7 ms·

Krita 5.0

427 points by raghukamath 5y ago

jph 5y ago
Krita release notes are superb studies in how to create software product pages: lots of context, plenty of examples, clear explanations, both features and benefits, thanks and credits, and call outs to real world users. https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ Kudos to the Krita team for the great upgrade.
- jasfi 5y ago
  Those release notes are a project in their own right. You need a team just for that!
  - hallarempt 5y ago
    They were written by pretty much one person, who also fixes bugs, maintains the manual and help out the maintainer -- me -- with any tasks needed. We usually start the release notes for the next major version right after we released a major version, and try to keep up with what happens. Upcoming Krita 5.1, that what's currently in the master branch on invent.kde.org, already has a bunch of new stuff...
    - jasfi 5y ago
      What about all the YouTube content?
    - hallarempt 5y ago
      We sponsor Ramon Miranda, a professional digital artist and art teacher, to create the content for the Krita youtube channel. (Not sure why that post didn't have a reply link...)
      - jasfi 5y ago
        That's great that your Open Source project can sponsor contributors!
        hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
        I like the business model, where MS Store users (and Steam, Epic, Google) pay $10USD and linux users just DL for free.
      - ploxiln 5y ago
        (meta: replying to a comment is disabled for a short period, which increases depending on depth of discussion or something like that, in an attempt to reduce unproductive back-and-forth argument)
    - zeruch 5y ago
      "We usually start the release notes for the next major version right after we released a major version, and try to keep up with what happens" That is a best practice right there, and I've long been an advocate of 'continuous documentation' because it's actually less work per unit of quality over time.
scriptproof 5y ago
I looked at the script language, SeExpr. Look like PHP with math functions. Is this really better than what we have in HTML Canvas?
- hallarempt 5y ago
  It's completely unrelated? SeExpr is a language for generating pixels in interesting ways, originating with Disney. Generic scripting is provided through Python, but SeExpr is fun for fill/generator layers.
  - jpm48 5y ago
    SeExpr is great and used a lot in animation / shader development in things like Renderman from Pixar, it was great to see it in Krita https://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ https://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/
- dagmx 5y ago
  For reference, SeExpr is only used for a certain amount of scripting (usually around pattern generations etc). It's an industry standard in visual effects and animation workflows and was created by Disney; http://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ http://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ It is not used for general purpose scripting, for which Krita allows you to write Python scripts instead.
  - scriptproof 5y ago
    That do not answer my question. Is SeExpr + Python better than Canvas + JavaScript. If yes, then how?
    - CanceledAccount 5y ago
      Yes because they are what’s used in CG artwork pipelines. If you are scripting Blender, Houdini, Substance and so on you are using Python not JS.
cturtle 5y ago
> With in-stack transform, the blending modes and overlapping layers are composited on top of the transform preview. This was a feature funded by the Blender Institute. Great improvement, and it’s wonderful to see support from another open source project.
geokon 5y ago
Is this a good choice for drawing vector graphics? (Inkscape is a bit clunky.. or maybe I'm just not good at using it)
- hallarempt 5y ago
  Krita has vector layers, but it's not the absolute focus: the purpose of vector layers is adding frames for comic books, text, speech bubbles and the occasional other bit of clipart.
- geenat 5y ago
  Krita has a lot of the right pieces but suffers from this snapping accuracy issue: https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4
- danShumway 5y ago
  I feel like a number of basic pieces are in place for Krita to be really good for this, but it's not quite all put together and hasn't been expanded out into a really usable form yet. I think they did a bunch of overhauls a while back (through a Kickstarter) where they specifically rebuilt and beefed up the core vector engine, but if I remember correctly other features ended up getting more votes during the campaign than some of the followup user-facing vector tools/systems they were thinking about, and they ended up prioritizing the other stuff that got more votes.
raghukamath 5y ago
Full Release notes here - https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/
udbhavs 5y ago
