Milton is an open source application that lets you Just Paint.

There are no pixels, you can paint with (almost) infinite detail. It feels raster-based but it works with vectors. It is not an image editor. It is not a vector graphics editor. It is a program that lets you draw, sketch and paint. There is no save button, your work is persistent with unlimited undo.

Latest release

What Milton is not:

Milton is not an image editor or a vector graphics editor. It's a program that lets you draw, sketch and paint.

User Manual

If the GUI makes something not-obvious, please create a github issue!

It's very helpful to drag the mouse (or pen) while pressing space to pan the canvas. Also, switching between the brush and the eraser with b and e. You can change the brush size with [ and ] and control the transparency with the number keys.

Here is the latest video tutorial

Check out the patreon page if you would like to help out. :)

While on Windows there are binaries available, for Milton on Linux or OSX you will have to compile from source. There are some basic build instructions below. They will probably build, but please be prepared to do a bit of debugging on your end if you run into trouble, since these are not the primary development platforms.

How to Compile

Windows

Milton currently supports Visual Studio 2019.

Other versions of Visual Studio might not work.

To build:

Run a x64 developer command prompt (for VS 2019 this corresponds to the "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt") and type the following:

build.bat

Milton will be compiled to build\Milton.exe

This repo provides a binary SDL.lib that was compiled by running build_deps.bat in the third_party directory.

Linux and macOS

As of 2018-10-24, linux and mac are not officially supported. I (Sergio) would like to support them again but my efforts are currently going into producing a new release for Windows. You can try and compile with the included scripts, but things will likely not work!

On 2021-02-27 a successful build for Linux can be done with these steps:

While in the milton top directory

cd third_party/SDL2-2.0.8
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DVIDEO_WAYLAND=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=linux64 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../
make
make install

and then in the milton top directory, so cd ../../../,

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make

And if successful, you should have an executable called "Milton" that runs.

I did not make this work automatically with CMake, because I don't know CMake.

Versioning scheme

Milton uses a MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning scheme, where MAJOR keeps track of very significant changes, such as a UI overhaul. MINOR keeps track of binary file format compatibility. PATCH is incremented for new releases that do not break file format compatibility. PATCH version gets reset to 0 when the MINOR version increases.

For example, Milton version 1.3.1 can read mlt files produced any previous version, but it can't read files produced by 1.4.0

License

Milton

Copyright (C) 2015 - 2018 Sergio Gonzalez

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Thanks

Milton is made with love by Sergio Gonzalez with the help of awesome people.