Edge3

This program, even in it's early access release, is what some pixel artists may be been looking for; an intuitive, fast and modern interface for drawing that doesn't get in your way. ■ First impressions Right off the bat, one of the standout features of EDGE3 is it's default interface. There is little to no modification required for most users, unlike a certain other program that decided that making the window GUI pixel art scaled to 200% for "retro aesthetics" or make a custom "retro" file browser thats both slow and clunky to match. This is a program that has clearly been designed for pixel artists first, without needing to justify itself by using "pretty" visuals to disguise a bad interface. That's not to say that EDGE3 is ugly, the look of EDGE3 is extremely clean and is more in line with other professional software such as Adobe's products and Krita. The small size of all the icons, tabs and buttons looks great on my 1440p monitor, and gives me a much larger view of my canvas, which is of course the most important thing of an art program. Everything is super readable from a glance and the layout is easy to understand. ■ Thoughts on Workflow Core functionality of drawing is also a strength of EDGE3. The usage of the mouse may be some of the best of the pixel art software out right now. For example, RMB is set to quick eyedroppper. You can quickly draw a straight line without switching to the Line Tool by clicking once, then holding SHIFT and moving the mouse around. Hold RMB and drag to quickly stamp. There is a small learning curve to this, but once you figure it out you can draw pixel art extremely fast. If you have any issue with the default shortcuts, there's also an extensive shortcut editor found under the edit tab. It may look pretty daunting at first, but the search tool will help a lot in finding what you want to add/edit/remove. EDGE3 doesn't just look and feel better, but it also has features that the current alternatives simply do not have for some reason (without weird, hacky workarounds). My favorite feature, one that carries over from EDGE2 if i remember correctly, is the ability to assign different palettes to different animation cels. Color cycling and palette effects are one of the most important features of pixel art work, so it's great that it's built in. In ASEPRITE, you had to save the same .png multiple times for each frame, with slightly different palettes. Indexed palette is the main color mode in EDGE3, and there is nothing wrong with how it works. As a previous ASEPRITE user, it drove me insane to see that indexed mode had so many bugs and needless restrictions. For example, in ASEPRITE if you wanted Index 0 of your art to be a solid color (not transparent), you had to set your layer to become a "Background" layer. The downside? Index 0 is now treated like a solid color not only visually, but when you draw. This may sound a bit confusing, but when selecting any pixels with "transparent" index 0 and moving them over some other pixel art, index 0 would no longer function as transparency and will overwrite your art with the color that you set index 0 to. This leads to the workaround of having a dedicated background layer JUST for index 0, which is silly. EDGE3 simply lets you make index 0 visually solid while keeping its transparency properties when drawing. It's the little things like this that made me fall in love... ■ Negative Points and Conclusion However, it's not perfect, as expected for early access software (I'll be adding some ideas as feedback onto the discussion page shortly). I personally think that while the interface as it is now is great for indexed pixel art, RGBA could use some quality of life improvements. Aseprite file format import is great for users coming from that program, but it's missing a few things that I'd imagine some people would be disappointed with. Initially I was also saddened by the lack of some shortcuts (such as "Select Next/Previous Color in Palett…