Changes with 8.0.7 (2024-03-10)

Fix: Fixed several glitches for the window layout management and window resizing

Fix: With some pen/tablets an internal error occurred when using WinTab interface. This error is now caught so that the program can still be used. A message appears that pressure support is disabled.

Fix: Invalid file type preselected in single image export file dialog after previous usage.

Fix: Unwanted log file writing disabled.

Fix: Transformation options where not allowed for separate tools like scale, skew, rotate.

Fix: Internal error at start up.

Fix: Airbrush now supports transparency lock. Actually the AirBrush does not use a paint mode and the transparency lock is a paint mode setting. But since it’s a painting tool it makes sense to also use the lock options with it.

Fix: Scrolling through blend modes in layer window rewinded when hitting a separator.

Fix: Animation playback got stuck if frame has a delay of 0ms.

Fix: Error when closing drop shadow effect dialog while trackbar of opacity input was visible.

Added some explaining message dialog to Window arrange and default layout functions

Project tab can now be closed with middle mouse button.

Improved key handling when stamping brush over frames.
When stamping a brush over frames is enabled for paint dotted/continuous tool by holding Ctrl + Alt then the cursor changes so that it can bee seen that this function is active.
Even if stamping a brush over frames (option “Stamp AnimBrush”) is enabled then the temporary tool assigned to Ctrl key can now be used (which is the pipette tool by default). The stamp mode starts when also Alt is hold.

Added another interface to access pen pressure data for non Wacom tablets.

Fixing invalid positionion of tile palette window in default window layout.

Added audio track to animation playback. Play a WAV file along with your animation.

Added visual checkbox for handle toggle in transformation tool options.

Brush shade up/down now working on current gradient for single color brushes.

Added shortcut to append the active brush to the current project as frame(s).

Added option to hide grid in canvas window.

Changes with 8.0.6 (2023-12-09)

Lifting free edition restrictions. Up to 5 layer elements. Groups and single image layers now allowed.

Window layout management improvements:
Automatic arrangement has been improved in different ways.
Auto save window layout when changing main form size.
Added buttons to the main window that let you quickly select a predefined layout.
Some bugs fixed when switching between layouts.
Pinned windows now ignored when rearranging.
Window layouts can now be sorted.
Workspace Windows do now snap to other windows when moving or sizing.

Added new option to let the transformation reference point move relatively with the object.

Added keyboard shortcut to hide/show handles when in transformation mode.

Made layer effect settings window to be resizeable.

Pattern drawing settings now allow 100 x 100 repetitions.

When creating an animation in 3d then the frame preview option now shows all visible layers and not only the active one.

Included experimental multi threaded canvas rendering.

Fix: Importing an alpha transparent PNG image into an non alpha transparent project not working if frame sizes differ.

Fix: Importing an image to an existing project could not be made undone.

Fix: Error when turning layer into single image layer + undo/redo.

Fix: Stamping brush over frames (Alt + Ctrl) ignored last selected frame in timeline. Hints of freehand tools now only show extra key options if they are available (AnimPainting, AnimBrush stamping, stamping brush over selected frames) and usable.
Alt or Ctrl now don’t activate layer move or color picker if multiple frames are selected in the time line to stamp on.

Fix: When toggling a layer group (open/close) while another layer was active, the layer list jumped to the active layer.

Fix: Error when using shortcut for “Restore Brush” when having the brush resize too active.

Fix: Menu item “Paste as new Layers” was always active.

Fix: Error when closing drop shadow effect dialog while trackbar of opacity input was visible.

Fix: Re-apply Color palette layer effect not correctly working on file export.

Fix: When loading a true color file that is defined to open PM, then the color reduction dialog was hidden behind the main window making the application defunct.

Fix: Editing palette color plus drawing plus undo also reverted the color modification.

Fix: When adding/removing frames along with undo/redo then previous palette changes where undone as well.

Fix: Crash when using extended oval/rectangle edit mode with stroke layer effect. If there is a definition of an oval/rectangle active with extended edit mode and a layer FX “Stroke” was added then the program closed due to an internal error.

Changes with 8.0.5 (2023-10-01)

Fix: Toggling “Grouping” in “Re-apply Palette” layer effect applied some internal value reset. When switching off “Use Grouing/Sub-Palettes” then internally the “Group start at” value has been reset to “0” leading to invalid rendering.

Fix: “Create 3d Animation” not working correctly when moving from outside top left into visible area. The brush contents have been misaligned.

Fix: Pen eraser not working.

Dix: Internal error when defining a paint mode formula only for right mouse button and leaving left mouse button formula empty.

Fix: When loading a JPG file then color reduction with “use current palette” did not work correctly. It used the default palette instead.

Fix: Swapping a brush in the brush container with Alt + left click does not work with the last slot.

Fix: Internal error if a folder was selected for halftone patterns that is write protected.

Fix: Internal error, when number of dots for lines is set to 1.

Fix: When using right mouse button to open the context menu of a layer, then the layer was not always selected correctly.

Fix: Loading sprite sheets from plain image files not working correctly. The layout definition that can be done when loading a sprite sheet image (BMP, PNG) was not reset correctly when loading another file. Internally it always created an animation with the number of frames that where used for the first file that was loaded, no matter what the input dialog said. This led to corrupted frame contents.

Fix: Wrong delays when exporting individual frame ranges to animation files.

Fix: Transparency not loaded correctly from alpha transparent sprite sheets.

Fix: “top level FX” and layer opacity created wrong rendering on output. When having a layer with opacity < 100 and a layer FX that renders “top level” then the effect has been rendered twice leading to a doubled opacity of the output when exporting to image or animation.

Fix: Export file extension of project presets was wrong (.scc instead of .cfg).

Fix: Error when using Frame/Rotate Canvas and Frame/Flip Canvas when a layer group was selected.

Fix: If project defines FPS for frame speed instead of ms delays then the input field at the bottom right still stored a new value as ms delay.

Fix: Rectangle tool did not allow temporary Ctrl-Pipette.

Rectangular brush grab tool now enabled for auto scrolling.

Changes with 8.0.4 (2023-05-14)

Fix: Pixel perfect drawing removed pixels when crossing lines.

Fix: Mouse wheel action for zooming now only applied when mouse pointer is on canvas.

Fix: Middle mouse button executing canvas mover sometime drew on canvas instead of moving it

Fix: frames sometimes not loaded correctly. Some (mostly larger) frames might not load correctly due to a compression decoding fault.

Added auto scrolling mechanism to toolbox for when the height does not fit on screen

Brush transformation tools now allow adding frames without stopping transformation

Changes with 8.0.3 (2023-04-02)

Shape of cursor for freehand drawing made to be more slim again.

Improved button visualizations in color palette window.

Added layer group and ungroup functions.

Using ESC key in the web color edit field in the color palette editor window now removes focus from the edit field.

Fix: If there was no other group/layer after a group then the layers of that (last) group could not be moved out of it by dragging to the very bottom.

Fix: When changing the delay of a frame directly in the corresponding input and using frame playback/control buttons, the delay was not correctly stored

Fix: When adding a layer and doing undo in a fast way while starting to apply tooling like fill on that canvas, an internal error occurred.

Fix: Shortcuts that are used for different working areas (tabs) in the color palette window where considered to be conflicting and the user had to choose one of the operations.

Fix: When having pixel perfect drawing enabled and the license key was removed then the application did not start correctly.

Fix: When using middle mouse pan and mouse wheel very quickly the same time then sometimes lines where drawn.

Fix: Freeform brush grab not working correctly if stencil is enabled.

Fix: ESC with freeform line tool was not working correctly.

Fix: Merging a layer group sometimes raised an internal error.

Fix: Extended edit mode with filled shapes did not work with interactive gradient fills.

Fix: Active tool did not cancel automatically when loading image/animation/project files leading to problems.

Changes with 8.0.2 (2023-02-26)

Several improvements in 3d animation creation dialog.
Improved calculation precision.
All brush handle types now supported.
Add switch to enable perspective distortion rendering. Default is now linear rendering.
Revived B-button to acquire last brush stamp position.

Made shortcut for switching palette edit modes (select vs. edit) to be a global one.
Before it only worked when the palette window was active.

Fix: Several fixes and improvements in the palette editor window.
Undo/Redo keyboard shortcuts sometimes not working.
Now when there are pasted floating colors, they use a different highlighting to differ copy/paste and movement actions.

Fix: Internal error when starting with 125% scaling on some system.

Fix: When stamping down the brush during brush transformation, the stamped brushes where made undone when the brush transformation was finalized.

Fix: When moving a transformation then the rendering changed depending on the in-pixel position of the corners.
This happened because the movement was made on sub pixel precision and not on pixel precision. Now the movement always moves by whole pixels.

Fix: News contents not displayed correctly on some systems.

Fix: Number edit field in line tool settings always included an additional “2” when entering numbers.

Fix: Internal error (division by zero) when using FPS edit on a frame that has a delay of 0ms.

Fix: Memory usage display showed wrong hint and some beta disclaimer on click but shouldn’t.

Fix: Crash when using WinKey for shortcuts.

Fix: Brush lost color palette when applying transformations.

Fix: When setting a color channel bit depth to 1 bit then the preview did not show correct colors.

Fix: Internal error when modifying color channel bit depth with projects having a layer group.

Changes with 8.0.1 (2023-02-12)

Fix: Removed requirement for some VC runtime files

Fix: Abnormal program termination when creating a new project but settings files (copied to documents folder) are not there. There have been cases where the program could write some settings files to a desired folder on start up but was not allowed to read them later. In that case and endless loop occurred internally leading to a program termination without any error message. Now it’s checked on start up if the preset files are there. If not then a message appears and the program closes.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 11 (2023-01-29)

Fix: Color selection indicators in gradient display did not scale properly with high DPI displays.

Fix: When switching between two projects with the same layout assigned to them, then default layout was used sometimes.

Fix: Displaying invalid 3d view (anaglyph) when stereo drawing base offset > project with half size. In that case 3d display is not applied now because it’s an invalid setting.

Fix: Internal error when creating a text brush without giving a text.

Fix: Win key + M did not only minimize the main window. Other windows staid open.

Fix: The stereo drawing 3d view (anaglyph, interlace) only worked the stereo drawing mode was enabled. It’s now independent from actually using stereo draw tooling. If 3d view is enabled then it’s used.

Fix: Internal random error when adding a new gradient in the gradient selection window.

Fix: Free Edition allowed “even segments” line snap, but should not.

Fix: Random internal errors when using transformation tools.

Fix: “The System Font could not be loaded!” appeared when starting first time.

Fix: Magic Wand Brush Grab tool did not show current cursor position coordinates.

Fix: mouse wheel not usable on tool options dialog.

Fix: Error message appears when double activating a transformation tool (free, rotate…)

Fix: Font too large on time line with some systems, when using DPI scaling.

Improving high DPI scaling. Theer where still some UI elements that did not behave correctly.

Added some hint for the gradient list button

Auto brush handle with grab tools now allowed in Free Edition.

Animation playback start/end definition now allowed in Free Edition.

Default grid colors now darker (#505050).

Pattern grids now allowed in Free Edition.

Free Edition now allows using the selection tool set completely..

Now the program stops if documents folder can not be used to store config data. This prevents errors that follow later, because that data is required.

Settings folder is now <documents>\Pro Motion NG – V8 (- Beta)

Documentation (help file) updated completely.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 10 (2023-01-15)

Documentation updated.

Fix: Program did not start when VSCode update installer was active. If VSCode was running and detected a pending update then PM did not correctly start. Nothing happened and the application process got stuck.

Fix: When moving canvas with the canvas mover tool outside the limits then canvas started to flicker.

Fix: Quick selection tool (holding E-key) did not work correctly.

Fix: when selecting a single tile while having a duplicate of it in the tile set then the wrong tile index was placed to the tile map.

Fix: Middle mouse button usage while drawing led to not undoable changes.

Fix: Selection tools (rectangle, elliptic) did not properly reset after usage.

Fix: When using free form brush grab tool and exceeding canvas then the brush that was grabbed had a wrong size and repeating pixels where the selection exceeded canvas area.

Fix: Resize project, undo, draw, undo left artifacts on the canvas.

Fix: When transforming layer data that has no transparent color then the transformed object showed invalid colors at parts that are outside the transformed portion.

Fix: Loading alpha transparent files (BMP, PNG) having an additional color palette file shifted colors. When using alpha transparency and saving contents as BMP/PNG files with alpha then also the color palette is stored to be reloaded and used when the image is loaded. When loading such an image file an extra white slot has been added at position 0 shifting all other colors of the palette.

