Colors! v1.06 is now released.
Colors! is a simplistic digital application for Nintendo DS based on modern painting-techniques developed for drawing tablets in programs like Photoshop. By taking advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the DS touch-screen it becomes a perfect portable digital sketch-book.
Current features
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Hard and soft circular brush
Pressure-sensitivity can affect opacity and brush-size
512×384 image resolution with 2 stage zoom
Replay the whole painting process of an image
Hue-circle and luminance and saturation-triangle style palette
Load and Save to memory card
Send painting as e-mail using Wi-Fi
Major updates in v1.06
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Major precision overhaul
Opacity slider in brush-screen
Pressure-Controls-Size option in brush-screen
New user-interface with graphics by madwurmz.com
Playback controls with the option to continue painting from mid-playback
The possibility to send your painting directly to an e-mail address
Unlimited save slots
One additional zoom-level
Available at http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors
Enjoy!
James: You can always copy files from your card and send them form your computer. You would be also welcomed to put them on the online gallery (click my name), if you decide to do so, remember to include drw and tmb files too.
This is the best App ever! Thanks!
Is there a way to playback longer drawings it seems to cut off at a point.
I would love if you could listen to your own music while drawing.
Alos take a look at my YouTube with music.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UyszVxKZpkU
DreamWalker: you call that music? Pretty bold statement.
Great painting software, overall one of my favourite even compared to other PC softwares! Maybe you want to add an “Undo” feature, because sometimes I have to load the painting back…
Hey, I LOVE THIS PROGRAM, I just had an idea. I don’t know if this is possible, but it would be cool to have a co-op painting, over the DS download and play. So two people could paint together, if one person does not have any mod card. Keep up the good work!
can u please make a undo or a step backward button? for the rest i love it and i make amazing stuff in it, this should be in the stores hahah
Thanks everyone,
I’m hoping to include an Undo button in future relases. It’s really tricky for me to do, but at least I have a plan now. Collaborative painting is also something I hope to get in and hopefully the download and play feature as well.
one of my drawings disappeared out of the gallery it wasn’t offensive so i dont why it would be deleted
Wow – I’m absolutely stunned! This app has blown me away it’s so good!
I’m hoping someday this will become a boxed product with full Nintendo backing – fits perfectly with their “Touch Generations” brand and the laid-back creativity Nintendo work hard to portray.
The planned web features and collaborative painting sound fantastic – perfectly pitched for Nintendo’s growing online presence.
Keep up the great work! :-D
bought a ds because of colors, arrived today. the program is even better than expected, thanks a billion times for programming this!
Think its possible i can get the source code…to try to port this nifty app to the nokia n800?
Hey Stan,
No, the source for Colors! is not available for a number of reasons. It’s possible that it will be released in the future, but I haven’t really decided yet. A port for the n800 would be cool though.
Daniel,
The “offensive” system is based on user reporting, but is validated by admins reguarly. If the painting wasn’t offensive it should pop back up again soon.
Great program. I figured I’d throw in a few feature requests for you to think about.
1. It would be nice if the color picker had a sample of the color you’re picking alongside the old color that you were using so that you could see the difference. Similar to Photoshop. It’s nice that the brush preview shows the color, but I’m usually using a brush that is too small to really see the color on it.
2. I understand that undo is difficult on this limited game system and this has been discussed to death. The reason why I usually want undo is because I accidentally did a multi-touch on the screen and drew a big line across my image. I was wondering if you have tried a multi-touch detector? If the program could pause and warn me if my drawing vector travelled more than half the screen, it would help minimimize ugly multitouch errors.
3. I think it would be nice if you could zoom out 1 or 2 more levels. This would help me get a good overall feel of my picture. Even if I couldn’t draw on it, this would be nice. Ideally 2×2-average downsampled. If I could draw on the zoomed out thing, that would help with large strokes. I recently was drawing god-rays into my picture that were near the edge of the screen. Unfortunately, it seems like the touch sensitivity is a bit weak towards the edges of the screen, so I had to scroll around to get them at the right intensity. Zoom-out could have helped me draw that.
4. I know you’re looking into this, but I figured I’d let you know that a bigger replay buffer would be great.
Thanks for writing Colors. It really is an exceptional program and has helped me learn to draw better.
