Deluxe Paint is still far and away my favorite
program for the creation of
artistic content using a
computer -
period.
Its feature set was extensive, and every feature had a well documented keyboard shortcut enabling the user to drive with the keyboard while painting with the mouse.
DP III and IV for the Amiga had features I still miss today in modern paint programs:
- Cubism
- perspective mode
- "animbrushes"
You 'picked up' a brush with your mouse and could then paint with it, only as you painted a trail with the brush new animation frames were being created. Note some modern paint / anim programs do this but I have yet to see any as smooth and intuitive as DP. Email me if you know of any :)
- multicycle mode
This let you define a brush and then paint with it, each successive stamp of the brush (which was continuous if you held down the button) would cycle every individual pixel in the brush forward by one color.
To me Deluxe Paint represents a synthesis between art and technology that has yet to be seen since the relative decline of the Amiga platform.