Fix: Invalid layer label positioning when using display with scaling > 100%.

Fix: Icon scaling with High DPI caused black artifacts.

Fix: Resizing a project using resampling removed transparency.

Fix: Pasting data multiply on canvas did not work when frame was switched after first paste.

Fix: Alt started AnimPainting with paint tool even if AnimPaint option was disabled in the settings.

Fix: Selection tools (rectangle, elliptic) did not properly reset after usage.

Fix: Clearing frame not working when floating selection active.

Fix: When turning an ordinary project into a tile map project then snap grid settings are set to the tile size but not updated in the settings window.

Fix: When turning a project into a tile map project then existing visual grid settings matching the target tile size has been overwritten by the tile default grid attributes (including color). Now an existing grid entry is reused if it exists (size, color etc. must match) and a new grid entry is added otherwise.

Fix: When using a color palette index as layer background with different color palettes per layer, the first layer’s color was used instead of the active one.

Fix: Invalid positioning when drawing starts for different line tools. Position was sometimes offset by one pixel vertically.

Fix: When using a color palette index as layer background with different color palettes per layer, the first layer’s color was used instead of the active one.

Fix: Corrupted colors when loading files using different color palettes per frame.

Fix: canvas window transparency did not re-enable when closing a project and opening a new one. It kept being disabled.

Added option “Layers” to fill tool to make the fill stop if pixels on any visible layer don’t match.

Automatic scrolling on the canvas can now be turned of in the canvas window settings.

When creating a new project from copied layers then opacity, layer name and blend mode are now copied as well.

Disabled auto scroll when semi transparent canvas is enabled.

Tile selection tool now also works with snap grid when tile mapping is not enabled

Improved inverted overlay pixel line contrast.

Showing in-tile coordinates additionally in tile modification mode.

Removed unused shortcuts re-working paint modes in menu mode.

Foreground/Background color now called First/Second color.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 9 (2022-11-16)

Fix: Improved naming for file association options in Windows so that the application uses a true naming instead of “Pmotion”

Fix: Polygon tool allowed undo during drawing

Fix: Brush grab tools did not finalize a floating selection before starting

Fix: Line tool did not show the correct angle when Shift was hold to use position locking

Fix: Frame/Clear Frames not working correctly when floating selection was active

Fix: When removing a floating selection with “del” then the pixel selection was kept on the canvas

Fix: When removing a floating selection with “del” then undo also undid the action before

Fix: Home screen list boxes sometimes misaligned. If home screen was off when the software was started and then the home screen was enabled, the file list boxes had wrong alignment.

Fix: Corrupted image data after enabling tile map sync mode. When enabling tile sync mode and then using tools like “line tool”, tiles where reset to wrong indexes and wrong pixels.

Fix: Cut brush did not propagate the remove of pixels to all pattern repetitions when in pattern drawing mode

Fix: Clearing frame ranges not working correctly if start frame was larger than 1.

Fix: Global mouse wheel actions also fired if a modal dialog was open.

Fix: AnimPainting ignored playback limit and cycled through all frames of animation.

Fix: AnimPainting with paint tool and pixel perfect drawing caused internal error.

Fix: Color cycling playback could not be stopped.

Fix: Curve tool did hide the the line after the first step (straight line + button release) if mouse was not moved immediately.

Fix: Invalid positioning when drawing starts for different line tools. Position was offset by one pixel.

Fix: When creating a new bitmap font project then the top left pixel used as character separator was not set up.

Fix: Internal error when exporting sprite sheets with multiple flattened layers.

Added simple application canvas transparency mode to show contents of applications underneath. Can be used for quick rotoscoping and similar.

With transformation tools Ctrl now stamps all frames, Alt stamps single frame only.

Removed unnecessary functions from 3d animation dialog.
Picking last brush stamp pos.
Trace function.
Also made preview images better to their headline label.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 8 (2022-10-31)

Fix: Pixel perfect drawing now working with stereo drawing.

Fix: Tile Mapping/Load connected Projects was disabled though one of the connected projects was closed.

Fix: Saving animation with a defined frame range caused error when using multiple layers.

Fix: Error when closing project while animation is running.

Fix: Menu entry “Save Copy As…” active when there was no project opened which led to an error.

Fix: Some elements in the color palette window wasted too much CPU time.

Fix: Moving pixels in tile map edit mode with sync mode off caused invalid results. When moving layer contents in tile map edit mode “Pick/Place Tiles” with sync mode off led to wrong final contents. Pixels where removed or where overwritten by tile data from the tile library which is wrong because sync is off. Only pixels may be moved then.

Fix: uppercase file extensions have been ignored and lower file extension added. Now the extension is always replaced by lower case extension.

Fix: Temporary canvas mover and temporary zoom tool stopped current active tool.

Fix: paint mode “erase” worked additive in alpha so that the erase effect was too strong.

Fix: internal error appeared instead of normal error message if FLC file could not be read.

Fix(1871): alpha transparent brush used full opacity for semi transparent pixels when drawing opacity was set to 100 instead

Fix: transformation object size was changed when moving on the canvas due to enabled snapping.

Fix: some problem with pixel selection and transformation. If transformation was applied to an existing floating selection that was based on a pixel selection then the final pixel selection was wrong.
Also undo/redo not working correctly.

Fix: Floating pixels buttons in tool settings window not removed when finalizing transformation without having a floating selection at the beginning of the transformation.

Fix: Temporary tools (canvas move, zoom) not working with tools using size interaction elements (crop, extended rectangle edit, transformation tools…)

Fix: Temporary canvase mover and temporary zoom tool stopped current active tool.

Fix: Space activated canvas mover although mouse is down (canceling a tool in progress, e.g. line tool).

Fix: When reselecting oval/rectangle tool in extended edit mode, then it did not remove canvas changes correctly.

Fix: Brush preview sometimes not showing when moving from -1 coordinat to 0 (rectangle, oval tools).

Fix: Coordinate display not accurate for oval/rectangle if rotated.

Fix: Rounding issues with symmetry and hollow oval/rectangle and even brush sizes.

Fix: When using tile map pick/place mode the selected and tile aligned area automatically increased more than it should.

Fix: The layer list jumped to the active a lock icon is used, wven if it was from a different layer.

Fix: internal error when deleting a tile map layer and using undo.

Fix: Free form line tool left brush preview on canvas when switching to a tool that does not use a brush preview.

Fix: Keyboard shortcut to toggle layer lock only changed active layer even if multiple where selected.

Fix: Tile palette window not showing when creating new tile map project.

Fix: Line snap (isometric, even steps) not working correctly of one part of the line went below 0-coordinates.

Fix: Imprecise coordinate display with negative values.

Fix: Line tools did show coordinate vale (x or y) as 0 although being -1.

Fix: With single frame layers the automatic pixel update when moving colors in the color palette did not work.

Fix: 8bit PNG files with additional 8 bit alpha plane file not loading correctly. This also caused alpha transparent brushes to not be displayed in the brush container.

Flip canvas function added.

Flip selection/frames function added.

Selections in pattern drawing mode not propagated to the repeated patterns anymore because this interferes with functions with transformation functions, scrolling etc.

Rotate frame/selection added.

Canvas rotation function added (90°, 180°).

Storing pixel perfect drawing option for next session.

New transparency pattern default colors #808080 and #c0c0c0.

When pattern drawing is enabled then the selection is not spread over all tiles but stays where it is.

Pattern drawing toggle now part of undo history.

Added shortcut to toggle layer group collapsing.

If layer group is closed that contains the active layer then the group becomes active.

If a layer is selected by tool then it’s parent groups are now opened automatically.

Layer blend modes reorganized.

Support cmd/bat files as post processing tool when exporting tile map data.

Right mouse button click on brush tip button now opens context menu instead of starting brush resize mode

When using brush pick up then “trim” option is now ignored if snap grid is enabled.

Remove/empty unused tile function added to tile palette window.

Pick layer tool (Shift + T) now supports for multiple layer selection when holding Shift.

Move tool now supports selection of multiple layers when holding Shift.

Icons for visibility and lock now shown semi transparent if a parent group is invisible or locked.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 7 (2022-09-25)

When making a layer visible then all parent groups are set to be visible as well.

Display opacity on layer only if not equal to 100%.

Single Image Layer now called Static Image Layer.

Fix: Transformation or movement now rejected if only invisible layers are selected.

Fix: Floating pixels overlay ignored layer transparency.

Fix: some UI actions had lags, e.g. when selecting a color in the color palette Window.

Fix: when color palette window is active then some non window specific keyboard shortcuts did not work.

Fix: don’t allow pixel movement if not at least one visible layer is selected.

Some improvements to the move tooling. It now works like this:
“Auto select” mode (there is no pixel selection and no active floating selection)
Activate the layer that is under the cursor if only a single layer is selected in the layers window. If multiple layers are selected in the layers window or if a group is selected then it will move all the layers.
Do not keep the floating selection at the end (anymore). It’s fixated so that it “feels” like you used a layer move tool.
“Existing floating selection”
No matter where you click, the floating pixels are moved. No layer is changed.
“Pixel selection”
Pixel selection is turned into floating selection.
If multiple layers are selected then they are used otherwise the layer under the cursor is activated and used
Floating selection is not finalized so that you can continue moving

Fix: Transforming a floating selection without having a pixel selection before, created a wrong pixel selection when finalizing the transform.

Fix: Several fixes with floating selections.
When using move tool without pixel selection then a selection was created after the move.
When using ESC then a move that has ben started is now completely reverted.
When moving without selection in multiple steps and finalizing then undoing the movement did not revert the complete move but all the single steps in between.

Fix: Don’t create pixel selection when moving pixels without having a pixel selection.

Fix: random bug effects when using transformation tools.

RGB color sliders now snap depending on the channel bits.

Ctrl + Space now activating temporary relative zoom tool.

Fix: thumbnail in brush container sometimes cut off right or bottom pixels.

Windows are now rearranged if main window size changed.

Setting default window layout now does not maximize main window but leaves it as it is.

Fix: Removed some flickering that appears on first startup when initial window positions are applied.

Fix: if preview window is set to center when animating then it could hide behind the canvas/magnify window.

Stencil load/save moved to stencil edit area. Added selection load/save functions to menu Selection.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 6 (2022-09-11)

Fix: Several problems with layout management and switching.
Crop tool switched to default layout.
Manual switching between layouts not working.
Added “Save” function to store changes in a layout manually instead of doing this automatically. Only default layout is stored automatically now.

Fix: Every transformation tool finished action when hovering over it’s content area. Caused by accidentally activating the temporary layer move tool which is not allowed for transformation tools and so stopped them.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 5 (2022-09-04)

Fix: Temporary tool activation (pipette, move layer, move canvas) had some problems. Pipette and layer mover deactivated each other when using extra keys for additional options. Layer mover kept activated when using Alt + Tab.

Fix: Tile palette window has wrong position (out of screen range) when having a fresh install

Fix: When multiple layers or a group was selected and the visibility was changed then only the selected entry icon state was updated in the layer list.

Fix: Magic wand selection tool did not correctly reset selection when cancelling.

Fix: Using a selection tool twice, reverts the latest change.

Fix: “&” character not displayed in the character display when creating a bitmap font.

Fix: When using move layer tool then undo did not work correctly.

Fix: Some key shortcuts in layers window context menu not shown.

Fix: Tile set window always reopened when switching projects even if it was manually closed.

Fix: Incomplete canvas update with some tools. For example in some circumstances when using the brush resize (scale) tool then the brush preview was not correctly updated when moving mouse coursor out of canvas area.

Fix: When drawing with pen then translucent paint mode did not use pressure.

Fix: When saving keyboard shortcuts to file then a wrong extension (.stn) was added.

Fix: Double click on PMP file in file explorer did showed error when PM was already running.

Fix: Keyboard shortcut for symmetry tool not working.

Fix: Brush grab with RMB did not cut with tile map projects and sync mode off.

Fix: Move tool hint was not displayed.

Fix: Tolerance not working correctly with flood fill/magic wand tools.

Fix: Using the move tool with an active but empty pixel selection caused an internal error.

Fix: Extended edit mode with oval/rectangle selection caused problems when cancelling tool. In that case the pixel selection was not correctly reset.

Fix: Certain JPEG file types could not be loaded.

Fix: Frame focus vs. frame selection improvement with fill tool. When having different selected frames on the time line then the fill tool fills these selected frames. If you have a frame active that is not part of that selection then only this frame is filled now and not those that are selected.

