Version 1.0
Author: Christian Schmalfeld  <c [dot] schmalfeld [at]
projektfarm [dot] de>

This article is about how to use the Pinta graphical editor to edit pictures and covers some of its most important features.

This tutorial comes without warranty of any kind.

1 Preliminary Note

Pinta is a lightweight image editor for Linux and is far more easier
to handle than Gimp but still has a large variety of tools and features
to use. It can be used for quick editing like resizing images or
adjusting the colours of photographs, but also for more professional
tasks which depend on layered images and more. It is a good mixture
between MS Paint and professional image editing tools and is
recommendable for most purposes of image-editing-everyday-use.

2 New Document

On first start Pinta appears as a single window with a large central drawing panel. On the left side, there is a Tools and a Palette panel, on the right side, there is a Layers and a History
panel. On the top windowbar you can find the usual editing options for
adjusting colors, brightness and others as well as adding effects to
your images.

For starters I will create a simple picture using some of the basic tools and effects. Start by selecting the Paintbrush tool and adding some colors to the first layer of the picture.

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To make sure that you do not damage the previously created parts of a picture you use different layers.
This feature allows you to part the picture into layers, which all act
as seperate pictures with a transparent background. Using these one can
draw anything on a single layer and erase it again without touching the
content of the other layers. To add a new layer, select Layers > Add New Layer.

Now you have an additional layer which you can use to seperate your
background from the rest of the picture. To choose other colors to use,
double-leftclick upon the primary color and a window will open where
you have detailed options to select a color.

After applying some color to the second layer you can watch these
alone by hiding the other layers. Therefore just uncheck the checkboxes
next to the layers’ names on the Layers panel to the right.if(typeof __ez_fad_position != ‘undefined’){__ez_fad_position(‘div-gpt-ad-howtoforge_com-box-4-0’)};

To make my current layers look more like a background I will apply a Gaussian Blur to it. Therefore I select Effects > Blurs > Gaussian Blur… and select a radius that matches my likings.

Next I add a few more layers to seperate my picture and add more
blurs, since everything I have drawn so far is gonna be my background.
By blurring the background you can accomplish a greater focus on the
important things on the foreground.