How does it compare to Photopea for beginners? Is it similar enough that I could follow along tutorials meant for Photoshop? Edit: It looks like it's oriented more towards painting than photo editing
- Grakel 5y ago
  Photopea is a perfect replacement for Photoshop, it's a shame you can't just buy it, he started a subscription model too. I don't want to pay a sub and I don't want ads.
- unixhero 5y ago
  I don't find your blanket statement accurate. It is suitable for both applications, painting and photo editing. I have used it strictly for photo editing professionally and privately and it works flawlessly. Highly recommended. I use the knowledge I have from my Photoshop days and apply them in Krita, no issues there. For me it is a Photoshop drop-in replacement.
  - MegaDeKay 5y ago
    This is really good to know. Years back they decided on making the program a painting app first and foremost so, not being an artist, I didn't really follow its progress. Knowing now that it does a solid job at photo editing tells me it is time to give it a second look.
  - pxc 5y ago
    Before Krita was 'marketed' as a digital painting app, it was described and used as an alternative to GIMP and Photoshop. At some point (in the 2010s?) there was a decision to refocus on digital painting, I think maybe because of the difficulty of keeping up with the expansive featureset of something like Photoshop or GIMP (and maybe the additional difficulty of still keeping a focused, pleasant UI). But it's not like the developers removed a bunch of functionality. It's cool to hear that Krita remains capable of handling some heavy duty photo editing use cases.
    - 5y ago
archerx 5y ago
I love Krita it is a great free open source photoshop replacement and does photo editing better than Gimp. People will say Krita is a digital painting program but it still goes photo editing in a much less frustrating way than gimp.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  I agree it's less frustrating than Gimp, but as someone who did a lot of photoediting in the latter, Krita's abilities do not really compare with Gimp's. Last time I checked (admittedly years ago), there was no equivalent of Liquid Rescale in Krita. Nor was there smart object removal capability. I think the options for dealing with noise were quite limited, as well.
  - k_sze 5y ago
    Krita and GIMP serve different purposes, even though they have some overlapping functionality. My understanding is that Krita is really for digital drawing, closer to Corel PaintShop Pro; whereas GIMP is for image editing, closer to Photoshop.
01walid 5y ago
How does Krita compare to Gimp at this point? (Since someone on the comments here said it can be a Photoshop drop-in replacement)
- Kliment 5y ago
  There's exactly one thing I still prefer to do in Gimp - splitting a single image into multiple images, one per RGBA/HSL channel. There's also some image formats that Gimp supports that Krita does not. But that's it. There's nothing else I miss, and Krita is just incredibly far ahead on usability.
  - CanceledAccount 5y ago
    Krita’s Python API should have everything you need to do this automatically.
  - hallarempt 5y ago
    Layer->Split Layer got some love for this release, too, but I'm not sure whether it even made it into the release notes.
    - raghukamath 5y ago
      I think they are talking about Image > Image split
  - raghukamath 5y ago
    > splitting a single image into multiple images There is Image menu > Image split in Krita
- lmm 5y ago
  The things I noticed: Nicer UI. Better colourspace support. Less good tablet support.
- oAlbe 5y ago
  To me, the thing that brings me back to Krita over and over is that fact that it's intuitive to use. I've been trying to use GIMP for the past 10 years and still have no idea how to resize an image/canvas or where the heck the crop tool is. In Krita those things are exactly where I end up looking for them.
chobytes 5y ago
When I tried Krita a few years ago I couldn't imagine using it over things like Clipstudio yet. I am really rooting for Krita though, so Ill probably give it another shot soon.
- hallarempt 5y ago
  Clip Studio still has a number of features we don't have yet, but we're regarding it as our main competitor. Now 5.0 is out, we will start looking at fun features again, and we've already made a little list of things CSP has that we want for Krita, too...
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    Cool to hear CSP is considered your main competitor. My wife is both a software dev and artist. She loves CSP - if you (and I) manage to sell her on Krita someday, I'll be impressed :)
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    Keep up the awesome work! I'm rooting for you guys too.
rbanffy 5y ago
I love that, if you are on Windows, there are official paid versions that help support the development of the app. IIRC, it’s on the Microsoft and Steam stores. And, of course, you can donate too.
