An intuitive user interface that stays out of your way. The dockers and panels can be moved and customized for your specific workflow. Once you have your setup, you can save it as your own workspace. You can also create your own shortcuts for commonly used tools.
Over 100 professionally made brushes that come preloaded. These brushes give a good range of effects so you can see the variety of brushes that Krita has to offer.
Have a shaky hand? Add a stabilizer to your brush to smoothen it out. Krita includes 3 different ways to smooth and stabilize your brush strokes. There is even a dedicated Dynamic Brush tool where you can add drag and mass.
Built-in vector tools help you create comic panels. Select a word bubble template from the vector library and drag it on your canvas. Change the anchor points to create your own shapes and libraries. Add text to your artwork as well with the text tool. Krita uses SVG to manage its vector format.
Customize your brushes with over 9 unique brush engines. Each engine has a large amount of settings to customize your brush. Each brush engine is made to satisfy a specific need such as the Color Smudge engine, Shape engine, Particle engine, and even a filter engine. Once you are done creating your brushes, you can save them and organize them with Krita’s unique tagging system.
It is easy to create seamless textures and patterns now. The image will make references of itself along the x and y axis. Continue painting and watch all of the references update instantly. No more clunky offsetting to see how your image repeats itself.
Import brush and texture packs from other artists to expand your tool set. If you create some brushes that you love, share them with the world by creating your own bundles. Check out the brush packs that are available in the Resource area.
Changing your workspace to Animation transforms Krita into an animation studio. Bring your drawings to life by layering your animations and export them to share with your friends.
Drawing Assistants
Use a drawing aid to assist you with vanishing points and straight lines. The Assistant Tool comes with 9 unique assistants to help you make that perfect shape. These tools range from drawing ellipses to creating curvilinear perspective with the Fisheye Point tool. Use multiple assistants at the same time when drawing.
Layer Management
Select & Transform
Full Color Management
Krita supports full color management through LCMS for ICC and OpenColor IO for EXR, allowing you to incorporate Krita into your existing color management pipeline. Or let it be the start of one: Krita comes with a wide variety of icc working space profiles for every need, with a color space browser to visualise and explore them.
OpenGL Enhanced
Krita takes advantage of OpenGL for some of its operations. With OpenGL enabled, you will see increased canvas rotation and zooming speed. The canvas will also look better when zoomed out. (The Windows version also supports Direct3D 11 in place of OpenGL, via the ANGLE compatibility layer.)
PSD Support
Open PSD files that even Photoshop cannot open. Load and save to PSD when you need to take your artwork across different programs.
HDR Painting
Krita is the only dedicated painting application that lets you open, save, edit and author HDR and scene-referred images. Furthermore, with OCIO and OpenEXR support, you can manipulate the view to examine HDR images, and use it in the most cutting edge workflows from the film and visual effects industries.
Python Scripting
Powerful API for creating your own widgets and extending Krita. With using PyQt and Krita’s own API, there are many possibilities. A number of plugins come pre-installed for your reference.
Training Resources
In addition to training and educational material found on the Internet, Krita produces its own training material to help you learn all of the tools fast.
Krita is, and will always be, free software. There is a lot more to learn than this overview page, but you should be getting a good idea of what Krita can do.
“a natural painting toolbox, perfect for everyone from artists to cartoonists, and beyond”
“Krita is a powerful app that any digital creator should at least take a look at”
“Fast, Flexible, and Free Photoshop Alternative Built by Artists”
“Krita gives budding artists and illustrators a pro-level set of tools”
You’re still here? What else do you want to know? Hmm. let’s see. If you are coming from another software we have a couple guides.
We also have a lot of tutorials that you might find interesting
