Please only post freeware. Thanks guys!

It's a recurring topic, and after years of using and promoting GrafX2 b96.5% (DOS version), this time I can say I contribute to >> GrafX2 <<, now using the SDL library and working on many different OSes and hardware.
Actively developped, GPL license.

I often use MS Paint, GraphicsGale, and the Gimp.

http://www.allegro.cc/resource/Tools/Graphics/AllegroSpriteEditor

I use the Gimp, but then again I don't draw sprites by hand I just edit pre-existing ones.

AllegroSpriteEditor had too many bugs last time I tried it (somewhat recently) for it to be really useful.

Non-native UI = showstopper.

I use PSP6.

GIMP here as well. Lack of artistic skill is a bigger show stopper than any other parameter.

GIMP here as well. Originally I learned on pirated Photoshop but then I went strait and GIMP had all the features of Photoshop I needed without the pricetag. Just remember to save often and keep backup layers.

I don't use freeware anymore since I couldn't find a program that could quite cut it. I ended up with ProMotion, which is fairly cheap. If GraphicsGale is free now it's not bad. Photoshop and MSPaint work in a pinch, although you have to be a little fancy with Photoshop for pixel editing (and I guess it doesn't count as "freeware" though did come bundled with my tablet ). I find the GIMP unusable but some people like it, I guess ....

I use MSPaint. I don't need anything fancy like GIMP to throw a few pixels on the screen, which is the limit of my artistic talent anyway. Besides, at least I can be sure of not getting those weird pink borders that are often caused by anti-aliasing.

This guy .

Technically they're caused by anti-aliasing and using a drawing pipeline with no alpha channel. Roll on Allegro 5!

I can't really add anything else to the discussion, as I don't use sprites.

There's also Paint.net. It takes some getting used to, but is okay for working with translucent png's and has minimal support for working with layers. One major gripe about it is that when you move a selection around the canvas, anything outside of it is destroyed, and you can't grab layers and reposition them without the aforementioned selection process.

RenderA is a nice start, and I hope it's still being actively developed.

I like Microsoft Picture It! 9, but it's not free, and doesn't have the best drawing tools, but it's got some really cool filters, along with rgb level adjustment, very good layering support, some good distortion tools, and other goodies. I got it fairly cheap for $10 at nothingbutsoftware.com, but I haven't seen it anywhere for a while.

For sprites, I usually use MSpaint, but my pixel art is not the best with small sprites so I start larger with other programs and then reduce them and tweak the pixels.

I used to use GIMP but it crashes a lot on me and I've lost some work, so I now use PSP9.

I use a PPS CS2 for all my graphics development.

3D Studio Max and Photoshop.

I use MSPaint. I do use Photoshop for some special effects and stuff, but always MSPaint for the basics.
There are some features lacking in MSPaint (transparency?), so I'm kind of half-looking for a new editor. I tried the Allegro Sprite Editor, but I remember not being able to figure out the UI or keyboard shortcuts. The GIMP and Photoshop are generally too "advanced" for simple sprites.
Not to mention that GIMP crashes a LOT.

Paul whoknows reminds me; Blender is great for making sprites if you're going for that rendered look and have some talent for modeling. Disregard if you prefer the pixel-pushing approach ...

That is true, but it also depends greatly on how large your sprites will be.
Sprites made with any 3D app won't scale down well, you lose details like eyes and facial expressions quite easily.
If you don't have such small details though, Blender is great for sprites!
Here's one I made a while back.

Trent and Schyfis: What version of GIMP do you use? I've been using it for a long time, and never had any problems with it crashing.

As for the Allegro Sprite Editor, I've never actually used it, I just thought I'd plug an Allegro-made app. I think PSP 5 would be the pixel art tool that I've liked the most.

You can always hand-edit the animations though. I've made a lot of small sprite animations that were made in Blender, scaled down, and then edited slightly for great results. Depending on how you work and you personal talents this may be faster or slower than making it from scratch in pixel-editing software, so it requires some personal experimentation to see what works best.

The version I have installed is 2.4, I haven't used it in ages. The version I started at was 2.2 or so if I remember right. I don't remember the crashing getting any better over the versions, and that's one of the reasons I stopped using it.

You're all gay. I use notepad to create mine

Oh, sorry, I shouldn't have finished early. I don't generally use sprites because they take me quite a while to make. That's because I make them by bridging lines on the data bus on my motherboard whenever I spot that the CPU is writing to the right address. I have to be speedy and it's quite error prone. I keep an old 25Mhz 486 around with the cache disabled because that makes my life slightly easier.

If you're a Mac person then you should consider Pixen, which gets a really good press.

paint.net
gmail (Yes, I use gmail for making sprite. From:Mike To:AnyPainter Subject:MakeMeASprite ;o)

LennyLen, the latest version as of a few months ago had the same problem, and it went back a while before that.

Your mom.

Uh, MS Paint or photoshop.

SUMO Paint looks impressive. It's a flash based Photoshop clone. Not suitable for pixel art, but I haven't seen it mentioned here, and I think some of you will want to check it out.

Graphics Gale

It has served me well.

And I don't make .GIFs with it, so I don't need to buy the full version.

Looks interesting. How easy is it to use? Are there any bugs or issues one should know about before use?