geenat 5y ago
Nice. A line-height adjustment was added to the text tool. Non destructive layer styles. Layer previews. Krita is honestly fairly competitive for design now since last time I've used it.
geenat 5y ago
Hate to say it but grid snap still seems to be broken: https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 Why is the handle not straight with the grid?
- divingdragon 5y ago
  May I tempt you to file a bug report on bugs.kde.org? I'm not sure if the devs even know about this bug, let alone fixing it. Edit: Ah nevermind, I think I found the relevant report.
ognarb 5y ago
Congrats for the release! Krita is one of the most awesome KDE apps and it's really nice to see so much new features in this release.
- pxc 5y ago
  Even though I don't have much use for it now that I'm out of school, Krita and the Calligra Office suite make up one of the reasons I've been a KDE user forever. The most prominent KDE apps have long done an amazing job, imo, of making tons of functionality accessible in a way that feels orderly and approachable rather than chaotic and cluttered. Amarok was this way, which made it just incredible when the most common way to listen to music was local collections. When Dolphin came out, it seemed like a harmonization of Konqueror's massive featureset along the same lines. Some apps are a little bit messier (Kate, Konsole) but are still way more orderly and easy to explore than popular alternatives on Windows despite matching or beating them on features. I feel like this aspect of KDE apps is often undersold. Outside of KDE, I hardly ever find anything as powerful as a mature KDE app whose UI isn't just an overwhelming hodgepodge of menus. Krita seems like a leader when it comes to this approach to adding features but in a thoughtful way.
uneekname 5y ago
Krita with a Wacom tablet on Linux is more plug-n-play than any other setup I've seen. I never had to "learn Krita," just the occasional Google to get me back on track. Thank you to everyone who makes these projects happen!
Shared404 5y ago
> We already had our own resource bundle format, but now we also support photoshop layer style libraries and brush libraries. This is great to hear! I had to reach for The GIMP a few times to make D&D maps using PS style brushes, glad that I can stick with Krita now!
danShumway 5y ago
Lots to be excited about in this release, particularly with animation. I've been using Krita as a daily driver for a while. It's been slowly working through its list of features that are "technically there" but that are either very narrow or just kind of cumbersome to use, and broadening them out and making them more competitive. That effort really shows. So in this release the animation tools go from being mostly suited for basic frame-by-frame animation to now having storyboards, and being able to do tweening, cloned frames, and having a bit nicer UX; it's a big jump forward. I say this whenever Krita comes up on HN, but I see a huge amount of potential in this project because of how its development team approaches development; they pay a lot of attention to the artist community and they're not just developing features in isolation, it feels like they have a sense of direction about the project, they put a ton of effort into UX. Krita has gone from technically sort-of usable as a daily driver, to basically good enough to be a daily driver, to actually just feeling quite nice to paint in where you'd probably have it installed on the side even if you were already accustomed to other programs and even if you didn't care about the OS aspect at all. The closest comparison-project I can think of is Blender, and I mean that as a high complement. If you're coming out of the Clip Studio world, it's worth taking a look at. There are some features I miss, particularly around the vector tools and being able to redraw line widths, but there's also some stuff that Krita just does better now: I think it has a much cleaner interface than Clip Studio and is just overall more pleasant to use with touchscreen devices. It's linked in the release notes, but dropping a second link to their funding page (https://fund.krita.org/ https://fund.krita.org/). If you want to have a competitive Open Source drawing/painting tool on Linux that can rival some of the more traditional painting tools in the same vein as projects like Blender, then I think Krita is pretty much the singular best project to back/fund. It's already good enough to use as a serious tool, and more than that I just feel very optimistic about their entire development process and trajectory. This is a good project for the OS community to just throw resources/money at.
zeruch 5y ago
Krita is one of those tools I've followed for ages, use sparingly, but should use more, as it continues to be one of the best tools for its class (let alone the fact its FOSS)

