SAI (software)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(April 2008)

PaintTool SAI

Developed by	SYSTEMAX
Latest release	Ver.1.0.0 / 2008-02-25
Preview release	Ver.1.0.1 / 2008-03-03
OS	Microsoft Windows
Size	5MB
Genre	Raster graphics editor
License	Shareware
Website	http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/

SAI or PaintTool SAI (ペイントツールSAI, PaintTool SAI^?) is a painting program for Microsoft Windows developed by SYSTEMAX.

[edit] History

Development began on August 2, 2004, a first alpha version was released on October 13, 2006, and the software moved into beta stage on December 21, 2007. The first official release (1.0.0) was on February 25, 2008, and a first update (1.0.1) appeared on March 3, 2008.

The official English language translation of both the website and the application were released on March 31, 2008. Payments through PayPal, either by credit card or by using a paypal account, are also accepted from this date, in addition to the BitCash and TelecomCredit payment systems that have been available for users from Japan.

[edit] Features

SAI is a lightweight application, which starts up in a matter of seconds.

The user interface allows you to have multiple documents opened at the same time. The drawing canvas can be both zoomed and rotated using the sliders on the navigator or the hotkeys configured on your keyboard, the toolbar on the top part of the screen also includes a button to mirror the drawing view without mirroring your actual drawing. It is also possible to open multiple viewports to the same document. An application-wide scratchpad (which can be used as a color mixing panel) is provided, which is saved between your sessions. Colors can be stored in the swatches panel.

Various raster drawing tools are implemented, such as the Airbrush, Watercolor, Pen, and Marker, which can all be easily customized, and stored in slots in the user interface of the application. There also is a set of vector drawing tools, intended for inking, which, like the raster tools, can be configured to be pen pressure sensitive.

Work can be done on separate layers, which can be grouped, and can have opacity masks. In addition to this, it is possible to mask a layer by letting the layer system automatically take the opacity of the layer below (or lower, if the layer below also has layer clip enabled) it into account, which is an efficient way of adding shadows and highlights onto your colored surfaces, without having to bother with creating special masks to take care of this.

There is also a pen movement and pressure smoothing feature, which can be manually configured as to how much effect it has.

Selection tools include the simple square selection, the lasso, and magic wand, which all have configurable settings for things like anti aliasing. There is also a selection brush tool, which is fully customizable, similar to the drawing brush.

Some common features that exist in similar software, like text layers and gradients, are not implemented, as this tool focuses on the drawing/painting, while the final composition is often done using another application. There is also no printing functionality, but documents can be exported to a range of popular formats, such as .PSD files or simply as .BMP files, in addition to the native .SAI format used by default.