The latest Mac and Windows versions of the product were developed by the current owner and publisher of Kid Pix, Software MacKiev, who had been involved in development of the Macintosh version of Kid Pix Deluxe 3 and has been the sole developer of the Kid Pix series since the initial release of Kid Pix Deluxe 3X prior to acquiring the brand from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2011. Kid Pix 1.0 received several industry awards, including the 1991 MacUser Eddi for best Children's Program, the 1991 Software Publishers Association Awards for Best User Interface in a New Program and Best Early Learning Program, and the MacWorld World-Class award for Best Education Program. By this point Broderbund had also begun developing a version of Kid Pix for MS-DOS. Broderbund's release of Kid Pix was demonstrated during the MacWorld keynote in 1991 and Kid Pix 1.0 was released in March 1991 to very positive feedback. He did not anticipate the application being adopted, but received a call within a week indicating that Broderbund would like to publish it. Hickman sent a copy of the application to Broderbund Software in the Summer of 1990 on the encouragement of friends, and having been given details for a contact within the company. By June 1990 Kid Pix Professional had been released, and Hickman estimates that around 100 copies were sold in total. An advertisement for Kid Pix Professional was bundled with Kid Pix when he released it in November 1989. Encouraged by a friend to sell his software rather than give it away, Hickman began working on a commercial enhanced version of the original monochrome Kid Pix freeware release, called Kid Pix Professional, which would retail for US$25 (equivalent to $50 in 2020). The Color Macintosh was released before Hickman's first launch of his program, which he had named Kid Pix.

It was this experience that encouraged Hickman to write a simple paint program for his son to use he also decided to make this freely available. Hickman noted how quickly he adapted to the use of the mouse and keyboard, but also that he inadvertently activated pop-up menus and other user interface elements. While using MacPaint that year, his then-3-year-old son expressed a desire to use the application.

After leaving college he continued to write programs for his own education, and by 1988 owned an Apple Macintosh and had begun distributing software in the public domain. This impressed upon Hickman a desire to learn how to program. Craig Hickman was studying photography at Evergreen State College in 1972 with the aim of taking a career in fine art photography when he encountered a friend entering code into a teletype in the college's terminal room.

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