427 points by raghukamath 5y ago

jph 5y ago

Krita release notes are superb studies in how to create software product pages: lots of context, plenty of examples, clear explanations, both features and benefits, thanks and credits, and call outs to real world users. https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ Kudos to the Krita team for the great upgrade.

jasfi 5y ago
Those release notes are a project in their own right. You need a team just for that!
- hallarempt 5y ago
  They were written by pretty much one person, who also fixes bugs, maintains the manual and help out the maintainer -- me -- with any tasks needed. We usually start the release notes for the next major version right after we released a major version, and try to keep up with what happens. Upcoming Krita 5.1, that what's currently in the master branch on invent.kde.org, already has a bunch of new stuff...
  - jasfi 5y ago
    What about all the YouTube content?
  - hallarempt 5y ago
    We sponsor Ramon Miranda, a professional digital artist and art teacher, to create the content for the Krita youtube channel. (Not sure why that post didn't have a reply link...)
    - jasfi 5y ago
      That's great that your Open Source project can sponsor contributors!
      - hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
        I like the business model, where MS Store users (and Steam, Epic, Google) pay $10USD and linux users just DL for free.
    - ploxiln 5y ago
      (meta: replying to a comment is disabled for a short period, which increases depending on depth of discussion or something like that, in an attempt to reduce unproductive back-and-forth argument)
  - zeruch 5y ago
    "We usually start the release notes for the next major version right after we released a major version, and try to keep up with what happens" That is a best practice right there, and I've long been an advocate of 'continuous documentation' because it's actually less work per unit of quality over time.

scriptproof 5y ago

I looked at the script language, SeExpr. Look like PHP with math functions. Is this really better than what we have in HTML Canvas?

hallarempt 5y ago
It's completely unrelated? SeExpr is a language for generating pixels in interesting ways, originating with Disney. Generic scripting is provided through Python, but SeExpr is fun for fill/generator layers.
- jpm48 5y ago
  SeExpr is great and used a lot in animation / shader development in things like Renderman from Pixar, it was great to see it in Krita https://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ https://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/
dagmx 5y ago
For reference, SeExpr is only used for a certain amount of scripting (usually around pattern generations etc). It's an industry standard in visual effects and animation workflows and was created by Disney; http://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ http://wdas.github.io/SeExpr/ It is not used for general purpose scripting, for which Krita allows you to write Python scripts instead.
- scriptproof 5y ago
  That do not answer my question. Is SeExpr + Python better than Canvas + JavaScript. If yes, then how?
  - CanceledAccount 5y ago
    Yes because they are what’s used in CG artwork pipelines. If you are scripting Blender, Houdini, Substance and so on you are using Python not JS.

cturtle 5y ago

> With in-stack transform, the blending modes and overlapping layers are composited on top of the transform preview. This was a feature funded by the Blender Institute. Great improvement, and it’s wonderful to see support from another open source project.

geokon 5y ago

Is this a good choice for drawing vector graphics? (Inkscape is a bit clunky.. or maybe I'm just not good at using it)

hallarempt 5y ago
Krita has vector layers, but it's not the absolute focus: the purpose of vector layers is adding frames for comic books, text, speech bubbles and the occasional other bit of clipart.
geenat 5y ago
Krita has a lot of the right pieces but suffers from this snapping accuracy issue: https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4
danShumway 5y ago
I feel like a number of basic pieces are in place for Krita to be really good for this, but it's not quite all put together and hasn't been expanded out into a really usable form yet. I think they did a bunch of overhauls a while back (through a Kickstarter) where they specifically rebuilt and beefed up the core vector engine, but if I remember correctly other features ended up getting more votes during the campaign than some of the followup user-facing vector tools/systems they were thinking about, and they ended up prioritizing the other stuff that got more votes.

raghukamath 5y ago

Full Release notes here - https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/ https://krita.org/en/krita-5-0-release-notes/

udbhavs 5y ago

How does it compare to Photopea for beginners? Is it similar enough that I could follow along tutorials meant for Photoshop? Edit: It looks like it's oriented more towards painting than photo editing