Fix: When light table is enabled then the layer opacity has been ignored. It always used the main frame opacity definition of the light table settings (e.g. 100%) instead of combining layer opacity with the light table main frame opacity.

Fix: Pen and hover click problems. With mouse usage and drawing tools the contract is: if you start with mouse button A and then click mouse button B then the operation is canceled.
When using a pen with mode “Hover click” then this is now disabled because when doing a “right click” and pen is hovering and then putting the pen tip on the surface would cause a left click which cancels the operation. That’s why hover clicks have been ignored to prevent this. Now the tool cancellation is switched off when using a pen and hover clicks are allowed again.

Fix: Importing transparent PNG image file not working correctly. The different combinations of alpha/non-alpha PNG and alpha/non-alpha project did not always process transparency the way they should.

Fix: Tolerance not working correctly with flood fill/magic wand tools.

Fix: Append single images caused artifacts if images where smaller then project size.

Fix: Importing image without alpha into a project with alpha raised an error.

Fix: Appending animation having no alpha data to an alpha enabled project raised and error.

Fix: Append animation + undo/redo was not working.

Fix: Some menu entries have been active even if no project was openend. This led to errors when using them..

Fix: Stroke layer effect renderer ignored “display on top” toggle.

Fix: Alpha value of (e.g. 70%) used 69% when drawing (rounding problem).

Fix: Canvas not updated when layers moved in layer list.

Fix: Corrected error message when trying to transform an empty layer group.

Fix: Fixing initial misplacing of brush transformation overlay when using brush transformation tool the second time.

Fix: Several fixes with stroke layer effect. Crashes when flattening effects and dong undo/redo fast. Not correctly working with alpha enabled projects.

Fix: Some tools did not correctly work with layer lock.

Paste to new layers function added.

Prevent closing application when animation is running.

Added foreground background color indicators to main window gradient display.

Added check box to limit font size of preview area in text brush creation dialog to a minimum of 10px to keep text readable with very small font sizes.

Added keyboard shortcut for toggling animation preview in canvas window.

Added shortcuts for changing spaypaint tool pressure and radius

Added foreground background color indicators to main window gradient display

Insert/remove pixel rows/columns now working working with all selected layers and frames

Creating backup file if project of a previous version is overwritten because the new can not be loaded in a previous version.

Flip frames now working with selected frames and layers.

Mouse pad gesture for zooming now supported.

Several improvements and fixes for brush container.
Fixed several issues (last brush not draggable/removable, insert first entry with keyboard shortcut not working, selection issues on remove/add).
Different colors for selected items and focused item.
New shortcut to send brush ton container after focused entry.
When clicking on border of brush slot then the brush is not picked up anymore. It just changes the slot selection.

“background fixed” menu entry removed from menu Frame because this function is available at the tool box.

Revived undo/redo buttons on tool box.

Shortcut definition (default: del) for layer window to delete layers.

New options for color picker. Different pick modes can be selected. Extra keys for picking opacity with alpha projects have been reworked.

Improved visualization of invisible layers. Caption becomes gray.

Included layer groups.

Rectangle tool and fill tool ignored layer lock. With all drawing tools: now layer lock allows drawing with paint mode “selection”.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 4 (2022-05-07)

Find the beta version at beta version download.
Fix: When having different window layouts for different monitors then switching between them did not maximize the main window.

Fix: Green layer ordering indicating line got stuck when dragging off layer area.

Fix: After flattening effects and applying further canvas operations, undo did not working correctly.

Fix: When no project is active the default palette did not show in the color palette window. Instead the last used color palette was still visible.

Fix: color quantization settings not fully working when importing true color sprite sheet. The color count limit was ignored. Instead 256 colors have always been used.

Fix: Inaccurate color quantization. If true color images have less colors than requested then no quantization should be done, because quantization always recreates RGB values and does not always use original ones. Instead the colors should be used 1:1 from the image.

Fix: Shape tools (rectangle, circle etc.) did not snap preview elements correctly when using grid snap. If grid snapping is enabled then the preview elements (brush dot or position rulers) did not snap to the grid positions. This happened to solid and hollow shape tools.

Fix: RMB strokes cancel themselves if using pen. When using a drawing tablet with its RMB assigned button to draw with second color then lifting the pen from the canvas canceled the operation.

Fix: Continuous paint strokes couldn’t overlap themselves. Some paint modes don’t allow overlapping (e.g. Invert, Brighten…) but it was also prevented with Color Cycling which was wrong.

Fix: Stereo drawing offset delta display not always updated. It sometimes got stuck to a certain value.

Fix: freeform line tool did not reset stereo drawing delta on finish.

Fix: inbound grid calculation not working correctly. Selecting something in tile map pick/place mode using (e.g.) rectangular selection tool did not correctly increase the selection to full tile sizes.

Fix: Internal error when using right mouse button at project tab area when no project or home tab was visible.

Project setting to save certain image files (png, bmp, gif) with least possible color depth is now off by default.

Allow pixel scrolling also when being in tile map mode “Place Tiles”.

Removing some white flickering on main form on during startup.

Replacing paint mode “Behind” by extra paint mode setting to lock transparent or opaque pixels.

PMP file format thumbnails. Storing thumbnail data must be activated in the project settings, either per project or for all projects in the project default settings in the preferences.

Replacing paint mode “Behind” by extra paint mode setting to lock transparent or opaque pixels.

Close project commands reworked. Close other/all now in file menu and in project tab menu. Ctrl + W, Shift + Ctrl + W now used as short cuts

Some start up speed improvements.

Toolbar Revision. Reorganizing and renaming tools. Removing clear “tool” button and adding a menu entry Frames/Clear Ranges… that now clears ranges of frames.

Added Tile Selection Tool to the selection tools group in the tool box.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 3 (2022-04-03)

Find the beta version at beta version download.

Application is now using 64Bit architecture.

Rectangular selection contents or whole frames can now be scrolled pixelwise.

More options in initial app behavior dialog. When the app is started first time then you can now also preselect some AnimBrush behavior options.

Minimum selection feature for crop tool.

Keyboard shortcuts dialogue window now resizeable.

Added simple drop shadow layer effect.

Reworked gradient filling.
Linear gradient now uses dragged orientation and length definition.
Circular gradient uses dragged gradient size definition.
Space + drag moves the whole gradient.
Radial gradient improved.

Swap BG/BG colors function now uses selected layers and frames.

Renamed lock grid to snap grid.

Now using newer file load/save dialogs style (Vista+).

Extended stroke effect to draw on border instead of only draw outline.
Now there are two modes:
Outline, drawing the stroke around the shape.
Border, drawing the stroke on the outer pixels of the shape.

Added keyboard shortcut entry to select current standard brush tip.

Now collecting 30 recent projects and 30 other recent files in home screen instead of just 25 overall.

Some internal optimization to speed up tile searches. Affects tile index rendering and canvas update functions.

Added free mem display.

Scaling icons when using DPI scaling.

Re-coded FLI/FLC reading improving i/o speed.

Exporting sprite sheet extra data as JSON file.

Fix: Tile selection tool (i) did not update selection state at the tool box and menu.

Fix: Copy brush to clipboard not working correctly.

Fix: With some tools the Ctrl-pipette could be activated after starting the tool operation, destroying the Ctrl-behavior of that tool.
E.g. filled/hollow shapes did not allow for Ctrl to use centered mode anymore.

Fix: After project loading and starting to add selected layers (e.g. with Ctrl), the initially selected layer became unselected.

Fix: ESC did not cancel tool operations when in fullscreen mode.

Fix: Middle mouse button operation was broken.

Fix: Stereo drawing was not correctly working with fill tools (filled shapes, flood fill).

Fix: When stereo drawing is active then temporary tool using same extra keys as stereo delta values has hidden the brush preview.
With stereo drawing the temporary tool assigned to Alt does not activate anymore when it uses the same extra keys as the shortcuts for stereo delta modification.

Fix: When stereo drawing is active then temporary tool using same extra keys as stereo delta values has hidden the brush preview
With stereo drawing the temporary tool assigned to Alt or Ctrl does not activate anymore when it uses the same extra keys as the shortcuts for stereo delta modification to prefer stereo tool preview before using a temporary tool.

Fix: Clear frame with tile map project + undo caused problems.
After clear frame + undo in a tile map projects drawing elements on the screen led to map inconsistencies.

Fix: with filled circle/rectangle the extended edit mode did sometimes not work correctly.

Fix: When using snap grid mode “inbound” then brush dots where misplaced when brush size was larger that grid size
This lead to wrong lines/hollow shapes.

Fix: Load AnimBrush did not remember previously used path after restart.

Fix: AnimBrush playback too fast with paint continuous tool.

Fix: animations with delay “0” did not play.

Fix: Turning tile map project into ordinary project not correctly working with connected projects.

Fix: if a tile map action has been aborted then some changes have not been reverted.
If (e.g.) not all connected tile map projects have been loaded, any change that is applied has to be reverted. This did not work correctly. Some changes on the canvas remained.

Fix: undo/redo of removing/inserting pixel row/column did not update canvas display.

Fix: Removing RMB action on “FX” icon at a layer entry
Up to now it directly opened the layer settings but since an update of the dev system it additionally opened the context menu.
Instead of trying to find a work around the action that directly opens the FX settings has been removed. It can be found as a menu
entry in the context menu anyway.

Fix: 1-based coordinate display option was not working anymore.
The preferences option “Coordinate Display starts with 1 instead of 0” was not working anymore

Fix: Enable and disable pattern drawing cropped project by one pixel to the right and bottom.

Fix: Loading projects with spare frame did not work.

Fix: file i/o plugins not loaded.

Fix: Middle mouse button applied draw actions.
When using the middle mouse button then tool drawing actions have been executed although only left and right mouse button are only valid to do so.

Fix: brush preview using wrong opacity.
Having an alpha transparent project and a brush with 50% drawing opacity showed wrong color mixing (higher opacity) for the brush preview.

Fix: Drawing with second color did not restore fixed background.
If background was fixed and right mouse button was used with paint mode “paint” then the fixed pixels have not been restored if the second color was the transparent color.

Fix: clear function for current frame not working.
If the current frame was not explicitly selected on the time line then menu Frame/Clear Frame did not work.

Fix: when loading image or animation the undo destroys current frame.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 2 (2022-02-13)

Find the beta version at beta version download.

New option “mix” when using normal paint mode with alpha projects. Instead of overriding the pixel color it mixes the existing color with the brush color depending on opacity.

Pipette tool did the operation when releasing mouse button and now does right when clicking.

Allow 1-8 bit for color channels.

Improved corner zoom repositioning when using magnify window without “pan around canvas” option.

Clear frame function now uses selected frames and selected layers.

Added select all/none to timeline context menu.

Improved displayed messages for brush color handling if imported from clipboard and color palettes don’t match. Same for when creating text brushes.

Zoom in/out now use increasing level above 6x zoom when using +/- or mouse wheel for faster navigation.

Zooming with keyboard shortcuts (+/-) now zooms to pointer position like mouse wheel.

“Show Selection Area” now re-enabled automatically if selection is modified.

Removed layer tool auto move option.

Show info/error/warning overlays at top center instead of top left and close with ESC/Enter.

Transformations without a selection. Even if no selection is available then you can now use canvas transformations like free transform, rotate etc. . In that case the contents to be modified are automatically detected.

Changed default transparency mode for brush pick up. The default transparency mode when picking up a brush was “second color”. It is now “Layer” to use the layer’s transparent color.

On startup the palette window now only auto re-activates color edit areas. The color palette window stored the last used area to be reactivated on next startup.
This led to confusion when contrast or stencil area where reactivated. Now only the last color editing area is reactivated. If stencil or contrast was enabled then it defaults back to RGB edit area.

With selection tools the “Move Selection” tool now auto activates when inside a selection.

Simple click outside a selection with a selection tool now resets selection. You now need to start dragging in order to also define a new selection.

Added an automatic tile map integrity check for beta debug purposes. There is a new entry in menu Tile Mapping: Auto check Tile Map Integrity (Beta Debug Helper).
If enabled it checks the tile map/tile set integrity of a tile map project after every single modification to track down actions that lead to inconsistencies between tile map display data and tile set data.

Made the selection tools work better with an existing floating selection. When a selection is floating then using a selection tool should finalize the floating selection and then keep the selection definition so that add/remove continue to work on that selection instead of starting from scratch.

Transform rotation snapping improved. Shift + Mouse now snaps to every 15 degrees no matter what the starting degree was. Ctrl + Mouse snaps to integer degrees.

