When drawing it helps to stop and blur your image to see how the image reads.This would be so easy if it could be done within the software so you don’t have to copy/paste/photoshop/gausian blur. Thank you for your time.
I did not understand why you want to blur it. Why does blurring help to see how the image reads? Is this a special process that is typically used? If so, is there such a preview function in other tools?
Hi Jan, Ive been reading a professional spriters book called Pixel logic and in his book it states “If it looks bad when blurred you have to go back and fix the pixeled version.” I’m not suggesting you make a blurring tool in a pixel based program that would be ludicrous. But iinstead if you had a check box on the animation window that would allow a single value of bluring to see how the sprite reads. It’s a quick way to tell if there is something wrong with your sprite or background.
So I think this new innovative feature would make ProMotion NG that much better! Thank you for your time.
This is something that professional pixel artists do to see if their sprites don’t read correctly. This is something that pixel artists do by using an extra program unless of course they are using Photoshop or Gimp. I just thought it would be really nice to have a program where it’s built in. At any rate if you do decide to do it the blur doesn’t have to be one where you choose how much blur the blur can just be a single checkbox where the value is fixed. just something to see if your drawing works or not. Just an idea,a really helpful idea.
adding my two cents -
To address your question Jan - personally, no I’ve never come across any preview functions in other drawing tools to add a real-time blur filter.
Sup, Morintari! I’m familiar with Michafrar and his Pixel Logic instructional tutorials, but after years of pixelling I’ve never once heard of pixel artists routinely using blur in an attempt to simulate how their drawing might look on different devices. The concept seems incredibly silly to me. If someone’s device is that blurry, everything displayed on it will be equally blurry. Are you going to magically unblur your pixel art on their phone by using slightly different technique? No.
That trouble user is already accustomed to everything they see being blurry and you’re not responsible for that.
In the Pixel Logic screenshot, he’s added a severe blur to a carefully pixelled image. Of course it looks bad, it’s been gaussian blurred. This will utterly destroy any pixel art image. There’s nothing you can do to the original image that will “fix it” in the blurred version.
This is something that professional pixel artists do to see if their sprites don’t read correctly.
This is something that pixel artists do by using an extra program unless of course they are using Photoshop or Gimp.
Is it? Do you have references? I would like to see more on this topic, if there is anything.
While this feature concept, to simply add a blur to the Preview panel, feels totally out of place to me, it does inspire a crazy idea. Please use extreme caution if you continue below. . . . 
Morintari is talking about adding a live blur to the Preview panel.
Well this makes me think of our beloved CRT screens of yesteryear. They certainly did blur all the pixel art we saw back ye olden days, right? So what if the Preview panel was capable of not only “blur”, but even some kind of full on CRT mode? What pixel artist doesn’t love a good CRT filter amirite.
If this was possible, why stop there? - we’re already entering shader territory now. So this is the real idea - Enable kernel shader for the Preview panel, perhaps in the form of Photoshop’s Custom filter:
Here in Photoshop I’ve drawn this orange dude and I’m running the “Custom” filter, which gives you a matrix of inputs to change.
The particular combo of values I’ve entered happens to render a weird glowing edges effect.
Simple blur and sharpening and all sorts of things are possible all just by entering different values in different places.
By inputting different values in the grid of boxes I’m telling Photoshop how to alter each pixel’s adjacent pixels.
Read more here - Homegrown Effects with the Custom filter | Photoshop CS2 Bible
… filter in which neighboring pixels get mixed together. The kernel can be a variation on sharpening, blurring, embossing, or a half- dozen other effects. You create your filter by entering numerical values into a matrix of options.
o god
Of course you might just offer only a handful of presets and not even let the user input their own values. Multiple passes of the kernel shader could be for more outlandish effects.
OR . . . this entire idea isn’t even possible within Pro Motion’s framework whatsoever, who knows I don’t know.
Just another whacky idea.
I don’t consider it remotely practical, to be honest.
Any user that would use this (I doubt I would) would do so for very niche reasons.
In conclusion - Questionable ROI.
Mathias, A long time ago I learned the old saying “If you can’t say something nice, Then don’t say anything at all” So I am going to refrain from all negative speech and say.Your work is very good. I am inspired by your use of color. As you know I got the idea from Michafrar. I figured rather than taking your work to another program it might be useful to view it at a fixed blur so you could see if there were any problems with ones art. I do not see that this forum is the place to ridicule a fellow artist, nor Joke about him. You do not know this but I am responsible for numerous features within this program. This was only one that I have suggested.
Ok, Morintari, I hear you.
Jan has to bear the brunt of the weight of having to sift through everyone’s feedback and evaluate the priority of all feature ideas. To help him do this, it falls partly on us users to give him useful detailed information.
You’ve argued for a real-time Preview panel blur. I gave my opinion, explained my opinion, and also took the time to describe a possible means of expanding the idea into something more. Disagreement doesn’t equal “ridicule”.
I appreciate how active you are in this forum and hope you and others like you will continue to post here and help inform and guide Pro Motion’s development and improvement as time goes on. No need to feel threatened by a counter-argument. Jan ultimately has to make the call on what features and things get added to Pro Motion and that’s a tough job I don’t envy.
…might be useful to view it at a fixed blur so you could see if there were any problems with ones art.
I still would like to see some examples of this technique put to actual use. It probably originates from the general art advice to squint your eyes when viewing your WIP drawing to help you spot contrast or readability, by reducing what your eyes discern to basic value clusters.
I agree, it’s great when you can do a project from start to finish in only one program. It saves time.
Mathias, Maybe not every Idea Iv’e ever had was the best. I figured if this idea was good enough for Michafrar(Who clearly his skills trump my own) it’s good enough for ProMotionNG maybe not maybe so…Maybe not! I’m sorry that I read too much into it when you suggested your own take.I too appreciate your posts and hope you continue to do so.
Thanks, Morintari. No I’m on your side; we’re in this together. And to be honest, Michafrar trumps us all. I love his JonTron work. His animation skill is incredible.
I think the important distinction here is the validity of the art technique of blurring a drawing to check for contrast/readability problems VS your drawing software providing a feature to facilitate doing this for you.
There’s no right or wrong way to make art - if you want to blur your WIP drawing and this helps you, awesome go for it; use the tricks that you like that work for you.
But carving out precious dev time from Pro Motion’s already very limited dev schedule for feature I honestly doubt would get much use, when there’s already a stack of objectively valuable features in the queue, is all I’m really arguing against. It worried me. We need to hear from more people and get more opinions to better weigh these things. All you I can do is offer our singular opinion, which is only so useful.
Let’s keep posting here and offering up our thoughts and ideas, bro.
Agreed, Mathias!I think that’s a great idea.