A Professional Digital Painting Software for Ubuntu Linux: MyPaint!

If you're looking for one of the best digital painting applications for Ubuntu, then there aren't that many which can beat GIMP for what it does. But if you're looking for a bit simpler yet a powerful and professional painting software that has a somewhat different characteristic to it (more later), then MyPaint is something that's totally worth giving a shot :).

According to the developer of MyPaint, it's designed for pressure sensitive Tablet PC type devices + puts a lot of "weight" on digital brush strokes, which makes it an excellent dedicated painting application rather than a usual image editor.

Welcome to the world of the "damaged bird!", ;-)... Original image by : Nicobou from deviantart.

 Main features...

*. As mentioned above, it's all about brush-strokes with MyPaint and you get a hell lot of 'em by default such as:

Sponge, Pen, Charcoal, Marker, AirBrush, Spray, Dry Brush, Rounded, ink_blot, Erasers and Blur brushes (of different types) are just a fraction of the brushes that you'll get!.

*. If you want to create a brush of your own, then you can use the built in "Brush Editor" which basically lets you define a new one using changing "Opacity", "Hardness", "Speed filter", etc values.

*. Import a brush package with ease.

*. A basic image layer support (add/remove, change opacity, merge layers, add a background, etc).

*. Save images as: PNG, JPEG, Multiple PNG transparent and Open-Raster formats.

*. Unlimited canvas size thanks to the Raster image support.

*. Also available for MS Windows platform as well. 

*. Edit pressure settings for Tablet or if you have a similar Touch sensitive gadget.

*. Change the colors of your brushes + pick colors from the color piker tool from your current image... are among the main features.

As said, the GUI is pretty simple and is not filled with options because MyPaint only emphasize on creating amazingly beautiful digital graphics rather than a fully featured image manipulator such as the GIMP, Pencil or Inkscape for instance. 

Anyhow, you can install MyPaint in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10 and 10.10 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install mypaint

Also remember to have a look at the excellent documentation of MyPaint which includes tutorials on how to use this amazing, digital painting software to create beautiful looking artwork in Ubuntu Linux. Enjoy!.