KolourPaint
KolourPaint is a free painting program for creating raster images, touching up pictures, and making simple image edits.
What KolourPaint is
KolourPaint is a free painting program for creating raster images, touching up pictures, and making simple image edits. Drawing tools include lines, rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, polygons, curves, and text. For editing, it offers a color picker, selections, rotation, monochrome conversion, and other effects. The handbook also documents tools such as brush, eraser, flood fill, pen, and spraycan, along with effects including autocrop, emboss, flip, invert, mirror, grayscale, resize, and soften or sharpen. Linux users can install it through Discover and other AppStream stores, distribution package managers, or Flathub. KDE also lists macOS, with nightly installers for ARM and Intel Macs; these are testing versions generated from the latest development branch. The product page lists BSD-2-Clause, LGPL-2.0+, and GFDL-1.2 licenses. KDE provides a KolourPaint Handbook and community forum for help, plus links to report bugs and view the bug list. The listed plan costs nothing.
Good
- Free painting and image-editing program
- Includes drawing, selection, and color tools
- Handbook documents a range of image effects
- Linux installation options include Flathub
Watch out
- macOS installers are nightly testing versions
- No Windows platform is listed
Who it suits
KolourPaint suits people looking for a simple desktop program for raster drawing, touch-ups, and basic image edits. It is listed for Linux and macOS users.
Verdict
KolourPaint provides drawing and editing tools for straightforward raster work, with Linux installation options and macOS nightly builds. Mac users should note that the listed installers are testing versions.
Plans and prices
From KolourPaint's own pricing page, checked 4 Oct 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| KolourPaint | Free | Desktop application · Linux via app stores or distribution package managers · macOS nightly installers listed |
The facts
Each one read from KolourPaint's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Drawing tools
- It supports lines, rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, polygons, curves and text.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Editing tools
- It includes a color picker, selections, rotation, monochrome conversion and other advanced effects.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Handbook effects
- The handbook lists image effects including autocrop, emboss, flip, invert, mirror, grayscale, resize, rotate and soften or sharpen.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Handbook tools
- The handbook documents tools including brush, color picker, eraser, flood fill, line, pen, rectangles, selections, spraycan and text.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Help
- KDE links to the KolourPaint Handbook and a community forum for help.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Issue reporting
- KDE provides a bug-report link and a bug-list link for KolourPaint.checked 4 Oct 2026
- License
- The product page lists BSD-2-Clause, LGPL-2.0+ and GFDL-1.2 licenses.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Privacy
- KDE's general software privacy policy says its software generally transfers no user-device information except through explicit user action, with some optional automated checks and opt-in telemetry in some applications.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- KolourPaint is a simple painting program for quickly creating raster images and handling touch-ups and simple image editing.checked 4 Oct 2026
- Testing builds
- KDE describes nightly installers as testing versions generated from the latest development branch.checked 4 Oct 2026
Where it runs
- Linux installation
- The KDE page lists Linux installation through Discover and other AppStream stores, distribution package managers, and Flathub.checked 4 Oct 2026
- macOS availability
- The KDE page lists macOS as another platform and provides nightly installers for both ARM and Intel Macs.checked 4 Oct 2026
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