I use Corel painter. It's more of an artistic program. It has a lot of features supporting the artistic side of digital art. I don't prefer using photoshop.. With me, it doesn't really make me feel that i'm focusing on using the proper brush tool to make art. I think they made it mainly for photo manipulation >_>.. Corel jus' makes me feel that i'm actually holding a brush, pencil, etc. Corel painter is amazing for traditional art like effects because of the various brushes and settings that come along with it. As for pixels, i used graphicsgale. It is one great software for pixeling and animating pixels. I've recently downloaded GIMP? I somewhat find it hard to use but it's cool with the pixeling. Hm, i don't really have much use with the tricks. I like it when i do the line art after coloring my drawings. I do it backwards.