Deluxe Paint II
Image: Electronic Arts

If you owned a Commodore Amiga back in the day, it's possible you also had a copy or two of Deluxe Paint — the graphics editor created by Electronic Arts' software engineer Dan Silva.

The intuitive and relatively inexpensive piece of software was introduced all the way back in 1985 (the same year as the Amiga 1000) and became the editor of choice for many professional video game artists and amateurs alike. As a result, many of those who used it (or its many updates over the years) look back on it fondly today, even if they've long since ditched their Amiga for more modern machines.

If you happen to be among this group, well, we have some great news to share with you. A web developer named Steffest recently announced on Twitter that they had created a new web-based image editor, inspired by the classic piece of software, called Dpaint.JS. According to Steffest, in their announcement tweet, it originally started as an icon editor but gradually "turned into a fully featured pixel tool, with layers, masks, selections, effects, blend modes..."

Already, people are reacting positively to this fascinating new tool, with the editor also allowing artists a new and easy way to view their old IFF files without the need for emulation or original hardware. If you want to take a tour of the software or give it a try, you can find it here.

[source stef.be, via twitter.com]