How do I get Pressure Sensitivity on my Pen + Tablet in GIMP?

[Im_Mr_Mapper]

So I've been trying to get pressure sensitivity going on my tablet using GIMP. I've read several tutorials on youtube and reddit on how to activate it, but after following them it still doesn't seem to be working for me. I've gone into Configure Input Devices under Preferences and turned set both my inputs from the tablet to "screen", and enabled dynamics in the brush window. Still nothing. The only thing that seems out of place to me is that when I go to enable them under the Configure Input Devices window, both my tablet options are greyed out (see attached image). I was able to still change and save settings, but the fact that the text was greyed out seemed off to me. Anybody know what I can try to get this working? Thanks! Help.png

[rdanhenry]

https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html

Troubleshooting
My graphic tablet doesn’t work on Windows/Mac. Does GIMP support advanced input devices such as Wacom?

Yes, GIMP does support graphic tablets and maps pressure, stroke speed, and other events to its advanced brush engine properties. However, the version of the user interface toolkit that GIMP currently relies on (GTK+ 2.x) is broken beyond repair on Windows and Mac with regards to supporting some advanced input devices such as Wacom’s.

To fix this, we need to port GIMP to GTK+3 where everything mostly works as expected. This is a work in progress.

[Im_Mr_Mapper]

Wait... am I reading this right? "We must port over to GTK+3, this is a work in progress" This sounds to me like i just have to wait for the developers to make the tablet's pressure sensitivity compatible with GIMP. So this is just a 'Wait it out' thing? Or am I reading it wrong?

[Tiana]

I don't use Gimp but that sounds to me like yeah, you gotta wait it out. Or use my choice program for painting and sketching, Clip Studio Paint ($50 USD right now but it always goes on sale at Black Friday for $20) and its tablet recognition is outstanding. You can also mess around with Photopea, an in-browser Photoshop clone which has pretty impressive functionality though its tablet recognition is limited. It worked on my Intuos but not my Cintiq.

[ChickPea]

I had no idea Gimp was so bad on Windows (I use it on Ubuntu and it does have pressure sensitivity there).

If you don't want to spend money, try Krita. They seem to have pretty fast development with regular updates. Quite a number of people in this forum have switched from Gimp to Krita, as it's aimed primarily at drawing/illustration, rather than photo editing (as Gimp is). Having said that.... I've never used it on Windows, but I think tablet support will be better than Gimp. It's easy enough to download and try though.

https://krita.org/en/

[Falconius]

Honestly Kirta is just so much better than GIMP when you have a tablet there is no comparison. It's a pleasure to paint with. Try it out if you like.

[Tiana]

Oh yeah, I haven't messed with Krita much but it's definitely worth a mention, I do have it installed, I use it exclusively for its amazing pointillism brush. It's an outstanding freebie.