Game Development Program of the Week – PSD Plugin for Paint.NET
It’s been way too long since I’ve posted anything. I got thrown out of my rhythm when I was away speaking at the Foundations of Digital Games 2009 Cruise for most of the week. While I’ll have more on that in another post, I did manage to catch a program, or more appropriately, plugin to pass on for this week.
Game Development Program of the Week Disclaimer:
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. By providing links and recommendations to any third party programs, I am in no way vouching for the programs security, safety, stability, or any other functionality intended or not intended. You are downloading and using the program completely at your own risk! Please take appropriate precautions when downloading any un-trusted software!
As you may know I’m a huge fan of Paint.NET, I’ve posted about it a long time ago but if you’re not familiar with it Paint.NET is a free (again donations are encouraged if you use the program) imaging/graphics tool for windows that is very feature rich and easy to use. It can easily be used to create artwork for use in your game and supports many of the type of features you would only expect in high end commercial packages.
If your getting art files from others at some point you’ll come across .PSD files. These files are the native file format used by Adobe Photoshop, and tends to be one of the standard array of programs people use with game development. I often find myself with a lot of a PSD files, but only have one copy of Adobe Photoshop, where all of my other machines are running Paint.NET as it’s such a great tool. Thanks to a post that I came across at Lifehacker, they pointed me to a PSD plugin for Paint.NET that allows you to open/save PSD files into Paint.NET. While from it’s page it looks like active development has stopped it still supports quite a few features:
- Support for layered PSD files
- Support for an array of color modes
- Save back out a PSD file
Both the binary and source for the plugin are available, so depending on the license the plugin was released under you might have the opportunity to fix it up and provide it to others if you encounter issues. It’s a great way to quickly and easily open up PSD files and use Paint.NET to tweak them and then export them to file format that is compatible with XNA Game Studio. The download links below will get you set up with Paint.NET and the PSD plugin. I’ve also included a link to the plugin announcement forum for Paint.NET if your looking to further extend the functionality of the program.
Paint.NET is available from: http://www.getpaint.net/
The PSD plugin is available from: http://frankblumenberg.de/doku/doku.php?id=paintnet:psdplugin
Also visit the Paint.NET plugin forum (find even more ways to extend Paint.NET!): http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewforum.php?f=16
Enjoy and keep checking back for more programs that make game development a little easier!
RE: Game Development Program of the Week – PSD Plugin for Paint.NET
Team XNA isn’t just here in Redmond. It also includes many incredible Direct X/XNA MVPs from all around
RE: Game Development Program of the Week – PSD Plugin for Paint.NET
Pingback from VGPC, Video Games Podcast » Episodio 2