Layer selection improvements. Different coloring for selected layer and active layer. When deselecting the active layer, one of the other selected layers now becomes active automatically.

When importing true color images or brushes you can check an option whether or not to import alpha transparency data.

When importing true color images you can check an option whether or not to import alpha transparency data.

Added visual transparent color marker to the palette editor color display.

New blend mode “Behind” that draws only where transparency is.

Polygon line tool now stops with Ctrl + click with drawing the last line. Without Ctrl it omits the last line like using other mouse button.

ESC with polygon line tool now reverts all line operations.

Filled polygon like tools now close the polygon when using “other mouse button” or Ctrl + click.

Tools of a tool group can get the same shortcut and in that case using the shortcut cycles through these tools. This is a replacement for the preferences option ‘Cycle grouped Tools with Main Tool Key Shortcut’ which has been removed.
Extra keys (Shift or Alt or Ctrl) may only be used for temporary pipette, temporary layer mover, temporary canvas mover (pan).

Improved foreground and backgorund color visualization in color palette window.

Improved DPI change and HiRes behavior of some dialogs.

Even Stepped lines enhancements. Now the even line stepping mode is an option for Shift lock. Shift either locks at isometric angles or with the even steps.

Added window layout management functions. Different window layouts can be defined and used for projects and project types.

Option to auto-save windows position and size on exit.

Color picker options improved.
If temporary color picker key is Ctrl the right Ctrl picks opacity for alpha enabled graphics.
If temporary color picker key is Alt then Ctrl + Shift picks opacity for alpha enabled graphics.
Extra option for picking opacity removed.

Initial App behavior definition improved. When selecting the initial app behavior definition for Ctrl and Alt keys then you have the following options now:
Ctrl picks color, Alt moves selection/layer
Alt picks color, Ctrl moves selection/layer

Fix: Temporary mover not correctly activating/deactivating

Fix: Out of memory error when large images have been rescaled using resampling (e.g. bicubic).

Fix: Pixel selection was ignored if you resize the project.

Fix: Program freeze due to invalid window size settings.

Fix: Playback limit not enlarged if more that one frame was inserted at a frame position within the playback limit.

Fix: Paint mode “replace” or tile mapping edit mode pick/place showed wrong preview. Instead of only replacing the pixels of the active layer, also the layer contents below the current one have been replaced in preview.
This showed transparency pattern or background color for transparent parts of the brush/tile instead of showing the pixels of the layers underneath.

Fix: Brush overlay did not use selected alpha opacity but always showed opaque.

Fix: Temporary tools should only activate when pointer is on canvas, e.g. pipette tool or move tool.

Fix: Alt Gr did not work for pipette as replace mode key.

Fix: When a floating selection was moved with cursor keys then finalizing placed the pixel correctly but the selection was misplaced.

Fix: Magnify window header sometimes did not show the project name correctly.

Fix: Tile palette window did not automatically update when drawing.

Fix: Project canvas position lost when switching from project to home screen and back.

Fix: Layer mover did not automatically activate anymore when hovering floating pixels.

Fix: Moving pixels partially outside to the left led to misplacement.

Fix: Free Form Selection Tool operation canceled itself prematurely.

Fix: Move tool now ignores empty layers. If no selection was given the move tool created an empty floating selection that was moved around but invisible.

Fix: With selection tools the center/square mode did not always activate correctly.

Fix: Endless loop when starting ping-pong playback and having only one frame.

Fix: Internal error when having a stencil but selection is switched off. If you had a stencil defined but the selection was temporarily switched off (which also switches off the stencil usage) then cutting a brush caused an internal error.

Fix: Random internal error when switching between tile map projects and non-tile map projects.

Fix: Fill like tools did also include transparent color when using tolerance values that would match the transparent color’s RGB value. Affected: Magic wand selection, magic wand brush pick up, fill tool

Fix: Crash if using rotate, skew and closing program without finishing the operation.

Fix: Magic Wand Tool add/subtract mode did not work with floating selection.

Fix: Selection tools add and subtract modes revamped. Now the selection tools show permanently if add (Shift) or subtract mode (Alt) is active. Square/Centered modes that also use Shift/Alt are only activatable after an initial stroke.

Fix: Selection tool subtract mode not working and modifier key redefinition. Temporary pipette is now disabled for all selection tools.
Shift adds, X subtracts.
X = Alt if temporary pixel mover uses Ctrl.
X = Ctrl if temporary pixel mover uses Alt.
Right mouse button always subtracts.

Fix: Deselecting a floating selection with menu entry or Ctrl+D not working.

Fix: Changing brushes in project tab Brush Container did not cause an unsaved change indicating asterisk in filename tab.

Fix: Import of alpha enabled image as brush can use wrong colors. If an alpha enabled image is loaded and fully transparent pixels use different color values then they need to be reset to the brush transparent color in order to work correctly.

Fix: Opening image with alpha transparency alters palette. If alpha transparent (true color images) are loaded then the transparent color index was inserted at position 0. This shifted the color palette if you select “use current color palette” when loading the image.
Now several detection mechanisms prevent this behavior and set the color 255 to be transparent if neccessary.

Fix: When using next/previous layer selection shortcuts the selected layer was not correctly highlighted. Also, when changing the layer selection then the active layer is not changed anymore.

Fix: Problems with floating selections in alpha transparent projects. Moving a selection with alpha transparency used wrong alpha values after being placed and colors have not been combined if placed on other existing pixels.
Copy & paste between alpha transparent and simple transparent projects not fully working. Having a floating selection with alpha transparency did not correctly display when switching color and alpha plane visibility.

Fix: Correcting some tool hints.

Fix: Undo/Redo bug with selections when drawing new selections. If you had a selection and drew a new one while replacing the existing one, undo/redo did not work correctly.

Fix: Polygon Line Tool didn’t start drawing lines with single click.

Fix: Could not switch selection tools while hovering a selection.

Fix: Random internal error. Happened in connection with screen updates.

Changes with 8.0.0 beta 1 (2021-12-23)

Find the beta version at beta version download.

DPI scaling. Now you can set up whether you you want the UI being scaled to the DPI settings of your system. This improves display on HiRes monitors.

All tools and the canvas rendering engine have been newly programmed enabling more consistent handling, improve performance and visual previews. Tools finalize their changes with Enter or cancel eith Escape key (both can be changed).

Symmetry now available with all tools where it makes sense.

There are now typical selection tools (rectangle, oval, polygon, magic wand) including typical options and selection movement.

Line tool has now an “Even stepping” option to prefer equal segment sizes when there is a match.

Circle/rectangle now offering centered mode by holding Ctrl.

Interactive extended drawing mode for all circle/rectangle shaped tools to rotate and changes sizes easily before finalizing the change. Extra rotate tools have been removed.

Crop tool now offers interactive selection.

Magnify tool offers a “Realive Zoom” option to immediately zoom in and out by just click and drag.

Key for temporary pipette can now be changed.

New tool to move the current selection/layer including temporary mode.

Multi layer selection. You can now select multiple layers and change their position etc. . The layer selection is also used for different functions like moving selected pixels, change blend mode, scroll, reverse, flip frames, copy/paste, floating movement etc. .

Multi layer and multi frame copy and paste based on selections even between projects.

Full featured selection transformations in menu “Edit”: rotate, skew, scale, free transform.

Improved brush rotation and skew functions.

New tool to freely transform a brush.

Transformation functions offer special optimizations to improve quality.

Time line range frame selection overrides playback limit. For certain operations the selected playback limit is used. If a consecutive range of frames is selected (marked blue) then this overrides the playback limit for that operations,
e.g. playback, flipping, scrolling frames, multi frame brush pick up etc.

New coordinates and attributes displays. Coordinates, project size, object sizes, brush size etc. moved to magnify window and redefined.

Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab now switch project instead of page down/up.

Adding some PS shortcuts:
– free Transformation Ctrl+T
– new layer Ctrl+Shift+N
– Move Layer/Selection V
– Rectangular Selection M

Maximum number of drawing grid entries lifted from 16 to 32.

Added toggle options to different tools for AnimBrush and multi frame handling. To free the Alt key for optional and global tool activation (e.g. color picker or layer move tool) the Alt key logic can now be toggled for the respective tools.
Brush pick up: enable an option “Pick AnimBrush” and then you can hold Alt to pick up the defined number of frames as AnimBrush
Stamping AnimBrush: works the same but the option is called “Stamp AnimBrush” to stamp an AnimBrush over frames when holding Ctrl + Alt
AnimPainting (for freehand and line tool): works the same but option is called “AnimPainting”.
Flood fill (filling selected frames): works the same but option is called “Frame Selection”.

JASC pal format for color palettes added.

Restore windows positions from previous session. Now the active window settings are stored when the program quits and reloaded on startup. Therefore the menu entry to save it manually has been removed. Also I changed the naming for the remaining menu entries.

Toolbox icons now 32×32 pixels and reworked.

Cursors completely reworked.

Added setting for fixed number of frames AnimBrush pick up from AnimBrush Settings dialog to brush pickup tool options.

When picking up an AnimBrush then frame range selection in time line overrides AnimBrush pick frame count setting.

Delays “A” button now stores the current delay to all selected frames (if any) or to all frames of playback selection.

Scrolling frames (menu Frames/Scroll) now affects selected layers and frames.

Removed display option for onion skinning in preview window because it’s not useful there.

Moved the file name details from the program title to the canvas window title.

Grid and tile index displays can be switched on/off in preview window.

When the animation is running then it is not stopped when using functions like ins/del frame etc.

Animation playback smoothness and precision improved.

Halftone blend mode with RMB. Now half tone inverts the pattern with RMB.

Keyboard shortcuts dialogue “Remove” button now disabled when not applicable.

Conflicting shortcut dialog now executes the shortcut automatically again after selecting the operation.

Option to preserve transparency with paint modes. If enabled, transparent pixels are not touched.

Now the “add slot” in the brush container is shown at the beginning instead of the end.

Layer names may be up to 100 chars now.

Fix: Opacity slider auto hiding was too unforgiving. Actually there was a bug that made the trackbar hide even if the number edit had focus. This was not wanted.
It now only hides if you leave the edit field at all or if you clicked on the trackbar and leave this. In that case you can now also move back on the trackbar again to intercept hiding (within 0.5s).

Fix: endless loop + crash with layer effect “display other project”.

Fix: shortcuts that can be assigned to extra mouse buttons did not support Shift

Fix: Brush “Border Outside Invert” had a drawing glitch. Also some refactoring to remove an internal “temp brush handling”

Fix: Switching frames or layers while drawing with a tool leaves artifacts on the canvas.

Fix: Some project specific menu entries where enabled when no project was loaded.

Fix: crash when using Frame/Resize with tile map projects. When canvas has been increased you could not draw into newly defined areas. A crash appeared.

Fix: reducing flicker when opening full screen edit.

Fix: Single extra key shortcuts (single Ctrl, Shift, Alt key) did not use correct text when displayed. Was “Alt + ALT” etc.

Fix: improving project switch performance and removing flicker.

Fix: Allow minimum layer opacity of zero percent.

Fix: When changing the second brush color in the color palette window then brush transparency was changed.

Fix: if a tile map project was saved with spare frame enabled then loading that project caused an internal error.

Fix: in rare cases a mouse wheel action can lead to an internal error

Fix: Modifying color bit depth to invalid values (9 bits) with “proof” activated led to an error

Fix: “close all projects” in project tab menu (RMB) did not update the tab list. Projects where closed, but still visible as tabs.

Fix: single image layer caused problems when moving tiles in the tile set. Tile updates where not correctly stored to the tile map leading to inconsistencies.

Fix: “save animation” with sprite sheet asked again for the layout after reloading a project where this was previously defined.

Fix: when dragging a layer past first or last entry then the green indicator line gets stuck.

Fix: running animation. Open menu. close menu. Animation ran fast to the current target.

Fix: ESC and Enter could not be used in the shortcut definition dialog.

Fix: tile palette window did not use project pixel size for rendering the tiles

Fix: wrong alpha value display in info panel when using alpha bit depth < 8

Fix: if brush size edit in main window was active then other sub windows could not be selected

Fix: Cannot use square brush with pressure sensitivity. Now also normal brush tips can be used with pen pressure size scaling.
Also fixed problems with gradient and halftone pressure drawing.

Fix: Custom brush handle position calculation wrong. Misplaced brush by 0.5 pixel.

Fix: Palette file problems. Gimp palette can have either spaces or tabs to separate RGB values. PM only supported tabs, now also supports spaces.

