by default when opened, and if you close it with only one color selected either in the palette or the range filer, this color is selected as foreground Added more space for filename in status bar Better command line handling, allowing more options and possibility to load an image for the spare page too Menu zoom is now maximum x2 by default. Avoids having a really big menu on modern screens Rewrite of the save and load system to avoid a risk of corrupting the picture in some special cases Program remembers the pixel scaler you used last Fixes Fix a possible crash when using grad rectangle with shift key Load and save palettes in "jasc" format and with the full 0..255 range Removed deprecated setting "mouse correction factor" Reset quicksearch when entering a directory in load/save dialog Rotating a brush 180° was broken if the height was even since r763 Fix BMP saving again Help page for Contour fill had a line too long Fix potential endianness and packing problem in all file formats. The homepage address on the splash screen was wrong ! Crash if you enable mask with 2 pictures of different size in main and spare Mask and Stencil shortcuts were reversed in the FX window Joystick is now disabled by default to avoid mouse drifting Text tool: Bitmap fonts painted in "color 0" now work Fix a wrong shortcut (filled circle) in helpscreen Fix the loading of some C64 format files [Less]

If you have been using the DOS version of Grafx2 (or still using it through DOSbox), the following information will tell you how Grafx2 adapts to the new platforms. Even if you've been using the Win32 port by Eclipse-game, some of this information ... [More] may interest you. Portability Of course, the main change is that you don't need to run MS-DOS anymore. GrafX2 is now running on a very wide range of operating systems and CPUs. Filesystem Long file names are supported. You can see up to 28 characters from the file name in the Save and Load windows, and you can scroll to the left and right for even more. The character encoding used is Windows-1252, but there is some limited support for UTF-8, too. The "select drive" button allows you to reach the drives (Windows), volumes (Amiga), or mount points (Linux). This replaces the DOS-specific drive icon handling. The list is refreshed each time you click the button, so you can add new drives (USB drive, for example) while the program is running. On all platforms, the files are sorted in a case-sensitive way, but the "quicksearch" feature is case-insensitive. There is also a new set of bookmark buttons to quickly reach your favorite directories. Input The mouse cursor should use exactly the settings of your OS. Grafx2 no longer needs its own mouse settings. The program allows you to bind shortcuts to your third mouse button and mouse wheel, in combination with shift / ctrl / alt if you want. 4th mouse button (and more) is still not supported. You can type filenames normally, the right characters will appear (within the limits of Latin-1 character set). Pressing control C in text input boxes no longer crashes the program. The configuration of keyboard shortcuts is done directly from the help screen, no need for a separate configuration tool anymore. The configuration files from the DOS version are still recognized, and GrafX2 will try to migrate as much of your settings as possible. Display The program's default mode (and 'safety resolution', the one you can call with Shift+Enter) is now a scalable window, since this is guaranteed to work on all platforms and screens. You can resize or maximize the window using your normal window manager, dragging the window edge etc. The other modes are fullscreen, using whatever technology provides fullscreen modes on the OS (DirectX on Windows, X11? on linux) The program has a preset list of (low-resolution) modes, and checks with SDL if each of them is supported. It also queries SDL for more resolutions, and all modes auto-detected by SDL are added to the list. The resolution screen only shows video modes that SDL claims it can display. If your graphics cards reports a mode that outmatches your monitor's capacities, you can tag it "Unsupported" by clicking the left-column button until it displays a black block. This way, GrafX2 will not use this mode on your system. About color depth: Grafx2 is still a 256-color program, and will use 256-color mode if they are available. If your hardware or driver only support truecolor/hicolor modes, it will use them instead, SDL does an excellent job of converting on-the-fly 8b->24b. Since it is uncommon for recent hardware (and drivers) to support low resolution video modes like in the DOS days, GrafX2 now offers an additionnal software scaling. This allows to double or triple the size of the pixels in software, and also allows wide (2x1) or tall (1x2) pixels, as required by some old graphics (C64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, ...) The color precision is now 24-bit, instead of 18 in the DOS version (which was limited by the VGA hardware). This can result in some changes to the saved files, for example the maximal color value saved by GrafX2 was 252, not 255, in GIF files. Power saving The original GrafX2 is a single-tasking DOS program, it uses all available CPU cycles. This version reduces the cpu usage to what's actually needed, so it will not overheat your machine. File formats A lot more file formats are now available, including more modern ones such as PNG. The old custom PKM format is not recommended, instead GrafX2 will now use GIF with some specific extensions to store its own data. New features All missing features from the beta versions under DOS are now implemented, and a lot more. The list is quite long (Animations, layers, text, gradients, ...), so maybe you should re-read the complete user manual. Fortunately, the help system was also improved. You can press the F1 key at any place to get help. This work in all windows, and also while hovering a button in the menu with the mouse. This is also the place where you can set your keyboard shortcuts. [Less]