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[UristWoodie]

Newb question:

I've been looking for a decent editor to create a tileset for DF. I'm not an artist, nor a student, but I am a cheapskate.

So...looking for inexpensive or free tools that allow creation of tiles and setting up tilesets for DF. And any other utilities handy for working with the graphics sets.

The set I'm working towards is meant for TWBT, specifically to enhance the appearance of the default Workshops, so I really need to create new tiles, rather than assemble existing tiles.

[CLA]

Adobe used to offer a student license for Photoshop. Try if your university offers that. <- Misread your second sentence.
GIMP is more than good enough, (there's also Krita although I haven't used it myself).
But really, any bitmap editor that has layers and masks, supports png with alpha transparency and has basic tools such as pen, eraser, and selection tool is absolutely sufficient.
Apart from MSpaint, I can't think of a single program that wouldn't be good enough.

[Vanst7]

Pretty much what CLA recommend. I find Gimp a really good free alternative to Photoshop.

[Taffer]

I used to use GIMP regularly. It needed to be configured well to feel comfortable for me.

I've recently switched to Krita and I haven't looked back. While I'm still getting used to the program, I prefer it to GIMP for both pixel art and general art. Krita also a sane interface and just had a successful Kickstarter. I followed this configuration tutorial to get myself set up for pixel art. A pixel brush has since been added to Krita.

Utilities specific to Dwarf Fortress aren't necessary. Just display a grid of your preferred tileset size in Krita/GIMP and draw.

[Vanst7]

I used to use GIMP regularly. It needed to be configured well to feel comfortable for me.

I've recently switched to Krita and I haven't looked back. While I'm still getting used to the program, I prefer it to GIMP for both pixel art and general art. Krita also a sane interface and just had a successful Kickstarter. I followed this configuration tutorial to get myself set up for pixel art. A pixel brush has since been added to Krita.

Utilities specific to Dwarf Fortress aren't necessary. Just display a grid of your preferred tileset size in Krita/GIMP and draw.

Oh My God! I just watched the video and really loving what i've see of it. I don't know why i didnt even heard of that program before, other then the fact CLA mention it. I think i'll definitely switch to it, even if i'm really used to use GIMP.

[UristWoodie]

OK, so I ended up going with paint.NET, and that seems to be meeting my needs, for the moment. I'm not an artist, so the other tools seemed to offer too much for me to work with.  I'm still trying to work through how to make part of a tile transparent, but not the whole thing.

Right now, that amounts to placing black objects on a gray-shaded background, which for many tiles works ok, since I want the material to show through. (eg, white table if the workshop was made of dolomite, and brown if it was made from wood) then the object (hammer, etc.) is in black. But that is a topic for another thread.

I did try Tile Studio as well, and that's interesting, and seems to have similar features to paint.Net. So it was a question of where do I spend my learning time, and I went with the more general toolset. TS does have options and ways to break up the tiles which could actually be really, really useful for work like this...but I didn't spend the time to figure out to really use it.

[CLA]

OK, so I ended up going with paint.NET, and that seems to be meeting my needs, for the moment. I'm not an artist, so the other tools seemed to offer too much for me to work with.  I'm still trying to work through how to make part of a tile transparent, but not the whole thing.

Right now, that amounts to placing black objects on a gray-shaded background, which for many tiles works ok, since I want the material to show through. (eg, white table if the workshop was made of dolomite, and brown if it was made from wood) then the object (hammer, etc.) is in black. But that is a topic for another thread.

I did try Tile Studio as well, and that's interesting, and seems to have similar features to paint.Net. So it was a question of where do I spend my learning time, and I went with the more general toolset. TS does have options and ways to break up the tiles which could actually be really, really useful for work like this...but I didn't spend the time to figure out to really use it.

In DF, a tile has two colors. A foreground color and a background color.
Everything that's white will be drawn in the foreground color; everything that's magenta (bmp) or is transparent (png, googling "paintNET alpha transparency" should lead you to some tutorials) will be drawn in the background color. All black pixels will be drawn as black, omitting the background color.
So:

White = foreground color
transparent = background color
black = black.

Furthermore, grey will be drawn as darker foreground color, half transparent black as darker background color.

I can't help you with paint.NET specifically, since I don't use it. But I'm sure there are tutorials on google for alpha masks, and reducing the opacity of the pencil and eraser tools (if you draw a black pixel and erase it with a 50% opaque eraser, you will get a 50% transparent black pixel. Similarly, if you draw a black pixel with a 50% opaque pencil on an empty background, you will get the same result).