Fix: as soon as you change lock grid settings animation play back is broken. Wrong frames are displayed between the animating ones. Only closing software solved the problem.

Fix: Moving tiles in the tile palette not working with single image layers. When having single image layers in a tile map project then moving tiles in the palette is nor working correctly. It leads to wrong tile indices in the tile map.

Fix: brush size edit field did not allow erasing of the current value. It forced the default “1” instead making input difficult.

Changes with 7.2.8 (2022-10-30)

Fix: Loading projects of V8 containing layer groups raised errors

Fix: When changing the second brush color in the color palette window then brush transparency was changed

Fix: If a tile map project was saved with spare frame enabled then loading that project caused an internal error

Fix: In rare cases a mouse wheel action can lead to an internal error

Fix: Palette file problems. Gimp palette can have either spaces or tabs to separate RGB values. PM only supported tabs, now also supports spaces.
JASC pal format added.

Fix: As soon as you change lock grid settings animation play back is broken. Wrong frames are displayed between the animating ones. Only closing software solved the problem.

Fix: Moving tiles in the tile palette not working with single image layers. When having single image layers in a tile map project then moving tiles in the palette is nor working correctly. It leads to wrong tile indices in the tile map.

Changes with 7.2.7 (2020-08-23)

Added shortcuts to toggle color drag modes in palette window.

Improvements to frame resize dialog concerning size definitions. The changes include percentage edits as well as a new adjustment button containing different predefined width/height adjustments.

Fix: When modifying a halftone pattern slot value in the paint mode settings and closing/starting PM again then it selected the dither pattern you had in your last session, but it did not load the individual slot settings. Instead it used the default values.

Fix: When using the hue slider in the square color selector pad and moving to the fare right position it turned the color to black.

Pipette options for “pick once” and “pick opacity”.
If enabled “pick once” returns to the previous tool after color pick up.
If enabled “right Ctrl picks opacity” picks opacity with alpha transparent projects.

Fix: Clicking minimize icon of PM directely when another app is active, left main window open.

Added name labels for color harmonies.

Added shortcut to toggle layer solo mode.

Fix: If you have layer effects in two projects that display each other then you could not load them again in PM. An endless internal loop occurred.

Fix: If a brush whose colours have been remapped gets resized using shift++ or shift+- its colours get reverted to the originals unremapped state.

Fix: Create animation from color cycling lost transparency.

Added option for TGA compression.

Added crop to selection feature in menu “Frame”.

Shortcut entry to send current brush to brush container.

Function to select everything that has the current foreground color in menu “Selection”.

Fix: Remove files from recent file lists that don’t exist anymore and remove duplicates.

Fix: When having full screen window and closing last project then it stays open leading to crash later.

Allow max pixel scale of 600 on export.

Fix: If a daily update check has been done and a new version is available then the corresponding “New Version available” button shows. If PM was restarted then the button did not show anymore until next day when a new update check was done.

Fix: Loading true color image improvements. Sort palette. White is first color. Select color 0 to be be transparent when using alpha transparency.

Fix: The function to hold Shift to lock the movement to an axis suddenly stopped working. Internally it is checked that only Shift and no other key is down. On some Systems a couple of extra keys like “Play”, “Kana”, “Kanji” are always “down” to enable certain special functions. Such keys are now ignored.

Changes with 7.2.6 (2020-04-26)

Fix: Random crash when closing project.

Fix: Loading an (older) tile map project could lead to project corruption.

Fix: Random error when using (e.g.) Ctrl + 1 to unzoom after opening/closing projects.

Increased max layers to 256.

New shortcuts for layer navigation: Move layer up / down, top / bottom, toggle layer lock.

Fix: Right mouse button tile erase not working in tile map pick place mode. When you have a tile as brush and place it with the right mouse button then a full tile erase should be done. This worked with indexed transparency but not with alpha transparency. An “action aborted” message appeared.

Improved keyboard shortcut management. Now keys like “Tab” can be used as well.

Fix: Licensing engine not working with UTF8 characters. Names with Asian characters have been displayed as ????

Free edition project management improvement. Due to a restriction to have two projects open at a time only, certain sample projects could not be loaded. It should be possible to load every existing project while creating a new project is only possible if you have only a single one open.

Fix: Different clipboard transfer glitches. Creating new project from clipboard did not use transparency if an image was copied to the clipboard that used indexed transparency. Getting data from clipboard as brush not working with clipboard image using alpha transparency.

Increased export scale max value to be 20.

Fix: Brush container could not be placed on second monitor. Always returned to top left corner of main window after startup.

Fix: Main window not maximizing again after minimizing all Apps using WinKey + D and switching back to Pro Motion.

More Shortcuts…
Toggle bucket isolated fill on and off
Toggle pen pressure sensitivity (known as ‘brush tip size’) on and off
Toggle brush pattern fill mode (technically, being able to cycle through fill modes on the fly)

Fix: Shortcut using F1 and any extra key opens help instead of when F1 pressed only.

Store option to display or hide home screen for next start up.

Fix: Export only plugins accessed even when only checked for supporting to read a file.

Fix: Outside border selection modification one pixel too small.

Fix: ESC not working with “Create Animation Window”. ESC now stops a running preview and closes the window otherwise.

Fix: App windows not disabled when no project active. If home screen is active the app windows could be used leading to different sorts of errors.

Stencil improved.
Stencil operations now stored in undo history.
Warning message if selection is to be changed while stencil auto update feature is enabled because this reverts the operation so that nothing would happen.
Initially “deselecting” a color must invert stencil first, automatically.

Added message if Windows Ransomware Protection blocks access to documents folder.

Added warning when trying to save alpha transparent image/animation with incompatible file types.

Improved overlay hint texts for the option icons in the layer window. There are a couple of icons in the layer window to show if alpha is enabled, stencil, global palettes and spare frame. Their text descriptions for when these options are active or inactive have been improved to make their state and function more clear to the user.

Added separate white color index for transparent pixels when loading alpha enabled images/animations. When image/animation files (e.g. png) where loaded then there was only a single white color used for fully transparent pixels and opaque white pixels at the same time. Now there is a separate white palette index for the transparent pixels.

Fix: Create project from clipboard contents not working correctly. With alpha enabled images the empty area was not correctly cleared. The palette was not taken/built from the image data but from the current project default.

When creating an alpha enabled project now color 0 is used as white and transparent instead of 255.

Fix: Errors in palette window when “alpha only” edit mode is enabled. If you clicked into the alpha palette then an error occurred. Also the vertical size of the alpha gray scale palette was wrong.

Changes with 7.2.5 (2020-03-20)

Drop indicator for dragging layers.

Added shortcus to toggle select/edit area in palette window.

Made F1 key to be available for other functions than help topic only.

Fix: Swap FG/BG color removed transparency pattern of the transparent color swatch.

Added shortcut slot to toggle pixel perfect drawing option. A concrete shortcut must be defined individually. There is no default.

Added functions to modify the current selection, see menu “Selection/Modify”. Grow, Shrink, Inside Border, Outside Border with given size and round or square shape

New function to directly shade a brush. New submenus Brush/Shade/Shade up, Brush/Shade/Shade down added. These functions take the colors of the brush and shade them like the multi shade paint mode.

Fix: Loading a third image in Free Edition led to an error.

Fix: Flipped gradients used wrong order after loading project.

Shortcuts to cycle through color palette rows. A concrete shortcut must be defined individually. There is no default.

Fix: Anti aliasing not working with pattern drawing.

Fix: Tile set export did not correctly remember file type and added two file type extensions. When you repeatedly exported a tile library and reused the previous name like “abc.png” then the extension “png” was added again.
Also when you saved as “PNG” then the next run pre-selected “TGA” as file type instead of using PNG again.

Fix: Swap FG/BG color removed transparency pattern of the transparent color swatch. If you had an alpha transparent project where the (fully) transparent color index is not “0”, you select this as drawing color and use the “flip fg/bg color button” then the color swatch did not show the transparency pattern anymore.

Fix: Random crash when opening gradient editor.

“Home screen” added with recent projects and files to load as well as news display.

When using mouse wheel to cycle through brushes in the container the selected brush is now brought into view area. It is now also in “selected” state.

When the currently selected tile changes then it is now made visible in the tile palette. The tile palette now scrolls to the tile position instead of leaving it out of view.

Changing selected layer with Shift + T now scrolls layer window to the position of the new active layer.

Fix: Undo/redo with single dot tool and paint mode “selection” not working. Also latest changes reverted when you switch to another tool.

Fix: Internal error when picking up tiles in alpha enabled project and moving to non-alpha project where tile index display is enabled.

Changes with 7.2.4 (2020-02-09)

Mouse wheel action to cycle through gradient colors + key shortcuts.

Fix: Random crashes when editing tile map based projects.

Fix: When toggling sync mode by key shortcut then brush preview was baked into the image and turned into tiles.

Fix: Mouse wheel not working in full screen mode.

Fix: Connected tile map projects problem when copying tile map projects. If you created a copy of the a tile map project file, e.g. with “Save Copy as” or by copy/paste in the file system then the connected project settings became wrong. The previous project was added as connected project to the new project file copy.

Fix: Invert selection clashed with stencil. When a stencil is active then Selection/Invert Selection inverted the stencil. This raised problems because the stencil might have been used for the initial selection. After that other selection modifications could have been made. When using the invert selection function then now the stencil definition is removed and the selection is inverted as is. To invert the stencil the invert stencil function in the palette editor must be used.

Fix: Brush alignment with single dot painting sometimes not working. The dot space definition was used a minimum distance, even if “Brush Size aligned” is active which sjould always use the brush size.

Fix: Modifying a mask while stencil auto update is enabled did not revert the change. If you had a stencil mask active and “stencil auto update” option enabled then you may not modify the mask, e.g. by drawing with paint mode “selection”. If you did then an error was displayed but the change was not reverted.

Fix: Sometimes an internal error occurred in palette editor when moving colors. After certain palette operations some function states are updated. Some involve checking if there is data in the clipboard. Opening the clipboard can raise an error. Windows sometimes refuses access to clipboard data randomly (probably due to security checking, virus scanning or something).

Fix: Palette edit allowed even if not all connected tile map projects are loaded.

Fix: Copied tile map projects interfered with each other. If you created a copy of a tile map file then internally a technical project id was copied as well. If you loaded both projects then both used the same id leading to weird effects and even destruction of the projects.

Fix: Brush magic wand cut pickup + undo not working.

Fix: Shade paint modes not working with alpha transparent brushes.

Fix: Some tile set operations always allowed though only valid when sync mode is enabled.

Fix: IFF animation files not loading. A ‘Not a valid IFF(Anim5) Animation!’ error occurred.

Fix: Pipette + Shift to select a color jumped to move/edit area of the palette window even when you wee currently in contrast/brightness area. Now it stays there.

Fix: Tile drag/drop not working when scrolling with mouse wheel. If you dragged a tile in the tile set and used the mouse wheel to scroll then the drop operation was ignored.

When creating to many new tiles, the operation is directly reverted if the user cancels. When creating too many tiles with a single operation (e.g. fill tool) then the user was asked if he wants to create so many individual tiles. If he says “no” now then the operation is reverted directly instead of letting the user hit undo.

Allow layer merge on brush pick up with tile map projects. This was disabled because merged multi layer tile data can’t be placed as tiles. But it can be used as new tiles and it is also useful when not in sync mode, so it’s up to the user to do the right thing instead if disabling that function.

Fix: Shortcuts to cycle through tiles not working correctly. If you used Shift + F and Shift + V to cycle through tiles with the brush then two problems appeared: They cycled to wrong direction (next vs. previous). With alpha transparent projects the brush was fully transparent showing no tile.

Fix: Import brush color dialog does not find matches if brush has transparent color. Some more tweaks:
Mark transparent color in project palette.
Auto map transparent brush color to project transparent color.
Display brush color details when hovering on them.

Fix: Color channel bits not considered when importing brush colors.

Fix: Get Brush (from clipboard) + certain functions reset to last pick up brush before applying the function

Fix: Getting 32Bit image data from clipboard can result in loosing colors even if no more that 256 are used

Changes with 7.2.3.1 (2019-11-25)

Fix: When having multiple projects open layers display did not update. This could even lead to crashes because of executing functions on wrong layers.

Fix: Mouse wheel not working in embedded windows mode.

Changes with 7.2.3 (2019-11-16)

Added typical layer handling functions to the Layers menu.

Fix: Mouse wheel using wrong operation. If a dialog was open and mouse wheel used then the underlying window sometimes executed its mouse wheel operation instead.

