PyDPainter is a free resurrection of the classic Deluxe Paint (“DPaint”) pixel editor, mainly developed for the Commodore Amiga, but there was also an MS-DOS version.
PyDPainter can run on Windows, macOS and Linux.
I worked with DPaint for around ten years, back in my days as a 16-bit game graphic artist, and I’ve always enjoyed the great pixel editor.
For me this is a real blast from the past!
While I did own this program, painting was not my forte, I did explore it a bit back in the day.
There are a lot of apps in my arsenal from then such as Art Dep Pro that I used to batch process comps and other FX.
It is amazing how ahead of its time the Amiga was, well, that horse has been beaten to death.
But hey it’s nearly 35 years ago that Amiga really arrived in the scene with the Video Toaster.
I remember playing games on my Amiga 500 from a floppy disc!
With color graphics…sound…
Ok, ok….
I’ll stop.
Great to see this app brought to the current century!
Art Department Professional was great too, indeed! I also used that a lot back in the Amiga days. 
Absolutely. The Amiga 1000 was a revolution when it was introduced in 1985. It pushed digital audiovisuals to new heights, in a time when PC compatibles were still glorified word processors with monochrome screens, and Apple’s Macintosh graphics were still black and white.
This was WAY before my time, but I’d like to try this out and see if, like the Github page claims, it really is easier to learn and use without an excess of tools, compared to today’s pixel art tools.
Well, I already made a quick little animation in it to play around a bit. I like how HUGE all the icons and and fonts are, especially on my relatively small 14" laptop screen. I certainly was able to play around with it a bit without digging into any tutorials or documentation, which is certainly a good sign that PyDPainter is indeed much simpler than the pixel art tools we have today.
It doesn’t seem to really do anything I can’t already do in software like Paint.NET and Krita, but I’m pretty sure that’s the point, not having the absolute glut of tools and options to choose from that we have today and just being a little low-res pixel editor, nothing more.
I imagine the software, being so tiny and light by today’s standards, would be a little kinder on my laptop’s battery, as well, great to casually play around with when my laptop is unplugged, but doesn’t quite have enough spare battery for Blender or whatever.
I didn’t get to use DPaint much but it was one of my first experiences with digital drawing. It’s probably been 30+ years since I touched it so this should be fun.
I used DPaint v3 on Amiga, back in the day, and I think I’ve tried this one a few months ago?
I think DPaint interface and tools have little to offer today except the nostalgia and the challenge factor (challenge to force yourself to use 40 year old tools: nothing bad with that except lack of practicality).
I’d be interested in checking this out, but I assume I’d need python installed on my computer? I thought python programs could be bundled up in a way to avoid having to install python separately. Isn’t that how MakeHuman works?
Yes, the only thing this offers is the nostalgia. It’s about as useful as a vinyl record is.
The huge icons and fonts are a result of the small screen size and display resolution of computers at that time. I don’t remember what the max display was on the Amiga 1000, but I don’t think it was more than 600x480 on a 12 inch monitor.
Yes, by today’s standards, it’s a simple program. At the time, it was really one of the first programs that allowed you to paint a picture with your mouse. At that time, the Macintosh was the only other computer that had a mouse as an input device, and it had a monochrome display, (black and white). The PC at that time was only text display and keyboard input.
Before Deluxe Paint on the Amiga, the only other time I remember using software like this was on the Commodore64 and using a light pen as an input device.
I still have my Amiga 1000, had to move all those boxes around a couple of years ago… I wonder if it still works
Randy
To my experience, no separate Python installation is necessary.
When it comes to modern-day high-definition graphics, yes, but pixel artwork and pixel graphics for games are still very popular, and for that purpose, DPaint / PyDPainter is still a powerful and very complete tool, even when compared to modern-day pixel editors like Pro Motion, Aseprite, et cetera.
Over here in Europe the standard high-res was 640 x 512, but in the US, Amigas used NTSC instead of PAL. It might have been 640 x 480 there.
You could also switch to “Overscan” modes with an even higher resolution.
Koala Painter? 
I loved that on the C64.
Nice. I sold my A1000s twice in the course of my life. The first time I sold it in 1987, to be able to buy an A2000. Years later, the boss of an animation studio where I worked at the time gave away his Amiga 1000 to me, because he didn’t use it anymore. When it was gathering dust in my attic somewhere in the 2010s, I decided to sell it for a low price to an acquaintance who actively traded Amiga hardware.
I made this tribute to the A1000 several years ago:
If you like retro-computing / retro-gaming discussions, have a look at this thread as well:
I was thinking the advantage might be, kind of like actually shooting footage with a vintage camera, instead of using a post process to fake it.
I am not sure what hoops you’d have to go though to get this look in a modern app. Whereas, open this, deal with the limitations, and there you are.
But I have not used this nor even tried for this look in a modern app.
Do not forget that there was also another thing which really boosted these visuals despite their palette limits, and that was the CRT monitor.
When you look at shots of games from the 16-bit era and from the early 1990’s in general, they are at a lower quality than you swore you’ve seen them in because you do not get the special dither effects or hue shifting from LCD, LED, or OLED screens, at least not unless you can apply a shader that attempts to emulate the effect (which is actually more complex than it sounds).
To really make this application pop, you need to find a CRT monitor, and they are still being made actually because of the demand for them for classic software.
PyDPainter defaults to a UI with CRT scanline emulation. You can turn it off, which I usually do, because scanlines are nice for that sweet retro-gaming feel, but I like my pixel canvas to be sharp.