-Otavio
i was wondering is it possible that you could have a built-in mp3 player so u can listen to music while painting or is that to complicated?
Best, Software, Ever. I love art again thank you so much.
I LOVE THIS!! It has allowed me to start drawing again even with my arthritis,fibromyalgia and carpel tunnel. Thank you!!
A great app and really enjoying it !
I have a question – pressure sensitivity in terms of getting a line from thick to thin does not work for me with the pen .I can paint with my finger on the screen and it works then . Is this the way it was intended ? Same problem with opacity. I have version h and have tried the different settings – on off brush size and opacity etc .
Apart from that ( could def be something I am not doing right ) this is fantastic and a huge thanks to you for doing this . I really was looking for a digital sketch pad and the ds is perfect . I ended up just buying one with a supercard ds one soley for this purpose .
Thanks .
Hi there …yesterday i bought a nintendo ds lite just to be able to use colors! im not into games at all, the thing is can someone help me by telling me how to get the colors! installation file into the nintendo ds lite???? it doesnt come with a data cable or a memory card so how can i install colors?
thank you
Ayman Alagouza. You need to get homebrew enabled cartridge to put colors on it. Please visit http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?p=145376#145376 for more info.
simon, have you tried the calibration tool?
jens, i know there are a lot of feature requests. there is a very simple thing, that would be great to have: a way to set the background color for a new painting.
Amazing work Jens , i recently purchased an R4 cartridge so i could run the SNES emulator on it , was looking for other interesting applications and found your excellent program , cant thank you enough , you should try and get it published and earn some money for this , it really is that good.
Thanks a million for this application.
As for requests, Otavio’s # 1 and 3 requests are the similar to mine.
The #1 thing I find myself wanting is to zoom out 1 or 2x so I can see the entire image easier, work with it smaller, and especially because the DS doesn’t read strokes very well on the edges. Having to pan over to do the edges is a pain when it could be solved by zooming out.
It would be great too if you could some how show the color that is currently selected in the color picker.
Another feature that would help a lot is an option to turn the image greyscale so I can judge the values, a great asset for learning to paint well.
Also another request about brushes, the square brush would be great along with some sort of grainy textured brush as well.
One last thing, I thank for making this usable for both left and right handed people (i’m left handed) but I was thinking if you made a version for left handed people and a version for right handed people you could have more hotkeys available. I know it’s meant to be simple, but there are just a few more things I find useful that could be added with more open keys. Also I find myself hitting those other keys on accident. I think someone needs to invent a Colors! glove to protect your hand from injury, I am already using a headband wrapped around my hand to prevent that hard plastic stylus from pressing too hard into my index finger.
Anyways, I’m going to start posting my Colors! sketches right now! You guys made my life much happier by making this. I thank Sparth for having his DS sketches on his blog, I had no idea about the DS pressure sensitivity.
Thank you again.
Thanks everyone for all the compliments!
Otavio, I agree that it would be nice to see the old selected color in the brush screen. I’m not sure how I would create a multitouch detector since sometimes they are reported as slow moves towards the second touch point. I do hope to get undo functionality in there for the next version, so perhaps that won’t be a problem after that. Also, I’ve got the suggestion of an additional zoom-out level from enough artists to make me want it in there and an unlimited paint-buffer is definitly needed.
Y, It would probably be nice, but I’m afraid that if I would start with an integrated mp3-player, I would need to spend a lot of time getting it as polished as I wanted it to be. Also, there is memory and performance issues with such a thing.
Christy lightfoot, It makes me incredible proud to have been able to help in that way. Thanks for letting me know.
re134123, In the spirit of keeping Colors! simple I’m not going to have a clear-color since it’s so easy to clear the screen manually.
DaveB, making the image temporary grayscale is something I need to think about. Perhaps that can be worked into the levels-tool screen I’m hoping to implement. Square-brush is something I’ve heard requested a few times so it’s probably something that’ll get in there as well. I’m not sure what to do about the left-right hand configuration though, but I’ll try to think of something.
Thanks again!