Transparent brush color can now be imported as well with the brush color import function (menu Colors/Import Colors from Brush). The transparent color (if any) is marked by some orange bar and placed at the end of all colors to be imported.

Fix: Different problems when importing data from Windows clipboard. Transparency was mixed up and sometimes “Paste Frame” did not work at all.

Prior to NG the Alt key was used as pipette option to replace a color you click on.
With NG this was changed so that Alt picks up opacity and Alt Gr is replace color mode. This was a mistake, because of two reasons:
Alt should have staid as it was and Alt Gr should have been added to pick up opacity.
Alt Gr does not even exist on all keyboards.
New approach:
Alt is used to replace the color again
Right(!) Ctrl key is now used for picking up opacity (Alt Gr does the same additionally).

Allow isometric angle locks with Shift when drawing straight lines or polygon lines.

Fix: Polygon tools didn’t capture mouse movement correctly. When leaving the canvas window the lines where interrupted.

Fix: Brush used wrong size when grabbed with freehand selection.

Fix: Some glitches with color palette selection (e.g. when selecting a palette in project creation window).
– the system searched all files in folder tree. This is now limited to 2 levels
– files that where 768 Bytes in size where incorrectly recognized as color palette

Fix: Error when using gradient color sort function in gradient editor

Fix: Clicking into PM with middle mouse button when comming from another app did a tool operation (e.g. drawing) instead of moving canvas when there is a pinned window.

With menu Edit/Insert Frame global layer palette is not deactivated anymore. Instead the layer palette is used and the frame pixels are remapped to it.

When turning a project into a tile map then it is automatically resized if it does not fit the tile size.

Fix: Import colors from brush reverted the brush the one that was pick up instead of the current one (e.g. imported from clipboard)

Changes with 7.2.2.2 (2019-10-06)

Fix: “Paste” menu entry in color palette window sometimes disabled even if there is paste-able data in the clipboard

Fix: Merging two layers on the layer stack not working. Contents of lower frame where removed.

Fix: Color remapping creates wrong colors when importing from true color (e.g. load true color images or paste from clipboard).

Changes with 7.2.2 (2019-09-15)

Fix: Inverse halftone gradient fill not working with gradient auto slots.

Fix: When drawing lines with symmetry then parts of the line end are not finally drawn.

Fix: Inaccuracy with multi point symmetry modes. With the multi point dots the symmetry positions are sometimes wrong, especially with larger zoom values and when moving the mouse cursor at the edges of a zoomed pixel. In that case the calculation suffers from rounding effects leading to misplaced dots.

Playback limit modifications now recorded in undo history.

Fix: Problems in 3D animation dialog:
If you enlarged the frame range and execute rendering then the last frame that was already there before the enlargement is erased.
Using “B” for acquiring the last brush stamp position was sometimes not working correctly.
Missing or doubled brush pixel lines when doing a straight movement without rotation at z=0 form outside screen on the left to outside screen on the right.

Internal color management and color calculations reworked.

Fix: Timeline selection with Shift sometimes not working correctly. Starting frame was removed from selection.

Fix: Internal palette generation corrected to match default palette.

You can now define a frame range when exporting animation data.

Added filter option to fill pattern management dialog to only show patterns that match the current gradient type.

Layer based selections:
Ctrl +… selection actions for layers when clicking on eye-icon
no other modifier key = set
Shift = add
Alt = subtract
Shift + Alt = logical “and”
Right Mouse button = remove selection

Single color editor reworked:
– RGB square, RYB/LCh/Lab color wheels and edits
– Color harmonies and scales
– individual scale editor to easily create color ramps
– screen color picker

Removed HSL/HSB preferences. With the new color editor offering different color spaces the option to use HSL over HSB has been removed from the preferences. The color palette window now always uses HSL. HSB is available in the single color edit dialog.

Compatibility tab in the preferences now always visible to e.g. define windows being “inside” the main window not only when running on MacOS or Linux.

Fix: AnimBrush could not be placed at outside top/left area. Also project frame now does not flip to the next one when placing an AnimBrush.

Added menu entries to the context menu in the color palette window (edit area)
– reduce colors
– remove unused colors
– remove duplicate colors

Fix: Some color changes in palette editor did not update paint color slots. If e.g. gray or invert color have been used and one of the affected colors where selected as first/second drawing color then their slots in the main form have not been updated.

Option “Auto select Color” in the dialog menu of the palette editor window is now “Select Paint Colors in Edit/Move Area” and also selects RMB color instead of opening context menu.

In the palette window where you can edit contrast, brightness and saturation gray colors can be changed concerning saturation turning them into colors.

Reworked color sort functions
– made color sort functions to be always available with any selection
– sort from bright to dark
– use multiple sort levels where useful
– let transparent color be untouched when sorting colors

Fix: color palette handling, paint modes, color matching algorithms reworked and glitches removed
– using CIE LAB color remapping
– paint modes used transparent color index if it’s best matching to the color to find
– transparent color problem with multi layer merges

Fix: when saving as PNG24 (sprite sheet) the layer merge used 256 color reduction.

Changes with 7.2.1 (2019-05-05)

Limit color remapping to masked area.

Shortcut option for 2×2 brushes.

Fix: The pen pressure range settings might become “0 to 0” after start up disabling all pressure based functions.

Fix: Layer merging still using wrong transparent color in merge result.

New functions as “hidden” shortcuts Alt Gr + O, Alt Gr + P that rotate the frames of the current layer, either the ones that are selected as playback limit or those that are selected on the time line.

Added preference settings to change transparency pattern size.

Fix: Cancelling layer settings editing led to unsaved changes flag being set to the project.

Fix:When you dragged a tile in the tile window but you start at the area where there are no tiles (gray dashed area at the end of the tiles) then
it destroyed the destination tile leading to different crashes later on.

Fix: Crash using shortcut Alt + D to show tile indices when not having a tile map project.

Fix: Different glitches with “Create from Modification History”.

Allow color sort in color palette with single color selection if the colors have a consecutive range.

Fix: Exporting merged mulit layer image/animation leds to an opaque image although there are transparent parts.

Fix: Crash when exporting scaled image/animation and enabled spare frame.

Fix: Crash when moving layer FX out of range in the effects list.

Fix: Pixel upscaling on export not working with alpha transparency.

Fix: Random crash when using quick mask stencil.

Fix: Preview of “Create Animation” could not be stopped. Click on Preview button now stops. Escape does not close the dialog anymore.

Fix: Undo/redo of frame scrolling down not working. Redo moved frame to the right instead of to the top.

Changes with 7.2.0 (2019-04-05)

Added “limit” option to the light table to limit rendering light table frames to the selected animation frames.

Fix: Merging layers using effects or opacity looses transparent color.

Real time paint mode usage with brush drawing tools.

Fix: Pixel precise drawing not working with Stereo drawing.

Fix: Ramp RGB/HSV did not respect channel bit depth.

Follow Preview option for magnify window.

Functions added to the palette editor to remap colors to a given color selection.

Some Microsoft ransomware protection denies access to the user documents folder. If this is the case then a special message is shown.

Added new tile index display mode for tiles that use mirroring.

Fix: File I/O plugin behavior not as described in the docs.

Scale and pixel size options now offered on file export (image and animation).

Random playback option for AnimBrushes added.

Fix: Prevent shortcut execution when application is not fully loaded.

Fix: Leaving ‘pick stencil from canvas’ with line mode shortcut changes the line mode

Re-integrated the “Create from Undo Buffer” function that was available. Now called “Create from Modification History”

Fix: When using two spin edit fields on the same dialog that have a track bar then an exception was sometimes raised when the dialog closes.

Fix: Pinned windows disappeared behind unpinned magnify windows (e.g. when using Alt key).

Swap Zoom Level now zooms at mouse position when switching to a larger zoom value and otherwise it centers the view position.

Mouse wheel brush size change now uses one pixel steps.

Zoom function (e.g. magnify and mouse wheel zoom) now keep the pixel under cursor aligned.

Scrollbar handle sizes are made dynamic, depending on the canvas display contents in magnify and animation window.

Fix: GIFs having different transparent colors per frame ended up with a wrong overall transparent color after being loaded. Such animations are now set to be opaque.

Fix: E-key selection and undo did not work.

Re-included image file names per frame as it was in V6.5.

When using flip or sort functions in palette window and option “Apply color Movements to Pixels” is enabled then the pixels are remapped automatically.

Fix: After moving selected colors in the color palette a following sort operation is applied to the original selection not to the destination after move.

Fix: Pick up brush, turn single color, change color, resize –> first selected color was used again instead of the latest one.

Fix: When creating an alpha transparent project, color index 255 must be used as white and transparent.

Fix: Pattern drawing and stereo drawing must deny each other.

Paint mode toggle added. If you hit a paint mode shortcut twice then it toggles back to the previously selected paint mode.

Fix: frame resize dialog did not allow width/height below 4

Fix: In alpha plane only edit mode, transparency pickup with pipette did not work.

Fix: In alpha plane only edit mode, value replacement with pipette + undo did not work.

Right mouse button or double click on tool icon now shows the corresponding tool settings.

Shortcut added to simulate right mouse button. For pen users it’s useful to hold a key (“P” by default) and draw to apply the second color while using the pen normally on the tablet.

When defining colors for a gradient, the color selection mode button was not down (initially it’s single color selection).

When adding colors to a gradient making it incompatible for color cycling, this option is silently deactivated instead of showing an error when you hit ok.

Add auto close option to freehand pickup.

Solo layer mode toggle. When holding Alt and clicking on the visibility icon (eye) of a layer then all other visible layers become invisible. Doing again will make them become visible again.
If the layer that was enabled for this solo mode is invisible at the time you hold Alt and click on it then it turns visible and doing it again will make it invisible again.

Added GIMP gpl palette file format support.

Fix: the animation preview window is considered optional, but there was a problem that when switched off and magnify window was enabled to display anim playback it still popped up. When the magnify window plays back then there is no need to auto pop up the animation window as well.

Added “Save Copy as” feature to project file menu. It just creates a detached copy for the current project. It leaves the project filename untouched and also does not reset the “unsaved changes flag”.

Fix: If you right clicked on a brush container already having a brush and cancelling after overwrite prompt an out of memory error appeared.

Fix: Cycling through brushes with shift + mouse wheel does not show brush when tile map project is used.

Mouse wheel now scrolls window contents that is under the cursor no matter if it’s focused or not, as long as it supports wheel scrolling.

Fix: Pipette did not switch back to previous tool when picking up transparency in alpha transparent project.

Redefinition of coordinate displays. The coordinate displays top left, center, bottom right showed the bounding rectangle and its center of the operation either of a single brush dot, line or rectangle etc. .
With single dots this is fine but not when drawing primitives. With these the display should display the brush grip position for the start and end of the drawing operation and the center of it.

Fix: sometimes an exception occurs when drawing a gradient direction line.

Add consistent filling with filled shape tools and real time preview. All fill tools have been reworked to show real time preview of gradient and brush filling. This is also supported with pattern drawing.
Some problems have been fixed along with the rework like
– can’t undo gradients drawn in selection mode
– fill mode “outline” not working with paint mode “selection”
– If paint mode selection is enabled and fill tool is used then the operation is not undoable
– Inline contour gradient direction inverted
– cancelling Fill shape during creation lead to non-undable operation

Use arbitrary grey scale image as halftone and transition patterns.
– pattern management system in paint mode setting and filled shape settings
– new pattern preview system in gradient editor

Fix: having all layers invisible and using canvas mover crashed.

Store animation as single image file export settings with project: folder, prefix, start index, file type are now stored with the project file.

Shortcut entries to switch halftone pattern slot (no shortcuts set by default).

Added new mouse wheel option to switch halftone slot.

Added new window arrangement option: “Set default layout”.

“Arrange Windows” function now arranges the windows based on their current position instead of always using a default layout. The user can roughly place the windows horizontally and vertically ordered an they are placed accordingly into to the three areas/lanes left, middle, right.

Fix: Holding flip frame keys (“1”, “2”) led to slow animation and frame switching lags.

Fix: Prev/next frame functions do not respect playback limit

Fix: Crash when setting a Lock grid dimension to 0.

Fix: Mirror and rotate always use latest pickup brush.

Fix: Pen opacity edit fields where not disabled for non alpha transparent projects.

Fix: Dark skin scrollbars stuck in place after arrange windows.

Fix: Tile set window placed on a second monitor displayed on the first monitor after new program start

Fix: Pen settings did not update usable options on project switch

Fix: Flicker in main window at startup.

