Best iPad apps for creating playdate graphics (e.g. pixel perfect, with tools for dithering etc)

SDK Development Discussion
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Hi everyone!

I was wondering what iPad apps people had found to be best for making playdate art? I started off trying to use Procreate, but really struggled to make art that didn't end up using shades of grey.

I found these procreate brushes which have been pretty good, although remembering how each dithering brush mixes with every other one has been a challenge

I also tried the trial version of Pixaki, dithering support on that was really good, although it's a lot less fully featured than procreate, so I haven't tried the full version yet.

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I use Pixaki, alongside some old Machintosh apps in an emulator: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/04/17/turning-an-ipad-pro-into-the-ultimate-classic-macintosh/

You might also have some luck with the web apps listed in https://devforum.play.date/t/convert-color-pngs-to-1-bit-per-pixel/393

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FWIW your thread reminded me to share my pixel-dithering Photoshop template which has streamlined my workflow a lot. I haven't tested it on iPad Photoshop yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic!

I did test my template using Affinity Photo... and it doesn't fully work there. Still, template or no, I wonder if Affinity Photo might not be a good tool for pixelart. I own it but I haven't done much with it yet.

Also, I found a whole tutorial on using Affinity Designer for pixelart, and I kind of want to try that sometime! (I've used it for other things and was impressed. It's an Illustrator clone, very different from Photoshop/Procreate/Affinity Photo, but it does seem to have have specific pixelart features.)

(The pixelart editor I used to use on iPad, Pixure, doesn't exist anymore—but in the end I like the full power of something like a Photoshop anyway.)

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This is awesome, I have the emulator running via xcode to my ipad but I dont know where to put the 7.5,5 disk image and LCIII roms i have to make sure they are included in the iOS build ? Any help much appriciated

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Oh the iPad appears in Finder... lets see if I have the right ROM and macOS ...

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You got it! Internet Archive or Macintosh garden will have what you need.

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Thank getting there... I have added the Artworks keyboard but I cant for some reason get the on screen keys to appear, even though I have selected it as keyboard layout.. it is working with hardware keyboard and British for now so I got Ultrapaint running :slight_smile:

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The ArtWorks keyboard requires another classic app to forward the events. I may need to share that config file.

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@THISISDINOSAUR Two years later... Did you have any opinions on Procreate (with those brushes) vs. other alternatives proposed here?

I'm currently learning in procreate and would love to hear any updates.

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Some new ones are:

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I ended up sticking with procreate and being reasonable happy with it. Made a Whale:

52WhalePerspectiveWithFish

After that I moved house and stopped doing any playdate stuff for quite a while. I've just picked it back up though and have been trying a different graphical style for which I've been finding procreate a bit more limited. So I might branch out a little and report back.

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I wanted to use Apple Pencil for my game art, but my SDK workflow is of course on Mac. So I settled on dragging a Photoshop window to the iPad. Works with pressure sensitivity, palm rejection, keyboard shortcuts, and everything.

If you happen to have some desktop graphics app you already like and want to stay with, various iPad screen-sharing apps including for Windows/Linux ought to work similarly (maybe minus pressure sensitivity).

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This is what I do with Piskel, BasiliskII, and other apps (no pressure though, boo). Pretty cool though

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I actually use Pixquare on my iPad for creating sprites and then rapidly share the result via AirDrop on my MacBook .

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Somewhat related: I use Google Drive to auto sync files, between multiple devices and multiple team members. I haven't tried it yet on iPad but AFAIK it is fully integrated and fully multi platform; windows mac, iOS android, probably Linux too. On Mac it behaves just likes I drive with full integration in the Finder. You can save files directly to the drive from any app and you can set it to be available offline.

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