Multitouch Support

Disclaimer. I’m a professional illustrator using mainly Krita. After attending LGM, I thought it was a good idea to get back to MyPaint to see the improvements of the last years, and I was surprised at how I still love the interface.

I would like to suggest some improvements.

As a general rule:

• I think what differentiates MyPaint from other software (such as Krita) is the minimalistic interface. I love that. On the other hand, we miss many important things (such as selections, masks etc). I believe the only way for MyPaint to stand out from other applications, is to be different, by empowering the interface and develop a lightweight application that could work with touch gesture for touch screens (I know that tablet support is difficult to integrate, but there are regular laptops with touch screen like lenovo Yoga). When I travel, I sometimes use Procreate on an Ipad. It misses many features, but it is quite good to paint on the go. I think MyPaint should go in that direction.


In any case, there are some improvements that can be done to adapt the application to a professional workflow.


• We need a regular Canvas. Infinite canvas is a very good feature when it comes to sketch out an idea or to make several thumbnails in the same page, but in the everyday life of an illustrator, you need to know from the beginning the size, the format and the resolution of a document. In 90% of cases, when you start drawing for a client, you need to know the ratio because you want to print out the illustration at the end. I think infinite canvas should be an option but not the default setting.

I think the frame tool in principle already does the same job as e.g. the Krita canvas. Even in krita, layers are sized dynamically - nothing prevents you drawing outside of the canvas, and the result is still there, out of view. I guess the issue is discoverability and expectations - in most pixel editing software, the canvas is a central and visible thing, whereas in MyPaint it’s an option not enabled by default. Users might not associate the term “frame” with what they are looking for.

I agree, the Frame tool seems pretty much exactly what one would need to have a regular canvas. I rarely use the frame tool and almost never have the “options” panel open. So, embarassingly, I never realized there were settings for DPI, inches, etc when defining the frame:

Touchscreen support would be great though. I know someone has a fork with some basic support in it, but there are a lot of issues to grapple with still.