Swanky Paint PC

Create pixel art and animations with this modern tribute to Deluxe Paint, built on the open-source Gamecake engine. It runs across Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windows, and Mac, delivering Deluxe Paint shortcuts alongside Escher modes like hexels and non-Euclidean geometry. Layer up artwork, trace full-resolution backgrounds, and preview dithering or bloom shaders while supporting wrap mode for seamless tiling. Work with multiple animation frames, spritesheets, and imports from GIF, APNG, SVG, JPG, or PNG, then export universally to any art software. Ultimate undo tracks every step, Lua scripting adds custom power, and 15 palettes like Pico-8 or NES fuel retro vibes. Pixel artists seeking cross-platform tools and community challenges from Swanky Art thrive here.

A modern Deluxe Paint tribute built using our open source game engine, Gamecake.

It is a perfect tool for creating pixel art and animation.

Deluxe Paint is a well designed bitmap graphics editor from the 80s that ran on the Commodore Amiga.

To this day, we still find it the best package out there for its purpose and we have yet to find anything close to it in terms of usability and design. We have tried other pixel editors but still keep coming back to an old copy that we still use every now and then for our games.

However, as times goes by, we find an increasing need for an actual replacement that is not only up-to-date but more importantly, cross platform (Linux/Win/Raspi/Android/Mac). So here is our attempt at recreating our favourite paint package for today's generation of pixel artists.

It should be noted that this is currently in active development so will contain bugs.




Features:

• We don't have a file format - anything created on Swanky Paint can be opened in ANY art software
  
• Runs on Linux, Raspberry Pi, Android, Windows & Mac
  
• Deluxe Paint shortcuts
  
• Escher modes: Hexels, non-Euclidean, strange geometry
  
• Bloom shader options
  
• Full resolution background image for tracing and referencing
  
• Multiple layers support
  
• Simple animation frames
  
• Spritesheet support
  
• GIF and APNG import to frames
  
• Supports SVG, GIF, JPG, PNG and APNG import & export
  
• Supports Fun64 clipboard conversion to ASCII
  
• Dithering options for paletted and true colour images
  
• Wrap mode for tiling preview, edit anywhere to update the draw area
  
• Ultimate undo remembers your history forever
  
• Export your image history as a GIF
  
• Supports 15 popular colour palettes like Pico8, DawnBringer, C64, ZXSpectrum, NES, Gameboy, MSX, AppleII, EGA, Swanky32 & more
  
• Import custom palettes and presets
  
• Support for Lua scripting
  
• Support for UV mapping preview on to low poly 3D model

These are some of the features that are already included in the current version. We are still adding more during development.

Swanky Art, a new kind of pixel art community.

On International Amiga Day 2014, we released Swanky Art, a pixel art community based on daily challenges that restricts your palettes, dimensions and filters.


Our aim is to fully recreate the restrictions of the past, teaching attribute clash to a new and terrified generation.