Very good application
thanks a lot
but can you make button L or R just a toggle between drawing or choose colors
too difficult for my little girl ( 3 years old ) to hold button when she choose color
Great software, my 6 year old loves it. Just a thought, could you implement an eraser tool? She finds it tough to select a perfect white using the triangle thingy, then forgets to change it back to full colour. Thanks a million for this.
hey great app
when will the new colors be out?
will be out before the end of this year?
Hi again, I haven’t found anything about this so I’ll ask it here.
Is there something I can use to watch .drw files on my computer? Or is it only possible on the DS?
thanks again.
You can watch drw in the online gallery (if you have java installed).
You can also go to download section of the gallery and download java applet to run it offline. You will be able tosave picture at higher resolution or save avi movie of the painting process, so you can post it on youtube for example. Apllet is not pixel perfect, but is close enough.
Applet was written by Ben Jaques, and you can even use it on your own page completely free. It is not necessary but if you use that applet on your page, please give Ben a credit – a link to his page maybe http://masscat.afraid.org/
Thanks again for all the complements. It makes me happy that I’m a programmer.
Arialia, yes, that is something I’ve seen as well. I’ll do some tests about alternatives for future versions.
dyl, I’m not so fond of the idea of an eraser tool, but it’s possible that I should add shortcuts to black/white colors. I’ve also been thinking about having the option of a simplified palette.
Y, yes, I’m hoping to have a new version out before the end of this year. Not promising anything though.
Thanks for the feedback!
This is so awesome to have wile on the go. Having a little digital drawing pad with me everywhere.
Do you think layers will be added to the next update?
Jens, I would like to know, how’d Colors! users make vertically large pictures, like this picture madwurmz did?
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=1545
Did he use both screens of the program? Make 2 pictures and then join them together? Drew it sideways in the drawing screen? Secret technique? Haha… Seriously though, how did they do it?
So now i’ve finished asking… Jens, you have created an indispensable product, just like CautionCat said. Though I’ve found that the product is not yet ripe for me to deem it perfect, nonetheless, the experience of being accustomed to the program was not as arduous as i first thought. Please, continue to refine the program, because i will be looking forward for all future versions i can find, beta or official!
CautionCat,
I’ve currently not planned to include layer-support for Colors!. Apart from the technical problems they would cause, it would also make the program much more complex.
Thanks for the compliment!
Kitetsu: The secret technique is to draw keeping your DS rotated 90 degrees to the side. :)
I figured I’d throw 2 more ideas out there for Jens to think about.
1. Dithering would help with smooth gradients. It looks to me like the DS is using a 15 bit frame buffer even though the picture is saved at 24 bits. If you use a standard dithering algorithm, it might confuse the artists since it would change pixel color without them directly changing it. So my ideas are like this… Make dithering as an option? Only dither when zoomed in? Or maybe dither over time. So like every other frame the color would flicker 1 level up or down. Since it’s only one level, it probably wouldn’t distract too much. I recently programmed something similar for part of an xbox360 game I’m working on. Time-based dithering seems to work as long as the color changes are small and the frame rate is fast.
2. Earlier, I had suggested having a current color and last color in the color picker. It might be interesting to have a short queue of the last few used colors. Like a recently used palette. I find myself frequently going back to a color that I just used 3 colors ago.
Ok, just some random ideas. I don’t know how hard these are to implement or if anyone else would be into them, but I figured it can’t hurt to suggest. :)
-Otavio
I bought a DS just for this program. Thank you very much for all the hard work and effort. Everything about it is just beautiful.
When I saw this I was like “finally”
But it won’t work with Super Card SD slot-2
Any way I can get it to work?
Jens :
My daughter has learned all alone how changing colors, load picture and save picture in few days !
Look at this : http://arialia.dev-fr.org/p3760/2007-11-27-colors-ds-ma-fille-m-epate.html
i’m so surprised !
Shinkon :
It works fine on all Supercard but you must patch colors with good DLDI ( for mine the Moon SCSD DLDI ) or test autopatch DLDI with new firmware 1.84 for supercard, i’ve tested with supercard MiniSD Rumble and it’s work fine ;)
If you want learn about DLDI : http://dldi.drunkencoders.com/
Hey everybody, I can’t seem to stop posting to this site, so if I get annoying, ignore me.
