How to set pressure sensitivity in GIMP to control line thickness?

Make sure you have checked Pressure: Size in the Brush Dynamics section of the Toolbox:

enter image description here

If this still doesn't work, you probably haven't enabled the tablet. To do so, go to:

  • Edit → Preferences
  • Input Devices → Configure Extended Input Devices
  • Choose your device and set it to Screen mode
  • Save, close, and try again.

On newer versions of Gimp the Brush Dynamics window will not look like that. Here is how it looks in Ubuntu 13.04:

enter image description here

If you click on the notepad to the right of "Pencil Generic copy", it will show the menu where you can select what pressure will do to the picture (opacity, size, etc.). But it is all disabled/greyed out. What you need to do is click on the crazy blue arrow, then click on the crazy blue arrow again, which will open the brush dynamics selection dialog. There you can select a brush and duplicate it. You will then be able to select the duplicate brush you just create, click on the notepad button, and then finally edit the brush dynamics as shown by htorque.

This has been tested in a Thinkpad X61 tablet running 13.04/raring and Gimp 2.8.4.


RE: Tablet not showing up in input devices Hi....Information from

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthre...ost2324411 on Post #13 as : Download as : https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.6/

Then I follow is work. But.. I Use Windows 10 my Gimp 2.6.9 Follow Below :

All, I know this is a bit outdated (the last post was in October), but I've stumbled on a different, although more troublesome, way to enable pressure sensitivity in GIMP 2.8:

  1. Plug tablet in.
  2. Launch 2.6 (in this case I was using 2.6.12)
  3. Go to File > Preferences > Input Devices > Configure Extended Input Devices... a. If you get an error saying no input devices found, close 2.6 and relaunch.
  4. Draw something on the canvas using the tablet.
  5. Close 2.6
  6. Launch 2.8

You should now be able to draw in 2.8 with full pressure sensitivity. I'm not sure why this works, but I've tried it, rebooted my computer and tried it again with success. I am using Windows 8, but I believe it should work on all versions of Windows. Because OSX used X11 for 2.6, but not for 2.8 I'm unsure if this process would work.

Using Ubuntu 12.04 I was able to get 2.8 to handle pressure sensitivity right out of the box--but it could have been because I had just launched & closed 2.6 and had both installed side-by-side.

Like I said, this is a bit more cumbersome than the solution 2blackbar suggested above but I figured it was worth sharing. Last edited by BnBGobo99; 28-May-13 at 15:13. Reason: Workflow was unnecessary.


if you are using a newer version of GIMP you just need to click on the arrow with three dots right of the text saying "Dynamics" then select the option you want to use, for example: "Pressure Size".

Hope this helps