MyPaint 1.0

At first sight, MyPaint gives the impression that is a robust, well-designed and complex graphic editor that would make anyone appreciate it.

Even more so, the fact that it is an open-source program makes you think that you have finally found “the perfect” graphic tool. But, after 15 minutes of testing it, the first impression vanishes instantly.

MyPaint is indeed a professional program that comes with a large number of tools which might be highly appreciated by graphic editors. But at the same time, this piece of software has its major flaws. I tested it on multiple computers, and every single time, it stopped responding after a while. It provides a quite large number of interesting brushes, yet it’s disappointing that you need to click an icon up to 4 times in order to select the desired brush. That also goes for opening the application menu.

MyPaint focuses on offering a large variety of settings for each brush, filter, layer or any other tool that it offers, and as far as I’m able to tell, they seem to work properly. Moreover, an interesting tool that I enjoyed is the Scratchpad. It is a small window that lets you test your brushes after customizing them. If you’re happy with the results, you can proceed to the working area.

Considering that MyPaint is still in early stages of development, I’m confident that it will become a great competitor for similar commercial applications.