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[Alistair Aitcheson]

I'm developing iPhone games and need a program to do the artwork with.

On my Windows XP machine I use Paint Shop Pro 7, and am really looking for something similar. It supports graphics tablets, and layers with various blend modes, which is the main functionality I'm after.

Is there anything anyone can recommend?

[caffeine]

1 word, photoshop.

[Oddball]

I have Paint Shop Pro on my Windows machine and Photoshop Elements on my Mac, and in my unprofessional opinion they are roughly the same.

[Peevish]

Not sure if it's robust enough for your purposes, but I use Seashore. It's free and open-source. I've never used it to do layer blending, but I know it does all the other things you're looking for. It's not designed to replace Photoshop, but for image-editing basics it's excellent, and the interface is a lot less cumbersome.

[slembcke]

I know a number of people that swear by Pixelmator. There's also GIMP.

Say what you want about Adobe and feature creep or price of Photoshop, but it's pretty hard to beat...

[WafflePilot]

I've had good luck using pixen http://opensword.org/Pixen/ (which is awesome and supports onion skinning and animation)/Photoshop + filterforge/modo (using blender for rigging)

i've also been using sprite something on the ipad to much success

[slembcke]

Pixen is pretty good for spriting, but that's really it's only focus. It's a bit buggy, but fine as long as you save often.

[Guillaume]

Pixen is pretty neat for pixel art.

Pixelmator is amazing, and only 50 bucks. I honestly think it covers 90% of Photoshop's functionnality.

Otherwise yeah, Photoshop for mac. I think I heard it is overly buggy and pretty bad on the mac though.

[Peevish]

I find Pixen unusable at this point. I love that program to death, but it's 4 years since the last patch and it's so loaded with bugs. It crashes every time I try to mess with the background, and the files I save often get spontaneously corrupted. I only use it for animation these days. It does have about the best pixel animation editor I've ever used.

And it's definitely no substitute for the functionality of Paint Shop Pro.

[Guillaume]

I find Pixen unusable at this point. I love that program to death, but it's 4 years since the last patch and it's so loaded with bugs. It crashes every time I try to mess with the background, and the files I save often get spontaneously corrupted. I only use it for animation these days. It does have about the best pixel animation editor I've ever used.

That's a sign, TIGers! Let's code an open source equivalent of Pixen!

[OneSadCookie]

I'm no artist, but I've been using Pixelmator for my rather limited requirements.  It doesn't seem to have nondestructive filters?  Worth a go round with the trial version, anyway.

Acorn has a free-forever 90%-of-features "trial".  I didn't like it, but some other people seem to.

[slembcke]

I find Pixen unusable at this point. I love that program to death, but it's 4 years since the last patch and it's so loaded with bugs. It crashes every time I try to mess with the background, and the files I save often get spontaneously corrupted. I only use it for animation these days. It does have about the best pixel animation editor I've ever used.

That's a sign, TIGers! Let's code an open source equivalent of Pixen!

* slembcke facepalms

Pixen is open source. What it needs is somebody to take over development.

[WafflePilot]

it's so hard to work on a oss  project without a decent bugtracker ;/

[Guillaume]

I find Pixen unusable at this point. I love that program to death, but it's 4 years since the last patch and it's so loaded with bugs. It crashes every time I try to mess with the background, and the files I save often get spontaneously corrupted. I only use it for animation these days. It does have about the best pixel animation editor I've ever used.

That's a sign, TIGers! Let's code an open source equivalent of Pixen!

* slembcke facepalms

Pixen is open source. What it needs is somebody to take over development.

Ah nice, didn't see that. Sorry
Although I see a link to the SVN on their website, but no mention of the license used. (and I'm too lazy to make an anonymous checkout to check whether it is included with the source or not)

[Absurdist]

Pixen is indeed buggy as hell. I can deal with crashes, but not with random color fading.

[WafflePilot]

I guess theres always graphics gale + wine

[Alistair Aitcheson]

Wow, thanks for all the responses everyone - really useful! I downloaded GIMP for Mac and I'm happy with it so far. It took me a while how to get it to respond to my tablet, but it seems fine so far. Can't quite find how to edit brush properties (especially hardness) yet, but hopefully with time I'll find them

Pixelmator sounds interesting - I'll give the trial a go, and might look at photoshop trials as well. I'll give Pixen a miss if I'm happy with GIMP or get one of the others, based on the mixed response to it here, but thanks to those who brought it up

Many thanks for your recommendations! 

[Peevish]

Pixen is open source. What it needs is somebody to take over development.

If someone knows Cocoa, this would make me happier than most other things.

Pixen is indeed buggy as hell. I can deal with crashes, but not with random color fading.

That's actually a problem I've had with a bunch of programs on my newer computer. Try going to Displays and setting your monitor to Generic RGB Profile. That fixed it in Seashore. One of those OS updates that a made a lot of not-quite-optimized programs generate a bug.

[WafflePilot]

it's always weird when you build a project from svn trunk and you get a prompt saying a update is available   

[philnelson]

There is a really good graphics app for OS X called Acorn, which just recently had a nice features update. At $49.95 it might seem a bit pricey until you consider that its only real competition in terms of usability/utility costs about 14 times as much. The 14-day trial gives you full use of every feature of the app, and after that you can continue using MOST of the app for as long as you want without paying a dime. I've been a user for a couple years, the updates are steady, and the bugs are fixed quick.