Tux Paint is an engaging, easy to use drawing program geared specifically towards children. Packed full of features to keep them engaged, it’s sure to keep their imagination engaged for hours on end!
The program is expandable, enabling the addition of brushes and “rubber stamp” shapes that may include sounds or textual facts associated with them.
Easy to use
Tux Paint was designed for easy use by children. When choosing tools, kids will enjoy fun sound effects and amusing animations of Tux the Linux penguin. Furthermore, when saving or opening images it works similarly to software on PDA devices, so children do not require knowledge of an operating system’s file system to save and open images.
The drawing canvas dominates most of the screen in the center, while on its right side a selector displays different options depending on which tool has been selected (ie: paint brush vs rubber stamp tools) A help area at the bottom provides tips and other pertinent information.
Kids using PicCollage for the first time are guided through an easy two-click printing process and when needing to adjust its size, the system automatically adapts it based on their creation without them needing to explain exactly how big their picture should be.
Ease of Use. Children can draw freehand or by using predefined shapes and stamps, with younger ones often preferring pre-set stamps for drawing easier than brush or pencil options. Furthermore, this program can be configured either via dialog box to disable printing altogether or only print once every few minutes using its “printdelay” command line option – adding another level of flexibility and customizability for older users.
Tux Paint stands out by taking steps to grab both mouse and keyboard input, blocking any operating system actions which might get the user out of its program (e.g. [Alt]-[Tab] window cycling or [Ctrl]-[Escape]. This feature can be disabled for younger users.
Tux Paint provides users with the advantage of supporting various languages. At runtime, users can specify which one will be used by providing text using the ‘lang’ command; additionally, Tux Paint respects any global locale settings set within your environment.
Aimed at kids
Tux Paint is an engaging drawing program for children that is both simple and enjoyable to use. As an open-source application developed by volunteers around the globe, it serves as an educational resource by teaching shapes, colors and mouse control while providing opportunities to explore subjects like history and science.
The user interface of our painting program is user-friendly and provides all the tools needed for beautiful creation. These include different brushes, color palettes and predefined geometric figures as well as text tools and rubber stamps. In addition, there is a range of effects such as fade, darken and cartoon; there may also be options which mirror markings like kaleidoscope.
Tux Paint features the Magic tool as a special feature that allows users to draw with various accessories, such as blinds, bricks and grass. In addition, this special effect provides special effects like color shift, distortion and negative. By default it is enabled; however parents may deactivate it if they believe it adds complexity to the program.
Tux Paint provides another feature to allow users to view slideshows of their creations. Simply choose which photos to include and set a speed to automatically make slideshows. Furthermore, you can set thumbnail sizes and themes, and Tux Paint will generate a short URL so people can share your artwork online.
Teachers can utilize Tux Paint software to teach their students computer use and enhance creativity, making it an ideal solution for schools that do not have access to more costly drawing software. Installation and use are straightforward; built-in help files provide useful assistance; multiple languages can be supported; Raspbian packages make Tux Paint accessible; it is suitable for home users of all ages; developers of Tux Paint are constantly striving to enhance the software by fixing bugs or issues as soon as they arise;
Extensive drawing tools
Tux Paint is an open-source program that is freely downloadable and customizable by anyone, making it a popular tool among children learning computer graphics. Its large community of users are constantly adding new features, improving existing ones, and fixing bugs – something its praise-worthy ease of use has been noted for by critics and reviewers. Tux Paint provides tools such as brushes, shapes, lines, stamps and erasers which enable artists to create incredible works of art using filters or special effects such as blurring your artwork with chalk-like effects on top of that!
The program begins with an empty canvas ready for drawing on. It can also load starter pictures such as this coloring-book chicken to show what can be accomplished with it. Kids can create freehand drawings or use straight line tools to draw perfectly straight lines on any picture, as well as more advanced tools for adding text or filling areas with solid or gradient colors. Eventually, an expanded toolbox displays all available tools and options.
Customizing the user interface is easy, which makes it particularly helpful for children with limited vision or motor control issues. For example, you can easily set how large buttons appear on a color palette (the default size is 48 pixels). Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts may need to be disabled, which is especially beneficial for kids learning keyboards for the first time. Finally, on touchscreen devices it may also be beneficial to hide mouse pointers altogether.
Tux Paint allows for another option that allows it to grab mouse and keyboard input, so that the mouse will only operate within Tux Paint’s window, with most keyboard commands (Alt-Tab windows cycling, Ctrl-Escape etc) being sent directly into it. In order to enable this setting you’ll need to disable your jog dial / wheel (jog dial).
Configuring the printcommand, which determines what the program prints when you press ‘Print, can be changed through editing the configuration file or command-line. A printdelay setting can also be set so that only once every SECONDS seconds, printing occurs.
Accessibility
Tux Paint can be controlled using any device that appears as a mouse to your operating system, including standard mice, trackballs and trackpads; drawing tablets (typically used with styli); touch screens; as well as configuration options that allow parents and teachers to tailor it specifically to younger children or those with disabilities such as disabling sound effects and only permitting one click at a time on mouse buttons.
The software offers children an array of stamp shapes and customizable brushes to explore the basics of drawing. A selection of colors makes coloring simpler while an eraser allows them to try again; additionally, this program can add text onto pictures for them to tell their stories in words.
Additionally, this software includes an option to enable keyboard control of mouse pointer movement, making this an accessible option for students who cannot use a mouse but still wish to operate their software with their keyboard. Furthermore, this can also be used to configure specific keys as quit buttons or change between on-screen keyboard layouts.
For optimal accessibility, this software enables users to set a’savedir’ that stores all of their saved images so they don’t need to search through files every time they need to reopen a picture – this option may be overridden using the –savedir option. Furthermore, a lockfile prevents it from launching more often than once every 30 seconds in order to prevent accidental multiple launches due to overzealous mouse clicking; this setting may be overridden using –checklockfile option.
One feature that contributes to accessibility is the ability to adjust the sensitivity of mouse pointer movement. You can choose a value between 0 and 32766 that determines how many pixels must be moved per unit of axis motion; increasing this number will slow down movement of pointer, making drawing easier for those with motor impairments.
This software supports many languages, and will honor the locale of a user’s system if known. If an explicit setting is desired, using options in a configuration file or the environment variable ‘LANG’. When using languages that require their own fonts, the software will retrieve these from within its locale subdirectory in Fonts directory.
