NAW is a modern tool that enables the creation of art ready for use with NES development. Meant for artists, it imposes all NES limitations and gives you a WISIWYG workflow.

It works with NES compatible formats such as nametables, CHR, OAM data and raw palettes, but it can also export to PNG and it allows images to be pasted directly on the CHR table from other software.

It has an extensive toolset and is actively maintained by nesrocks. Updates are posted to the official itch page: https://nesrocks.itch.io/naw

It is a free download but donations are welcomed as they allow the project to receive new features.

It does NOT open ROMs directly yet, but you can import a PPU dump from emulators. You can also import the OAM dump from mesen.

For ROM hacking it is useful to edit the raw graphics manually extracted using PPU dumps or the CHR taken using other tools. Re-inserting the graphics into the ROM will require ROM hacking knowledge.

There’s a simple tutorial project that loads to default, it can be disabled in the preferences. Hit the “nametable #” button to view the tutorial pages.