Fix: Create project from clipboard led to wrong playback limit.

Fix: Random crash when closing project.

Fix: Frame resize with resample + undo led to wrong transparent colors.

Fix: Random crash when saving project with layer effects

Fix: Remapping colors should not change a transparent color.

Fix: When there is an open action in the palette window, moving the mouse outside now applies the operation

Fix: color selection rendered in alpha edit mode

Fix: ensure changes are always applied (leaving window, closing window, changing tab)

Store layer flattening options for image/animation file export with project so that there is no need to confirm them next time you save after reloading the project.

Added tool option to color picker to define if only the current layer should be used or all/current and below.

Added extra options for mouse wheel for Shift, Ctrl, Alt keys.

New layer effect “Re-apply Color Palette”. This enables you to apply other color palettes to existing pixels or shift color ranges to apply different color ramps.

Fix: hold E -> click without movement did not update selection mask rendering.

Fix: single pixel brush does not activate last used brush draw tool

Fix: rectangles did respect lock grid Keep Cell Boundaries option (which is now called “Inbound”).

Reworking grid settings and algorithms and introducing “inbound” option that creates objects within grid cells.

Extensive rework of the tile mapping engine. Most important changes:

  • with tile map projects transparent colors per layer are not useful and therefore not allowed anymore
  • tile map integrity check is now an official function, but only available by shortcut (Shift+Ctrl+i)
  • new workflow options for modifying tiles:
    • edit empty Tile: Allow new Tiles, Merge new Tiles, Reuse matching Tiles
    • edit present tile: Modify existing Tiles, Auto place matching Tiles, Duplicate & Modify Tiles
  • switching transparency mode alhpha vs. indexed now possible with tile map projects
  • the order of connected projects can now be changed with drag and drop.
  • if a project is saved having connected projects then they are saved as well if they have changes.
  • added tile set display settings dialog in the tile set window. There you can define a fixed number of tiles to be displayed per row as well as the marks for empty and duplicate tiles.
  • context popup functions in tile set window: Insert Duplicate, Join Duplicates
  • new tile set import features incl. append, overwrite and color handling options
  • improved export features for tile set and tile map data
  • flattening FX and layer merge now allowed for tile mapping projects. Requires sync mode to be off.
  • tile set windo completely reworked to support selection display, better drag/drop, delete/insert shortcuts, better scaling etc. .
  • tile index display has now differnt options which will also color indices based on the selected display mode, e.g. tiles selected as brush are emphasized, duplicates etc.
  • tile drawing is automatically updated over tiles incl. merging as the seamles pattern drawing does
  • in pick/place mode the brush coordinates now use tile coordinates
  • allowing color movement and remapping with tile mapping sync mode disabled
  • cycle tiles by mouse wheel (see “control” section in paint & tool settings dialog)
  • improved connected projects management
  • remove duplicate and unused colors now available with tile maps
  • single image layers can now be used as tile maps
  • tools like filed shapes or fill now automatically place aligned tiles when using “Pick/Place” mode
  • info displays (tile coordinates, in-tile position, mirror options…)
  • fixed a couple of problems with undo/redo
  • Construct 2/3 JSON tile map export

Changes with 7.1.8 (2018-08-26)

Mac OS and Linux version based on Wine including a couple of compatibility changes that where required to be more compatible with Wine.

New import functions for colors. Theer is now an extended dialog when using Coors/Import from Brush to place and arrange colors to be imported from Brush to the current project.

Tweaks: Removed some warning dialogs. Upated Tips. “Help/Support” menu entry. Changed UI fonts.

Dark Skin now available for Free Edition.

Plugins now available for Free Edition.

Fix: Smear paint mode placed wrong pixels when doing multiple strokes.

Fix: Different improvements concerning pinned Windows.

Fix: Random crashes when switching to full screen mode.

Fix: Crash when using the fill tool off the canvas in tile map editing.

Fix: Crash with “edit alpha only”. Sometimes there was a crash with alpha transparent projects when switch on alpha plane edit mode.

Fix: Shortcut for real time dither/halftone did not work anymore.

Fix: Single image layer erased when defining number of animation frames.

Tweak: In palette window keep selection when switching edit areas.

Fix: Default selection mode in the color palette editor not correctly preselected.

Quick ramp key “R” in color palette window now creates vertical ramps, too.

Fix: Using lines and curves for 3d stereo no longer worked with 3D offsets changes.

Fix: The fill tool did not fill with a dither pattern when dither was enabled.

Changes with 7.1.7 (2018-05-06)

Fix: AnimBrush playback skipped frames with continuous drawing and placing single dots

Fix: Initial AnimBrush pick up creates empty 1×1 brush if tablet is connected

Fix: Multi layer image/animation not preserving transparency correctly when storing as GIF/PNG

Fix: Grip position not reset when standard brush tip is set by brush tip size change (slider or edit field)

Fix: License holder name displayed wrong with UTF-8 characters

Fix: The automatic horizontal or vertical lock that is enabled when holding Shift sometimes drew the first dot not precisely but for one pixel aside.

Fix: Rotating a standard brush was not possible. It reverted to the latest picked up brush and rotated this one.

Fix: Using Shift + S when brush is on canvas it was stored with the image.

Fix: Phantom pixels appearing on the canvas occasionally.
– loading an image with keyboard shortcuts
– switching between file browser and PM with Alt-Tab and loading a project from the file explorer with double click
– when closing a project with Alt + F4

Fix: When the current layer transparent color was selected as foreground and background color and picking up a portion as brush then selecting a standard brush led to a fully transparent one which was not usable.

Fix: Restore brush function (Shift + B) did not rewind an AnimBrush to its first frame.

Fix: Error in tile palette window when switching between tile map projects and normal projects.

Fix: There where different regular internal errors on some systems. Fixed based on user feedback.

Fix: When all layers are turned into single image layers and then deleting a layer raised an internal error.

Fix: It was possible to create a project with more than 32768 pixels width leading to program faults.

Fix: Random crash when using brush size slider and closing program.

Fix: When using the transparency edit field in the layer window, then the edit field was always reactivated when you re-enter the window, even if you olny click on a layer. When using keys 1/2 to switch frames you accidentally changed the opacity value then.
Additionally it was possible to enter huge numbers leading to a failure.

Fix: If layers window and brush container where not visible and window rearrange function was used then an error occurred.

Changes with 7.1.6 (2018-02-14)

Raised the 2GB memory limit to 4GB.

Fix: Mouse pointer icon not always immediately changing when using keyboard shortcuts to switch tool.

Fix: Remove alpha plane made layers opaque.

Fix: Filled polygon with auto close did not fill bottom and right edges.

Tweak: Inconsistent insertion behavior for color slots and auto slots in gradient editor. Now the slot that was used before the insertion is always active after insertion.

Fix: Color palette select single colors incorrect tool tip.

Tweak: Canvas drawing operations are now refused on invisible layers.

Fix: When tool settings change the tool window was activated leading to some flickering.

Fix: Random crash when closing last project.

Changes with 7.1.5 (2018-01-14)

New Option in timeline to switch to the frame where the playback was stopped

Some magnify window options enabled by default: Show Animation Playback, Pan around Canvas.

Always apply animation playback in preview window even if playback in magnify window is enabled as well.

Fix: Storing file associations not working on some systems. An error message occurred.

Fix: Symmetry sometimes not working correctly when drawing fast strokes.

Fix: Light table settings crashing under Win7 with dark UI

Changes with 7.1.4 (2018-01-01)

Fix: Mouse wheel brush size change restored last picked up brush although a round brush was selected before.

Fix: Pipette tool left temporary line on canvas when after using the line tool.

Fix: Loading true color image and reducing colors not functioning when you use “current palette” option.

Fix: Brush size slider suddenly disappeared when sliding.

Fix: Moving colors in the palette editor not working with tile map projects if sync mode is off.

Changes with 7.1.3 (2017-12-16)

Fix: If the tile library window is on second monitor all dialogs opened there as well.

Fix: Creation of project from a frame stored in the clipboard selected wrong transparent color with alpha transparent image data.

Changes with tile map engine
– Added warning if more than 200 tiles are created at once with modify/create tile map edit mode.
– When using the tile pick/place mode then the paint mode replace is activated because replacing the bitmap data by the brush pixels is required. But instead of switching to this paint mode it is used internally now to prevent confusion.
– Added tile index and orientation info to the information panel
– Shortcut to switch between tile map modes (create/place tiles)
– Duplicate mode now also works in modify/create tile map edit mode
– In modify/create tile map edit mode drawing on empty tiles now always creates new ones and does not use tiles already present in the library
– Fix: Tile mirroring options where ignored when creating a new tile project
– Option that shows number of tiles in tile map project on the canvas
– Fix: Tile library window did not show all tiles vertically. Some at the end might have been cut off in certain situations
– Added option to the tile library window to toggle if picking up a tile from the library should activate the pick/place mode
– Tile mapping duplicate and sync option now available in the keyboard shortcut prefs
– Tile drawing limit. Hold “I” to enter tile selection tool. This will select a tile area with LMB and unselect with RMB.
– Store tile library window open state
– Allow saving tile map project with sync mode off
– No automatic switch to “Pick/Place Tiles” or “Modify/Create” after brush pickup anymore
– Pick up single tile with a single click when using Pick/Place Tiles mode on a tile map project
– Ensure drawing grid to be visible when creating a new tile map project.
– Allowing to cut tiles with right mouse button brush pick up

Fix: Creating a bitmap font project does not work

Fix: Delta keys not working with drawing lines and curves stereo drawing

Fix: Slow or no brush re-display on Win10 fall creators update when switching frames. MS seemed to have changed mouse refresh functions.

Fix: Startup speed improvements. Especially Win 10 Fall Creators update has some slower gfx functions. Workaround was added.

Fix: Quantization settings where ignored when loading animation from single images.

Fix: Onion Skinning not showing next frames as expected when using “Key Frames only” if there was no previous key frame as well.

Tweak: Mousewheel control “switch frames” now cycles instead of stopping at the and or the start of the animation.

Changes with 7.1.2 (2017-10-13)

Tweak: In palette editor the option “Apply Color Movement to Pixels” now is not used when using the copy mode. Because when copying colors the pixels should still use the original and not the copy.

Fix: Palette issues after compacting unused or duplicate colors with tile map projects.

Fix: Tile Map projects and moving/remapping colors in the palette caused problems because the tile library data was not updated.

Fix: When saving a tile map project with the last tile being an empty duplicate of the 0-tile then crashes appear after reload.

Tweak: If a tile turns empty then the tile map entry was not reset to be the zero tile which required to use “optimize” to get rid of those empty tiles. Now if a tile turns empty then it is replaced by the zero-tile in the tile map.

Fix: Crash when undoing right after creating a new tilemap project.

Fix: On some systems there’s a crash on startup due to a incompatible wintab32.dll.

Fix: Cannot move around the canvas anymore with cursor keys when drawing.

Changes with 7.1.1 (2017-09-25)

There are a lot of changes and fixes. Too much to list all in very detail. Here is an excerpt.

Fix: Symmetry center coordinates inverted with Multi Dot Mirror/Cycle

Fix: Crash when turning single animation layer into single image (global color palette disabled)

Fix: When having Tile Mapping Sync mode off you can accidentally close project with unsaved changes

New Timeline with selection drag & drop etc. .

Fix: Polyline tool did not automatically finish when first dot was hit

Added auto-close option to filled polygon / contour tool.

Double size option to increase size of mouse cursors.

Fix: Text brush creation preview not working when using background color

Allow palette ramps with rectangular color selection in color palette editor. This way also vertical gradients can be created.

New option at palette editor to auto commit color movement.

Fix: Circle with N dots and AnimPainting not working with small circles.

Fix: Busy-cursor after brush rotate.

Fix: N-dots circle not working correctly. With higher N-values the where not placed correctly along the circle outline.

Brightness calculation for sorting and gray scale conversion improvement to better match the perceived brightness of a color.

Remap frames to gradient.

Fix: Layer effect “display other project” did not relocate projects when moved

New window to host different settings for quick access: tool options, paint mode and dither settings, lock grid, symmetry, pen pressure settings

Some quick indicicons moved form main window to layers (spare frame, alpha mode…)

Dark UI skin.

Layer blend modes + opacity at layers window.

Tweak: Layer lock icon is now a button to toggle directly at the layer

New color constraints engine to support error detection for legit hardware systems.

Option to use HSL color scheme instead of HSB.

Color palette generation tool to create colored ramps.

