When comparing MyPaint vs Darktable, the Slant community recommends Darktable for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux image editing tools?” Darktable is ranked 3rd while MyPaint is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Darktable is:
There are a lot of different modules.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Interface gets out of the way
MyPaint mostly consists of the canvas. The interface to select different brushes can be brought up if needed, but it generally stays out of the way of getting things done.
Pro Good support for pressure sensitive graphics tablets
MyPaint was designed specifically with pressure sensitive graphics tablets in mind.
Pro Good media emulation
Pro Forgo the need to resize the canvas
If a user needs a bigger canvas all they need to do is zoom out instead of re-sizing.
Pro Feature rich
There are a lot of different modules.
Pro Fast and Flexible
A very well considered UI makes edits fast and fluid. You can redo or undo any step without disturbing any other part of your edit. The UI doesn't get in the way.
Pro Good batch editing capabilities
Darktable allows applying the same set of operations to multiple images and saving your history stack as a style (you can pick exactly which modules).
Pro Edits are saved to a separate file
Original files are untouched by any edits. No worries on what was done before or if an accidental save occurs. All work is separate from the originals.
Pro Customizable
Darktable allows favoriting modules and remapping hotkeys.
Pro Allows for local adjustments
Most modules, by default, affect the whole image, but have the option to only be applied to masked-off areas (be those drawn masks, parametric ones, or a combination of the two).
Pro Supports tethered capture
On the camera set it to use USB Remote. Open Darktable, on the left side under Import, click scan for devices. The camera should appear. Click on tethered shoot. Next on the right side look for the gear icon above the battery n/a and click it. go to the session options tab, and change the base directory to the location you want to save photos. close that settings window and try taking a picture. It should come right up.
Cons
Con Is not stable at all
I could not even open a png file to start without the software to freeze.
Con Not a lot in terms of image manipulation
MyPaint focuses only on drawing. It has very little in terms of post processing or image manipulation features.
Con Can be overwhelming
There are a lot of different modules. You're going to need some time watching tutorials to understand how to get the best out of it.
Con For tethered capture on Linux you may need additional software installed that is not a dependency for Darktable
First make sure you have gphoto2 and libgphoto2.
Con No official Windows version
Whilst official builds exist for Linux and OSX, this isn't the case for Windows (though unofficial versions do exist).