Jetboy, the gallery site is lots of fun. I was wondering if you could do something like limit the number of uploads per person per day. It seems like sometimes there will be some sweet pictures that people upload that get quickly bumped off the main page when someone decides to upload 8 “modern arts” all at once. Also, when is the next contest?
My last feature request is… How sweet would it be if the Colors program kept track of how long you have been drawing a picture? Then you could have contests where you have to draw something in a certain time limit. I think that could be lots of fun.
-Otavio
Hi all,
I have a quick question, Ive just bought my daughter a ds for christmas and have seen a lot of news about this awesome looking package. Will this Homebrew App work on an
M3DS Simply cart?
Ive read a few places about using a DLDI patching program, will I need to do this for this cart?
Just want to put my mind at rest – I think this will be the toy of choice this christmas :D
cant thank you enough for this
@Otavio:
I know this is important issue, but we dont want to discourage people from posting to the gallery. I know you are used to the higher standards, but colors gallery is for every colors users. I will think about it and we could discuss it on the technical forums http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=14182.
As for the time painted thing – it was planned from the beggining. Jens did put that field into drw specyfication, just he didnt implemented that feature yet – so the field is left blank for now. Maybe next update will include that.
@S-I-T:
Colors will work on most flashcards, M3DS Simply is one of them. There is more explanation in gallery on FAQ page.
Great app, and definitely the best painting app for DS! Something I think would be an important feature in the future is of course UNDO. I don’t know anything about programming on DS so don’t really know about limitations of like how many steps you could UNDO, I quess its the memory, right? But even a single-step UNDO would be so GREAT and useful.
Great software. At least one undo would be great. Custom brush shape would also be great. I think there should be some way to alter an image in Photoshop and bring it back into Colors to work on. I tried this this and something strange happened. When I opened the png in Colors, I could see the modified image. I could paint over it and eyedrop sample colors from the modified image. But when I email the image to myself or I copy the file back off the SD Card, the Photoshop modifications don’t appear. Only the actions in Colors. You should find a way to allow importing of our own original images that we can then paint on. I would like to set up some toned and textured backgrounds so I can make images that look even more like paintings. Instead of only being able to work on the default white background.
Oh, I forgot. One more thing. It would be preferable if you could change the file saving from the limited number of slots to something unlimited, or limited by the size of the SD Card. And if the saving function behaved like other programs, giving you a directory and the ability to name your own files. Of course loading from the same directory. It doesn’t make sense to limit the number of saves.
First, thanks for the most powerful paint program on console ever!!!
second, i wrote a colors article on my blog (in spanish) to make may more people know colors.
Third, maybe a thing, a 1024*768 document and angle brush are a things to incorpore to colors.
thanks!!!!
hey jens
when is the wifi gallery going to be up?
will it be up before the new version of colors?
Absolutely fabulous software! thank you Jens! now my daily 2 hours lost on the train to and from work will be put to very constructive use. I cant thank you enough. I’ll let you know when i have a site up! (so much to do and so little time!!)
Hey, I got an M3 DS Real.. but i cant get Colors working on it.. can anyone help me?
Hi,
Thanks for Colors, I think my daughter and I are going to have lots of fun with it. I have a few suggestions:
1. Undo of at least a few strokes. Like others have said, this is a biggie if you actually care about what you’re making.
2. When pressure-sensitivity is enabled for size/opacity, you should be able to choose a min *and* max value. I often don’t want huge ranges, just some subtle variation to make things look more natural.
3. A way of creating a palette of colors and/or “brushes” (i.e. color+size+opacity), preferably along with the ability to save and restore them. Note that this would give people a way to have an “eraser” as a saved brush with white color and 100% opacity.
Anyhow, thanks again for the nice program!
Cheers,
-n8
I’ve been waiting for a soft like that since I bought my DS. It even was a reason for buying it, but I didn’t find a good enough drawing soft. I even tried painting on my palm, with many crappy and buggy apps, and no pressure, and no precision in the stylus…
“Colors” is just awesome ! Well done, easy to use, and all you need to paint is implemented : pressure, opacity, and the indispensable color circle. Made by a painter for other painters, I guess… Very ergonomic and well thought.
Now I’ll paint everything I see !
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thanks.
And thanks again.