Portable Pixarra Pixel Studio 4.17
Pixel Studio Portable follows the key strong points from all the of the Pixarra TwistedBrush artist software products but with a focus on pixel art. This art, sometimes called retro, makes no attempt to hide pixels and sizes of images are often very small. Useful as utility for creating icons, sprites, and other small images for games and websites but also for art on its own. There is no surprise that pixel art is popular, it is simply fun!
Powerful Pixel Art Editing
The user interface of Pixel Studio Portable is designed for efficiency and elegance. Power of over a decade of development in the TwistedBrush product line brought to focus on the single task of pixel art.
Specialized ArtSet for Pixel Art
TwistedBrush has always been known for its powerful and vast collection of brushes. The same is true for Pixel Studio. The program includes a collection of brushes designed just for pixel art.
Brush Variety
Choices are important in pixel art as in any art. Here are a few pixel drawing brushes
1. Pure pixel brush. Solid pixels are panted everywhere the cursor goes. This is a dab placement brush. Rather than drawing a line, a square or circle are drawn.
2. Anti-alias pure pixel. Same as previous but the pixels edges are smoothed.
3. Pixel brush that draws as a connected line. This is a straight line brush, solid and anti-aliased.
A remembered powerful brush in Pixel Studio is the auto mask fill brush. Draw pixels within an enclosed area without worrying about going outside of the lines. Even change colors and your area is remembered because a mask is magically created for you behind the scenes.
Quick Access Panels
The Color Management panel and the Brush Shortcut Panel are two panels you will use a lot. All the panels in Pixel Studio will automatically hide if they get in your way while painting. Manually hiding all panels is also possible with the F3 hotkey.
Quick Command Panel
The Quick Command panel gives you a configurable array of buttons you can keep close at hand while working. Resize and reshape the panel to your needs. Add, remove and move buttons to create the layout that works best for you. Quickly show or hide the panel with the[F4] hotkey. Right click to edit a button or add one to an empty slot.[Ctrl] + click to drag a button to a new location. As an added bonus there is some functionality exposed in the Quick Command panel that isn’t available anywhere else in Pixel Studio.
New Features
New ArtSets and Brush Modifiers
- Nu Media
- Shape modifier ArtSet
- Brush Size modifier ArtSet
- Brush Rotation modifier ArtSet
- Texture modifier ArtSet
- Color modifier ArtSet
- Effects modifier ArtSet
New Paper Features
- Paper Textures
- Paper Color
New Shortcuts
- Hot Key F2 to toggle all dialogs
- The comma (,) hot key allows for a temporary toggling of full screen mode
- The number keys 1-0 select brushes 1 – 10 from shortcuts panel
- The / key pops up the modifiers panel.
- Ctrl X key performs a cut action.
- The M key randomizes the selected brush.
New Brush Effects
- Brush effect “pRend DabEnd” added. Renders the particle only at the end of life with a dab.
- Brush effects “Add Var 1” – “Add Var 10”
- Brush effects “Sub Var 1” – “Sub Var 10”
- Brush effect “3D Shadow Opacity” added. Impacts the other shadow effects. (v4.10)
- Brush effect “VM Percentage 10000” added.
- Brush Effect “Auto apply mode”.
- Brush Effect “Smooth Angle”
- 21 Blob Style brush effects added to change the rendering style foe Alpha Smooth Lum4 layers. (v4.17)
- Brush effects Block Start and Block End added for more powerful flow control. (v4.17)
- Brush effect Anti-Alias v2. Design for use only with smooth stroke. (v4.17)
- Brush effect fade-by-size added. Useful to brushes that need to fade the strength with time based on initial brush size. (v4.17)
- Brush effect envelopes taper1-by-size to taper5-by-size (v4.17)
- Brush effect seed2 added to address issue with exposing it to the Brush Control panel. (v4.17)
- Brush effect Age stroke added to allow for more control over brush effects and enevelopes that interact with stroke length (v4.17)
- Brush Effect “Smooth Angle”. (v4.17)
- Brush Effects “Wedge3”, “Wedge4”, “Wedge5”, “Wedge6”. (v4.17)
- Brush Effect “ColorSelect Index” (v4.17)
- Brush Effect “VM Modulo” (v4.17)(v4.17)
- Brush Effects “VM Min” and “VM Max” (v4.17)
- Brush Effects “Multi 100” (v4.17)
- Brush Effects “Lock Dab Count” (v4.17)
- Brush Effects Envelope “b-ang SmthAngle” (v4.17)
- Brush Effects Envelopes “f-in-slow” and “f-out-slow” (v4.17)
- Brush effect PageArray added (v4.17)
- Brush effect ColorSeclect Set added (v4.17)
- Brush effect Rebase Reset LineTo added (v4.17)
- Brush effect Brush effect Clear Lum on Start addedRebase Reset LineTo Reseed added (v4.17)(v4.17)
Other New Features
- Save Pixel Art option from File menu. Exported at zoom level within the grid.
- Import ArtSet option from the File menu.
- Preferences are now exposed via the Edit menu.
- Tablet compatibility flagged added in Preferences dialog.
- Edit Color dialog added to Quick Command option.
- New Utility Combo Palette.
- Mouse wheel support for lists.
- Menu option to toggle all dialogs
- Brush Select option added to brush shortcuts popup menu.
- Import ArtSet option from the File menu.
- Colors – Combos 01 now included with Paint Studio (v4.17)
Enhancements
Improved Features
- Up to 30 layers are now available!
- Layers UI improvements.
- Page Explorer UI improvements.
- Color Selection improvements.
- Brush selection Improvements.
- All dialogs converted to use color themes.
- Color themes and icon updates.
- Font size improvements to better match higher resolutions.
- Ignore leading or trailing spaces in license key entry.
- Show a wait cursor when doing a long brush search operation. (v4.09)
- Increase the font size in the Brush Effects panel
- Pressure sensitivity responsiveness improved (v4.17)
- Increased number of brush blender bristles from 20 to 100! (v4.17)
- Brush effect Rad Scatter 2 improved to respond to brush resizing dynamically. (v4.17)
Changed Features
- F10 is used to open Page Explorer rather than F2.
- Brush Effect “VM Percentage 1000” to allow values to extend beyond the limit of a brush effect amount.
- Ctrl + Click on shortcut brush will open the Brush Select dialog.
- Allow brush sizes up to 99. (Previously max size was 25).
- Allow all Zoom levels up to 3200%. (Previously restricted zooming out to 1200%)
- The page position won’t automatically be recentered on each page change. (v4.17)
