SuperPaint is a graphics program capable of both bitmap painting and vector drawing. SuperPaint was one of the first programs of its kind, combining the features of MacPaint and MacDraw whilst adding many new features of its own. It was originally written by William Snider, published by Silicon Beach Software, and released in 1986 for the Apple Macintosh. William Snider wrote and designed the program from his house on an Apple Lisa in Pascal. It was the only program that outsold Silicon Beach's Dark Castle games, but SuperPaint was much more lucrative for the company. The program and packaging was also localised into Japanese. As it requires Classic, SuperPaint is unsupported as of Mac OS X version 10.5, but can still be used with the assistance of Mac OS emulators.
History
Version 1.0, released 1986, has a fixed positionuser interface with palettes arranged on the left and bottom edges of the screen. Includes LaserBits 300dpi editing mode and the ability to print in colour despite only being able to display in b&w.
1.1, released 1988, included the SuperConvert app to convert to/from LaserBits; was bundled with Microsoft Word 4.0 for Macintosh in 1990.
2.0, released 1989, introduced many new features including: AutoTrace, SuperBits, freehand Bézier tool, multi-page documents, rich text in text blocks, rotation and transformations, plug-ins, a multi-palette user interface, custom tools in the paint palette.
3.0, released 1991, was a major revision that added many extra features, most notably colour support, but also image enhancement functions and texture fills; hot keys were revamped to simplify the interface; tear-off palettes.
3.5, released 1993, brought support for System 7, copy brush tool, several other new drawing tools including some that are pressure sensitive, expanded importing capability including still frames from QuickTime. This was the final version of the app.
Later versions were published by Aldus after their 1990 acquisition of Silicon Beach Software. The app continued to be sold by Adobe after their 1994 takeover of Aldus.
Uses Since
Artist Richard Bolam used images drawn using Aldus SuperPaint in the 1990s as part of his "Bolam at 50" exhibition in 2014.
