Pixel art software woes

...Alright, I need to vent and complain for a second.

Lately, I've been trying various pixel art programs. However, a lot of them have incredibly frustrating flaws. Part of it comes from my familiarity with GM's Sprite editor, but a lot of it comes down to practicality.

Basically, in GM the shortkeys are like this,

C - Eyedrop Tool
D - Pencil
S - Box select
W- Magic wand tool
F - Fill tool
R - Rectangle

1 - Frame left
2 - Frame Right

Middle Mouse - Hold to scroll view

What's so great about this? Everything I need and use is within quick reach of my left hand, and can be accessed with a single button press. People often cite GM as having a bad sprite editor, so it always makes me wonder how long it's been since they've used it. Everything is simple, but everything is fast.

The majority of my workflow consists of switching between the color picker and the pencil quickly. Even when I'm not doing anything, I'll often keep tapping the C key repeatedly out of habit. I can switch to any tool with a single button, and switch back with a single button. Perfect.

Okay, so what about say, Graphics Gale and Pro Motion?

In Pro Motion, if you wanted to use a box select tool, first you would have to go into,
1. Select Mode
2. Rectangle Tool

And then to switch back you would have to go into.
3. Draw Mode
4. Paint Continuous.

Four button presses. Great. It wouldn't be so bad if you could set multiple functions to use the same Hotkey. Since in normal use, I'm always going to be using Draw and Paint continuous at the same time, so it would make sense for me to make them both the D key. There are a lot of problems like this in the program.

And Graphics Gale? It has other problems. It's color picker is set to right click. HOLDING the right button does a box select. Remember how I said my workflow consists of switching  quickly between colors by using the color picker? Well I can't, because if you're moving too quick then instead of picking up a color, you'll do a mini box select!!

.......

Oh, and there's no eraser tool. So to erase you have to select the background color, which is annoying because of the box select. Or, you can use modes. You know, like the ones in Pro Motion. So if you want to erase and then switch to another tool, you need to switch the mode back before you do.

Alternatively, you can set the second color to the color of the background and swap between them. But look out! Because if you color select while swapped, you'll be caught off guard the next time you try to erase something because it will be the wrong color.

How about....have an eraser!
Use single button presses!

And the palette picker...to change your color with a proper window, you need to click on a color slot, pick the color and then.....click on the color slot again! An extra click for no reason! Does it think I just change colors FOR KICKS?! Why can't you just change the colors you have selected with the same window as the palette slots????

AREGKGRKLAEJGKJERG...!!!

....................................................

....Anyhow...if you have any solutions to these problems let me know. I'm also open to any other programs. I initially dismissed AE because it doesn't have hotkeys customization, but I see that can be changed by editing a file. Although at this point, any color selection that isn't like GM's is going to slow me down a lot.

Oh, and the reason I haven't uploaded sound versions of the flash files yet is because I'm trying to get semi-randomized sounds done like I did in Noaika, which makes things way easier. I looked into it, it was beyond my abilities, and so now I'm waiting on a word from a couple different programmers who may be able to do it.

Alright, done complaining. In all honesty, I really do want to find a program I like that can use layers, because it would make a lot of H stuff I'm doing in Noaika right now Waaaaay, waaaay easier.

Edit: Oh, I also never mentioned that I did a pixel art tutorial recently. It's up at the top under tutorials.