Web-based image editor modeled after Deluxe Paint

https://github.com/steffest/DPaint-js

Comments

VimEscapeArtistJan 25, 2026, 5:57 PM
I've been following this app for a while. Worth noting that the author is also a very talented graphic artist and demoscener. Works created with this tool frequently appear in various demoscene compos.
bananaboyJan 25, 2026, 10:43 PM
Yeah! I posted one of his recent entries to a compo separately but should have just posted it in this thread https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyB5cvA6f78

He also made this amiga demo and wrote the music for it too. He’s multitalented! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc8f7zg3-v8

badsectoraculaJan 25, 2026, 8:25 PM
This is neat, some years ago i also thought of making a simple DPaint clone (though much simpler than what this project seems to do) and started by... painting the tool icons, then losing interest :-P. I did end up reusing them for a pixelart editing component for Lazarus though[0] (and put the icons in my "Bad-Common-Icons" icon set[1] that i use for my GUI programs). But i do want to, at some point, tackle making something like Paint Shop Pro 7 (for desktop, not web) because i think it has the best UX of all image editing programs (including later versions of PSP which i never liked).

That said, i played with this a bit and found some bug with the smudge tool blending[2]. It also seems browser-related as it has different behavior in Firefox and Falkon (which uses QtWebEngine / Chromium). Also the way opacity works with the smudge tool feels weird/wrong as even at 1% it seems to affect the image a lot even though it should barely make a difference.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/kht16dJ.png

[1] http://runtimeterror.com/tools/icons/

[2] https://github.com/steffest/DPaint-js/issues/50

SteffestJan 25, 2026, 11:20 PM
Indeed! Blending colors is surprisingly hard. I've pushed an update that addresses most of your concerns. Not perfect yet, but an improvement. Dev version with these changes on https://www.stef.be/dpaint/dev/
badsectoraculaJan 26, 2026, 12:07 AM
I tried the dev version on Firefox and didn't seem to fix the issue though it was "reversed" in that things became brighter now. On Falkon it worked better though there was still some weird coloration for pixels that shouldn't have been altered - see the images i attached in the bug report.

Also in both cases the brush area remained intact (it was just 'moving around') instead of being smudged, it is more obvious in the Firefox shot because i only did a simple circular motion but can also be seen in the Falkon shot in that there is a floating corner at the top right corner of the orange box that was 'dragged' from the left side (i was doing a horizontal motion to show that the pixels above the brush were affected even though there wasn't any vertical motion to push the orange colors up to the blue area).

augusteoJan 26, 2026, 2:35 AM
The vanilla JS with zero dependencies is refreshing. Looking through the code, it's surprisingly readable for something handling Amiga file formats and color cycling.

The demoscene connection makes sense. That community has always valued doing more with less.

VerifiedReportsJan 26, 2026, 4:47 AM
Yeah, I'm sick of endless JavaScript libraries that assume that everyone and everything has Node installed.
roskelldJan 25, 2026, 5:47 PM
Steffest was just showing off his entry for the color cycling competition at GERP 2026 which uses a few of his tools to produce including DPaint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyB5cvA6f78

EDIT: I see he posted a link at the bottom of the Readme.md I guess I should have scrolled to the bottom first.

socalgal2Jan 25, 2026, 9:57 PM
How is this like DeluxePaint? For me DeluxePaint's defining feature is how brushes work. You press B, you select some pixels, those pixels immediately become your brush that you draw with

https://classicreload.com/play/dosx-deluxe-paint-animation.h...

This clone doesn't do that, therefore it's not remotely like Deluxe Paint and it's disingenously to claim it's modeled on it.

badsectoraculaJan 26, 2026, 12:09 AM
It isn't in the linked version but it is in the dev version which also has some further brush enhancements. It seems the brush stuff are still being worked on.
antodJan 26, 2026, 12:05 AM
My vague memories of DP are centered around the custom ranges for cycling through color palettes. A talented artist could make simple animated scenes.
Grom_PEJan 26, 2026, 2:25 AM
Deluxe Paint 2 for DOS was my favorite drawing program, so had to check this out, pretty nice!

The only thing that stops me from recommending it is non-integer zoom levels, which is especially bad for pixel art.

Moving layers around was also confusing, had to click Layer → Transform → Free Transform to be able to move things around. It would be much more obvious if there was a move icon in the tool panel that does just that.

AldipowerJan 25, 2026, 4:47 PM
Nice! The code looks pretty neat! And also somehow clean. I like those projects, without all those boring constraints you have in "enterprise" or even worse start-up code.
newsofthedayJan 25, 2026, 6:50 PM
I appreciate the nostalgia of it but DPII was a light themed tool, this one is dark themed, difficult for me to read.

I run DPII in DoxBox on Linux like this:

dosbox DP.EXE

Something I don't see in your app is the Perspective tool.

dizzy9Jan 25, 2026, 9:35 PM
Another Deluxe Paint clone is PyDPainter. It's Python-based and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The UI is very much reminiscent of the original.

https://github.com/mriale/PyDPainter

kosolamJan 25, 2026, 4:17 PM
Nice. Vanilla js with a pretty clean code. From a quick look there is some components architecture and they are decoupled via an events bus. I used to implement evented architectures in winform apps in the past. On the one hand it may seem insane but in practice it was a really good choice.
heliumteraJan 25, 2026, 4:53 PM
Source code is very readable and very comfortable to use application.

This is surprising given it's a web application in modern age, did not expect that.

baudauxJan 25, 2026, 3:38 PM
Is it simple to adapt file open/save in order to embed it in https://exaequos.com ?