Grakel 5y ago
Photopea is a perfect replacement for Photoshop, it's a shame you can't just buy it, he started a subscription model too. I don't want to pay a sub and I don't want ads.
unixhero 5y ago
I don't find your blanket statement accurate. It is suitable for both applications, painting and photo editing. I have used it strictly for photo editing professionally and privately and it works flawlessly. Highly recommended. I use the knowledge I have from my Photoshop days and apply them in Krita, no issues there. For me it is a Photoshop drop-in replacement.
- MegaDeKay 5y ago
  This is really good to know. Years back they decided on making the program a painting app first and foremost so, not being an artist, I didn't really follow its progress. Knowing now that it does a solid job at photo editing tells me it is time to give it a second look.
- pxc 5y ago
  Before Krita was 'marketed' as a digital painting app, it was described and used as an alternative to GIMP and Photoshop. At some point (in the 2010s?) there was a decision to refocus on digital painting, I think maybe because of the difficulty of keeping up with the expansive featureset of something like Photoshop or GIMP (and maybe the additional difficulty of still keeping a focused, pleasant UI). But it's not like the developers removed a bunch of functionality. It's cool to hear that Krita remains capable of handling some heavy duty photo editing use cases.
  - 5y ago

archerx 5y ago

I love Krita it is a great free open source photoshop replacement and does photo editing better than Gimp. People will say Krita is a digital painting program but it still goes photo editing in a much less frustrating way than gimp.

BeetleB 5y ago
I agree it's less frustrating than Gimp, but as someone who did a lot of photoediting in the latter, Krita's abilities do not really compare with Gimp's. Last time I checked (admittedly years ago), there was no equivalent of Liquid Rescale in Krita. Nor was there smart object removal capability. I think the options for dealing with noise were quite limited, as well.
- k_sze 5y ago
  Krita and GIMP serve different purposes, even though they have some overlapping functionality. My understanding is that Krita is really for digital drawing, closer to Corel PaintShop Pro; whereas GIMP is for image editing, closer to Photoshop.

01walid 5y ago

How does Krita compare to Gimp at this point? (Since someone on the comments here said it can be a Photoshop drop-in replacement)

Kliment 5y ago
There's exactly one thing I still prefer to do in Gimp - splitting a single image into multiple images, one per RGBA/HSL channel. There's also some image formats that Gimp supports that Krita does not. But that's it. There's nothing else I miss, and Krita is just incredibly far ahead on usability.
- CanceledAccount 5y ago
  Krita’s Python API should have everything you need to do this automatically.
- hallarempt 5y ago
  Layer->Split Layer got some love for this release, too, but I'm not sure whether it even made it into the release notes.
  - raghukamath 5y ago
    I think they are talking about Image > Image split
- raghukamath 5y ago
  > splitting a single image into multiple images There is Image menu > Image split in Krita
lmm 5y ago
The things I noticed: Nicer UI. Better colourspace support. Less good tablet support.
oAlbe 5y ago
To me, the thing that brings me back to Krita over and over is that fact that it's intuitive to use. I've been trying to use GIMP for the past 10 years and still have no idea how to resize an image/canvas or where the heck the crop tool is. In Krita those things are exactly where I end up looking for them.

chobytes 5y ago

When I tried Krita a few years ago I couldn't imagine using it over things like Clipstudio yet. I am really rooting for Krita though, so Ill probably give it another shot soon.

hallarempt 5y ago
Clip Studio still has a number of features we don't have yet, but we're regarding it as our main competitor. Now 5.0 is out, we will start looking at fun features again, and we've already made a little list of things CSP has that we want for Krita, too...
- whateveracct 5y ago
  Cool to hear CSP is considered your main competitor. My wife is both a software dev and artist. She loves CSP - if you (and I) manage to sell her on Krita someday, I'll be impressed :)
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  Keep up the awesome work! I'm rooting for you guys too.

rbanffy 5y ago

I love that, if you are on Windows, there are official paid versions that help support the development of the app. IIRC, it’s on the Microsoft and Steam stores. And, of course, you can donate too.