New project creation workflows with preset management.

Fix: Brush resize sometimes not working as well as Shear/Bend

Fix: Picked up brush is not restored when you select a standard brush tip and use Shift + B afterwards

Paint mode values (% scales) can now be edited directly at the color selector area.

Brush tip setting moved to color selectors area.

Transparency mode selection for brush pickup.

Color contrast algorithm in the palette editor renewed to have better results.

Changes with 7.0.10 (2017-06-05)

Fix: New installer software because the previous one did not install if you have more that 2TB free space on the traget drive.

Fix: Hex-Edit in palette window was not usable with “c” because it executed the shortcut of quick copy instead of typing a “c”

Fix: Sometimes the brush did not paint or even a crash appears. It was connected to disabling pen pressure brush size option.

Tweak: Added shortcut settings to clear and invert stencil

Fix: Shift + mouse move did not always lock the correct movement direction.

Changes with 7.0.9 (2017-05-07)

Fix: When there is no gradient that is active for color cycling then animation/create from color cycling crashed.

Fix: Mouse wheel didn’t scroll tile library when the tile library window was over brush container or layers list windows.

Fix: Crash when invoking ‘Print…’ from menu without any open project.

Tweak: Gradient reordering via drag & drop. Resizeable gradient list windows. Speed improvements concerning gradient list display when switching projects.

Fix: When using pipette tool with double click on the canvas then the color change requester opens. After that, using a drawing tool immediately used it actively on the canvas as if the mouse button was pressed.

Fix: AnimBrush “rewind after drawing” option was not working correctly. The rewind was also done if deactivated.

Fix: Curve tool did not work correctly with AnimBrush.

Fix: Crash when undoing the creation of a 3D animation on a new project with single frame.

Fix: Project files could not be loaded that had a mask and where resized before being stored. The mask was saved with a wrong size sometimes leading to weird effects when loading again.

Fix: Slow mouse wheel scrolling in select gradient window and gradient management.

Tweak: Allow closing a project when animation/color cycling is still running.

Fix: Temporary ‘Move canvas’ tool did not deactivate in full screen mode when releasing space bar.

Fix: Copy/Paste multiple frames dialog allowed to enter “0” for frame numbers leading to an error.

Menu entry File/Animation/Append Image… removed because File/Animation/Import Image… does the job.

Fix: Second tile map layer destroyed tiles if the first layer was not empty when adding a new layer

Changes with 7.0.8.1 (2017-03-18)

Fix: Crash when loading a tile map project with multiple layers.

Changes with 7.0.8 (2017-03-05)

Tweak: The “New Project” dialog should enable transparent project by default.

Fix: Store/reload ‘Allow Display Below 1:1’ tickbox setting for full screen mode.

Tweak: If a layer has a transparent color then “clear” should use that transparent color instead of the current 2nd color.

Tweak: Store selected layer index with project and activate on reload.

Tweak: Earlier close with polygon tools. Polygon (brush pickup or draw tool) automatically closes when setting a dot 3 pixels near to the starting point.

Fix: Tile mapping “Remove duplicate Tiles” menu entry was not disabled in non-tilemap projects.

Tweak: adding trackbar editor to several number edit fields.

Fix: Harmless ‘External error’ on startup on some systems when using the Free Edition.

Tweak: Do not allow lock grid and symmetry enabled because this does not make sense and also is not always working.

Feature: Support for drawing tablets. There are pen options to use pressure for:

  • Brush tip size
  • Brush scaling
  • Real time dithering
  • Gradient with dithering
  • Paint mode scale for Brighten, Translucent, Saturation, Hue, Shade, Multi Shade and Halftone
  • AnimBrush frame switch
  • Alpha transparency (opacity value)

The eraser can be used as well for second color/inverse operations or erase.

Feature: Allow for circles with even width and height pixel size for non-centered circle drawing.

Tweak: Centered brush grip is now pixel perfect for brushes with even width or height. Before the brush was half pixel out of center.

Fix: Right click on empty tile areas in the tile library lead to an internal error.

Fix: Error at startup with CrossOver 16.1

Fix: Crash when using tile duplicate mode when placing tiles and using undo later on.

Changes with 7.0.7 (2017-02-05)

Fix: Brush pickup tools did not contain the subsymbol that indicates a tool group.

Fix: Light table did not work in full screen mode

Fix: Color slot shows transparency pattern even if the current layer has a different transparent color.

Fix: Shortcut “D” did not activate Continuous Drawing when “cycle grouped tools…” in the prefs was switched off.

Fix: Crash in tile library palette window if there are duplicated tiles and the window has a certain size.

Tweak: Stay on selected palette editor page when picking up color.

Fix: Double click on empty tile (dashed area) in tile library leads to an error

Fix: Crash when creating first project from clipboard data.

Fix: True color sprite sheet saves wrong when having more than one row.

Fix: Flatten to background option could not be removed when storing as single layer and display of background color was switched off. Example: You had set up displaying a background color on the layer stack. You save the file as sprite sheet (e.g. PNG) and select “flatten to background color”. Then you switch off the background color in the layer stack and save again (even with “save as”). Still the background color is used silently instead of creating a transparent image.

Changes with 7.0.6 (2016-12-26)

Fix: Symmetry drawing caused brush artifacts left on the canvase when used with pattern drawing.

Fix: Remap brush to gradient sometimes introduced wrong transparency to the brush.

Tweak: when using “paste” (Ctrl + C/V) in palette editor then switch cursor to “ok”-shape

Tweak: Shortcuts for animation playback can toggle playback and stop now.

Tweak: Automatically switching to ‘Edit Stencil Mask’ when invoking ‘Quick selection’ (E) and reselect previously active area when leaving quick selection

Fix: Undo was not working AnimPainting (hold ALT and draw).

Fix: When using “keep cell boundaries” on a grid that is not aligned to 0x0 but e.g. 5×5 then drawing a line from lower right to top left snapped to wrong positions.

Tweak: “tile palette” for tile map projects consequently renamed to be “tile library”

‘Layer modification settings’ of menu Layers removed. In the scroll submenu you can now decide which layers to scroll. The operation of “Flip” of menu “Frame” was replaced by the operation from “Flip Frames…” of menu “Animation”. So there will open a requester asking for frame range and layer settings now.

Fix: There was a slight brush distorted when creating 3D animations.

Fix: When switching from two displays back to one from time to time then some dialogs have been displayed outside the visible area.

Tweak: Tile library window now has a vertical scrollbar only and supports mouse wheel and auto track.

Tweak: Tile mapping settings window is now resizeable

Fix: Tile zoom window hides behind tile library window when opening and closing a modal dialog.

Fix: Brush container did not work correctly with saved window positon (alternative).

Fix: Top level windows have been still weird when switching between applications.

Fix: Crash with vertical line contour gradient on small areas.

Fix: Layer effect “display other project” crashed when using current project.

Fix: File drag drop not working when splash screen is switched off.

Tabs are now used in the brush container to select between global and project brush container.

Tabs are now used in the palette window to select between color selection and extended edit modes.

Added new “Inline Contour Gradient” fill mode. It fills the shape with colors of the gradient from outside in.

Changes with 7.0.5 (2016-11-20)

Paint mode “shade” has been slowed down to only apply a single shade step until the mouse button is released. Re-factoring of the brush container:

  • dynamically add slots without having a full set predefined
  • selection of multiple slots + drag/drop, copy, paste, delete…
  • background definition
  • slot size definition
  • auto slot alignment to have only a vertical scrollbar for faster navigation
  • auto zoom
  • animated brush indicator

Decoupled lock grid and symmetry settings to have separate tool box icons and settings dialog.

Added X- and Y-Mirroring to the symmetry tool.

Lock grid can now display the corresponding grid lines by option.

Toggle for symmetry mode so that symmetry can lie between 2 pixels.

Fix: mirror settings not working when creating tile map from image.

Undo for frame speed settings.

Fix: Create animation (3D) did not work with alpha transparent brushes.

Fix: Strange behavior of paint mode settings edit fields when entering numbers.

Palette editor changes:

  • improved palette entry selection/move with single entries
  • enabled color ramp in single color selection mode
  • new selection visualization
  • when moving colors then the corresponding pixels are moved too by option which
  • instead of auto-cancel do auto-ok when an operation is in progress and the mouse leaves the window is a better approach than the auto remap option

Fix: Crash when File / Load Animation… with certain avi files.

Letting the main tool key only cycle through tools that have no shortcut defined.

Fix: Fix Background stored the visible brush when using keyboard shortcut.

Moved File/Recent Files menu below File/Project Settings

Fix: CTRL based shortcuts sometimes leave the pipette active.

Changes with 7.0.4 (2016-07-17)

Tweak: Improved filter with keyboard settings to also search for keys like “Ctrl + A”.

Update information feature.

Tweak: Left click on selected tool brings settings window on top. Useful for when using pinned windows.

Keyboard shortcut settings have been moved to a separate (larger) settings dialog.

Switch to display or hide light table layers in magnify and animation window separately.

Tool cycling (e.g. “B” for brush pickup tools or “V” for lines) can now be disabled in the preferences.

Fix: Changes in connected tile map projects did not trigger the “unsaved changes” flag which led to inconsistent tile data.

You can now define a shortcut for every single line tool.

Tweak: User folder is used as initial default for save/load dialog instead of the app folder.

Fix: Symmetry “place center” function not correctly working with tile maps.

Tweak: Symmetry center is now project center by default.

Tweak: Save scroll frame settings for next restart (menu Frame/Scroll/Scroll current Frame only).

Fix: Crash when enabling sync mode (tile mapping).

Fix: Crash when using paste frame(s) function with position offset.

Changes with 7.0.3.1 (2016-06-19)

Fix: Adding layer not working with tile map projects.

Changes with 7.0.3 (2016-03-22)

Tweak: Improving quick mask/stencil selection (E key) to also work on empty mask/stencil when using right mouse button to remove selection area or stencil mask colors.

Fix: Crash when creating a tile map project from an image with alpha plane and using tile map data export function.

Fix: Spare frame is enabled with new projects although being empty.

Feature: Layer effects are now availabe for free edition.

Feature: Layer effect “Display other project” was extended to repeat the project frame horizontally and/or vertically to apply endless tiling. See effect settings.

Feature: Layer effect “Display other project” was extended to have a dynamic x/y offset depending on the frame index displayed for the master project. This way you can apply automatic scrolling of external project display while animating the master project. This can be used for (e.g.) parallax effects like this where every parallax level is a separate project displayed with a master project’s layer:

See effect settings.

Fix: Layer flattening on file export glitched under certain conditions leading to missing image data.

Feature: Quick operations (copy, swap, ramp) for RGB/HSB tab added in palette editor:

Fix: Playback buttons did not allow switching between play modes directly without hitting stop before.

Fix: Single image layer disabled for tile map projects because it is not supported yet and leads to bad side effects.

Fix: “Layer effect “Display other project”‘s “on top” setting did not work correctly.

Fix: Animation Window not updated in full-screen view.

Feature: Modify color channel bit depth now undoable. Changes can now also be applied without changing channel bit values to re-format a palette that has been loaded into the project.

Fix: Lock grid height could not be set to “1” anymore.

Fix: Crash when using “duplicate layer” function on a tile map project layer.

Feature: It is now possible to have both PM NG and PM 6.5 open at the same time.

Fix: Single image layers have been cleared when inserting or copying frames.

Fix: Crash on exit happening sometimes on CrossOver (Mac)

Tweak: Automatic activation of web color edit in onscreen palette is now an option.

Tweak: Added default keyboard shortcuts for colour reduction functions (menu Colors).

Major changes from 6.5 to Release 7.0.2 (2016-02-17)

(Only major changes are mentioned. Please check the Free Edition to play with Pro Motion NG when you are used to V6.5 yet. It will give you a better impression about the changes.)

All new layer engine with lock layer, merging, layer effects (stroke, display other project), duplicate etc.

Key frame settings (color/title).

New light table system.

New gradient engine including auto slots.

Pixel perfect drawing to remove smeared pixels/jaggies when drawing freehand with single pixel brush.

Redone Copy/Paste of multiple frames.

Improved edge line displays/cross hairs for canvas tools like brush pickup, filed polygon etc.

Support of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in palette editor (RGB/HSB views).

Option to have a pan around the canvas to be able to move corners to the middle of the window.

New color edit dialog with color preset slots.

Stereo drawing (experimental).

Free Edition with some features switched off.

Lots of UI changes incl. better Windows 10 compatibility.

Lots of smaller tweaks and fixes.