Get creative with Tux Paint

Tux Paint is a fun painting program for children, ideal if you want them to do something more productive than just playing games. It is easy to use with plenty of sound effects.

Installation is quite simple. This download comes with Open Candy, which will offer to install another program as a way for Tux Paint to help cover its costs. There is also an alternative download without Open Candy software if you would prefer.

The configuration program is launched automatically. You can set the size of the Tuxpaint and make it fullscreen rather than a windows. This is handy for making everything on the screen bigger.

It is possible to set the right mouse button to work as the left while in Tux Paint. Speaking from the experience of trying to get children to use the correct button, this is very welcome. The disadvantage though is that it might take longer to get them to use the left button in the future.

Printing can be allowed or not and a time delay between print commands. This should avoid problems when impatient youngsters keep clicking on Print because they don't see anything happening immediately.

There are several templates for starting painting projects and these include colouring pages as well as frames and an underwater scene. The lines of the colouring backgrounds stay visible on top of the image.

There are the usual tools for drawing lines and shapes. The stamp tool really needs the extra stamps, which you can download from the Tux Paint website as Tuxpaint only comes with six stamps. The full pack includes lots of different animals, food, household objects, people, plants and vehicles.

Our only real criticism is that there are no audio cues for younger children when the cursor moves over the different tools. Still it gives you a chance to have a go with them, which is part of the fun.

Tux Paint is good fun for children and parents and an essential download.