geenat 5y ago

Nice. A line-height adjustment was added to the text tool. Non destructive layer styles. Layer previews. Krita is honestly fairly competitive for design now since last time I've used it.

geenat 5y ago

Hate to say it but grid snap still seems to be broken: https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 https://imgur.com/g5yMFvp.mp4 Why is the handle not straight with the grid?

divingdragon 5y ago
May I tempt you to file a bug report on bugs.kde.org? I'm not sure if the devs even know about this bug, let alone fixing it. Edit: Ah nevermind, I think I found the relevant report.

ognarb 5y ago

Congrats for the release! Krita is one of the most awesome KDE apps and it's really nice to see so much new features in this release.

pxc 5y ago
Even though I don't have much use for it now that I'm out of school, Krita and the Calligra Office suite make up one of the reasons I've been a KDE user forever. The most prominent KDE apps have long done an amazing job, imo, of making tons of functionality accessible in a way that feels orderly and approachable rather than chaotic and cluttered. Amarok was this way, which made it just incredible when the most common way to listen to music was local collections. When Dolphin came out, it seemed like a harmonization of Konqueror's massive featureset along the same lines. Some apps are a little bit messier (Kate, Konsole) but are still way more orderly and easy to explore than popular alternatives on Windows despite matching or beating them on features. I feel like this aspect of KDE apps is often undersold. Outside of KDE, I hardly ever find anything as powerful as a mature KDE app whose UI isn't just an overwhelming hodgepodge of menus. Krita seems like a leader when it comes to this approach to adding features but in a thoughtful way.

uneekname 5y ago

Krita with a Wacom tablet on Linux is more plug-n-play than any other setup I've seen. I never had to "learn Krita," just the occasional Google to get me back on track. Thank you to everyone who makes these projects happen!

Shared404 5y ago

> We already had our own resource bundle format, but now we also support photoshop layer style libraries and brush libraries. This is great to hear! I had to reach for The GIMP a few times to make D&D maps using PS style brushes, glad that I can stick with Krita now!

danShumway 5y ago

Lots to be excited about in this release, particularly with animation. I've been using Krita as a daily driver for a while. It's been slowly working through its list of features that are "technically there" but that are either very narrow or just kind of cumbersome to use, and broadening them out and making them more competitive. That effort really shows. So in this release the animation tools go from being mostly suited for basic frame-by-frame animation to now having storyboards, and being able to do tweening, cloned frames, and having a bit nicer UX; it's a big jump forward. I say this whenever Krita comes up on HN, but I see a huge amount of potential in this project because of how its development team approaches development; they pay a lot of attention to the artist community and they're not just developing features in isolation, it feels like they have a sense of direction about the project, they put a ton of effort into UX. Krita has gone from technically sort-of usable as a daily driver, to basically good enough to be a daily driver, to actually just feeling quite nice to paint in where you'd probably have it installed on the side even if you were already accustomed to other programs and even if you didn't care about the OS aspect at all. The closest comparison-project I can think of is Blender, and I mean that as a high complement. If you're coming out of the Clip Studio world, it's worth taking a look at. There are some features I miss, particularly around the vector tools and being able to redraw line widths, but there's also some stuff that Krita just does better now: I think it has a much cleaner interface than Clip Studio and is just overall more pleasant to use with touchscreen devices. It's linked in the release notes, but dropping a second link to their funding page (https://fund.krita.org/ https://fund.krita.org/). If you want to have a competitive Open Source drawing/painting tool on Linux that can rival some of the more traditional painting tools in the same vein as projects like Blender, then I think Krita is pretty much the singular best project to back/fund. It's already good enough to use as a serious tool, and more than that I just feel very optimistic about their entire development process and trajectory. This is a good project for the OS community to just throw resources/money at.

zeruch 5y ago

Krita is one of those tools I've followed for ages, use sparingly, but should use more, as it continues to be one of the best tools for its class (let alone the fact its FOSS)