What is SuperPaint?

SuperPaint’s single most distinguishing feature is its ability to incorporate both painted (dot-by-dot) and drawn (object-oriented) images in a single document. You must use very different techniques to edit these two kinds of images. To simplify things, SuperPaint documents are split into two layers, one for each kind of image.

You will work with only one of these layers at a time. The layer you are currently working on is always “in front” of the other layer. You can either superimpose the layers, or hide the one you aren’t working on (the one “in back”). To change from one layer to the other, you click on the icon in the top of the tool palette that contains the paint brush and the compass icons.

The Paint layer contains an image consisting of many dots. In it, you can use all sorts of painting tools, like a spray can, paint brush, eraser, and paint bucket to erase or paint more dots in the document. You can also paint rectangles, ovals, and round-cornered rectangles. Remember, though, that painted shapes are nothing more than a collection of dots. Once you create a rectangle, for example, you cannot go back and change the pattern it was painted with. Instead, you must erase the dots that made up the old rectangle and paint a new one in its place.

In the Draw layer, objects are distinct from each other. Since they remember all their characteristics, such as line width and pattern, it is easy to go back and change the pattern of a rectangle in the Draw layer. Changes are easy to make -- without erasing anything.

Objects are entities that are stored as mathematical information in the computer. They can overlap each other, and be stacked up. They cannot be edited dot-by-dot.

Schnapp, Russell L. (1986). SuperPaint. (p. 2). San Diego, CA.

Download SuperPaint for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

System Requirements

From Mac OS 3.2

Compatibility notes

Version 1.1 Requirements

• Macintosh 512K
• System 3.2 and Finder 5.3

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac