WHAT IS KRITA?
This is our vision for the development of Krita:
Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end–to–end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters. Fields of painting that Krita explicitly supports are concept art, creation of comics and textures for rendering. Modelled on existing real-world painting materials and workflows, Krita supports creative working by getting out of the way and with a snappy response.
Note that when we say "Krita is a KDE program", that doesn't mean you need to run the Plasma Desktop to run Krita. It means that Krita as a project is proud to be part of the wonderful KDE community and uses the great framework technology that the KDE community develops.. You can run Krita on Windows, Gnome, XFCE, and if you spend some effort even on OSX.
Why is Krita part of the Calligra Suite?
Krita started out as KImageShop inside KOffice because the KOffice libraries gave us things for free we would have to code ourselves otherwise, like filter handling, a really cool rich text tool and so on. And that's still true, even though KOffice has become Calligra. One reason for the new name is that it moves away from the focus on "office". The calligra foundations still are essential to make Krita work! These days, most Linux distributions will let you install Krita on its own or together with Karbon. We have separate mailinglist, a separate irc channel on freenode (#krita) and separate forums on forums.kde.org. Krita is based on the Calligra platform.
Is there a package for OSX?
We have acquired a Mac Mini and are looking into packages for OSX. There hasn't been much success to date, though you can use the beta ports file for mac ports: http://trac.macports.org/ticket/38099.
What tablets does Krita support?
Krita isn't much fun without a pressure sensitive tablet. Krita uses the Qt library to provide the application interface and the tablet support. Right now, on Linux, Qt only supports Wacom tablets. There is a patch that makes some other tablets work on Linux, but Qt hasn't integrated it yet. The Krita developers only have Wacom tablets, dontated to us by the community. We cannot test Krita ourselves with other tablets. On Windows, most tablets should work, but there can be problems with driver versions and so on.
What are Krita's Development Goals ?
Krita is primarily a painting program, although it has image processing capabilities. This means that Krita is intended for creative people who desire to paint and draw with computer software as they do with real-world tools in an art studio. If you are looking for a tool primarily to apply effects to existing images or photos, to catalog images, or to view images other software (such as Digikam) may be more suitable. If you want to work on collage, photo editing or print production work, Gimp might be more suitable. Ease of use and power as a painting application will always have a higher priority in Krita's ongoing development.
Would you like bug reports?
Definitely. Please take care to include backtraces if you've got a crash, and if there's an image that breaks Krita for you, try to attach the image to the report. If it's too big, contact me (that's 'boud') on irc: #krita at irc.freenode.org, or directly on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Adding new wishes to bugzilla isn't terribly useful, I'm afraid. We have a lot on our TODO already, and to create a new feature, we need to engage in some deep interaction with you, so drop by on the forum, mailing or irc instead. You can report bugs at the KDE bug tracker: http://bugs.kde.org. We try to reply to bug reports within a week.
Can I join the fun?
Yes. The best thing you can do is use and enjoy Krita! Learn to use Krita and teach others. Create tutorials and sample files, create artwork to show off what Krita can do and spread the good word. And if you want to be more directly involved, well, I didn't know any C++ when I started hacking on Krita and I managed. You can do it, too! Check the Join Krita page for more information.
And if you don't feel like hacking C++ -- well, there's the manual that needs someone attending to it, a set of tutorials would be nice, we are everlastingly needing more artwork for interface elements, and finally, we really appreciate reports from people using it, telling me about their workflow and what hampers or helps them.
Is there commercial support available for Krita
Yes. KO GmbH, the company co-founded by the current maintainer of Krita, Boudewijn Rempt, offers commercial support for Krita in various ways.
Legal information
The Stichting Krita Foundation owns the Krita trademark. Please refer to the trademark guidelines.
Why do I get a checkerboard pattern when I use the eraser?
You're probably used to Gimp or Photoshop. The background, that is default or first layer in these applications doesn't have an alpha channel by default. so, on their background layer, the eraser paints in the background color.
In krita, all layers have an alpha channel, so if you want to paint in the background color, you should do that, instead of erasing. You get the same effect in, say, gimp, if you create new image, add an alpha channel and then use the eraser tool. Most krita users actually on starting a sketch in krita add a new blank layer first thing they do (the INSert key is a useful shortcut here.) That doesn't use extra memory, since a blank layer or a layer with a default color just takes one pixel worth of memory.