I had problems with Graphics Gale on Vista - windows didn't look right, and stuff was funky. I uninstalled it until they come up with a better version.

Not very; I found the interface a bit unintuitive. But if you can get used to it, it's fairly capable.

Unintuitive like Blender, or just unintuitive like suddenly trying to use Windows 3.1 again?

so thats why mine did not looks like pauls wiki examples. I think ill change my size aswell

The blood of small kittens

(it really adds to the artistic effect, sometimes I include a part of my ear)

I use the command line version of Gimp.

I found the interface in graphics gale really handy. I haven't seen any bugs, other than the animation preview has some weird frame rates sometimes. Probably more to do with my computer than the program, though.

Also, once you adjust to using the right-click-as-an-eyedropper feature, it can do wonders for small, animated sprites.

Well, not sure what my other login was..

Anyway; I'm currently trying (attempt no 3!) to make my own paint program that's good enough for my uses.

I think it was this one.

On topic: I'm not allowed to say, because it's not freeware.:P

Me using GIMP as well. And yes, using it with frustration along with my bamboo tablet. There was even one ocassion when I click "Save As" the program crash and there goes my painting, gone.

Oh ya, to those experts out there, I have one question. How to scale down the image like the zooming one does? There are only four options for scaling: none, linear, cubic, san(something). No matter which I choose the image just doesnt scale down like the zooming does. What I mean is of all the four scaling methods, the quality somehow reduce by a bit but if I zoom down the image the quality isn't reduced. How to scale it down as though it is being zoomed down?

Are you trying to scale an 8 bit aka paletted aka 256 colour image? In that case, convert first to RGB (24 bit), then scale.

256 colour eh? I think it is 24 bit RGB by default. I just wanna know what mechanism is being used for the zooming as I see scaling doesn't produce exact quality like the zooming does. Else I'll have to zoom down the picture and use the print screen method to reserve the quality of zoomed picture. The only problem is that this method doesn't preserve the transparency value.

Traditionally, a drawing program which displays an image "zoomed out" will use a linear interpolation as it's not too slow. You can check it by drawing a pure black and white image : When zoomed out, if it displays grey pixels to smooth out the edge, it's one of the interpolation modes (bilinear, or bicubic).
Your problem is strange, because if you choose a scaling mode in the menu, the program should just apply it...

Sometimes you get a better visual effect if you apply some smoothing before rescaling, but it really depends on the style and size of the image.

I just use the Gimp. Very powerful, though somewhat tricky at first, and even at times later on for pixel editing. It's free though, and DEFINITELY kills MS Paint in my opinion.

Good 'ol Deluxe paint is still cool though if you want something that chews less memory than the gimp and still has some pretty nifty features -- especially for editing palettes. It was used for making the graphics for OMF 2097. I think you can download it here: http://www.amigau.com/aig/dpaint.html

This is virtually impossible: You cannot scale pixel images without any loss of quality - when you scale the image down, you lose information, because the resulting image has less pixels; when you scale it up, you need to 'invent' pixels that weren't there before, and depending on the type of image, you need to choose a suitable scaling algorithm.

IIRC, GIMP lets you set the on-the-fly scaling mode to any of the 3 (aliased, bilinear, bicubic), and when you resize, you can select a mode independently.

However, bicubic is not always the best option; images with sharp edges (such as pixelled art) may 'overshoot' around the edges, and bilinear is often a better alternative.

Another thing GIMP may be doing is using 3d hardware to do the on-the-fly scaling (that is, upload the image as a texture and then render it as a 3d quad using OpenGL or something like that); in that case, the scaling is done in hardware, which is faster, but doesn't necessarily match the software algorithm that GIMP uses for the actual scaling. Typically, 3d hardware uses trilinear filters, that is, produce a series of mipmap levels, and then use 3 stages of linear interpolation: two for x/y and one for the mipmap level.
If you are scaling down by a factor of less than 50%, then you may consider applying a 50% scale iteratively until you can reach the target size with a scaling step between 100% and 50%; this somewhat approximates the mipmap algorithm used by graphics hardware.

Which paint application doesn't?

However, is it really that bloody hard to put everything in one window, just to make things more intuitive? I hate GIMP for that very reason, altough I still use it

The tiny little Artist's Sketchbook doesn't. No wait, it does! With rocks, actually.

TileStudio. A technique I use to quickly draw spaceship sprites using TileStudio is:

1. Draw outline in black (include inner outlines).
2. Copy outline to another frame
3. FloodFill outline with appropriate colors.
4. Select an unused color (like pink), select Rectangle tool, select Smooth Random Fill (the "TV static" thingie in the drawing toolbar), and draw a rectangle over the entire sprite. The borders should now be blurred.
5. Re-paste the outline you copied earlier into the blurred sprite.
6. Go back to Step 4 if you are not yet satisfied.
7. Add highlights as necessary.

It still doesn't look as professional, but it's good for quickie sprites. A sample I made using this technique:

Gimp 2.4.6 is very stable for me under windows xp, they have changed how it installs on windows, it comes with its own set of gtk+ libs, instead of using the system install of it. So it has helped with stability heaps, but I have a gtk for pidgin (that was my setup choice, so it could have a different gtk skin), and one for gimp, then the system install.

Nevermind, I figured out the problem already. Just that the problem isn't visible when zooming down but eventually revealed itself when do the real scaling.