Krita on Windows, the Next Step
On Friday, Intel and KO GmbH (that's the company your humble correspondent works for...) agreed to start a project to make a new version of Krita on Windows. We're provisionally calling it "Krita Sketch" -- and it's going to be extremely cool! There's new hardware coming that supports touch and multi-touch in new ways, and we want to use that to improve the painting experience.
And this is not about finger painting as with existing tablet painting applications -- those tend to be boring and not really suitable for real artists -- this is for hybrid devices, with keyboard, touch and stylus. So, for instance, if you use your stylus to draw your lines, you can use your thumb to smudge them out. Or you can grab the handles of the transformation tool and drag them with your fingers, making it possible to deform your selection with multiple points at the same time!
Krita is, of course, GPL-licensed and that means that all the work KO will be doing will be right in the open from the start. We'll work on the existing bugs in the Windows version that the Windows users have been telling us about, we'll improve integration with Windows, improve support for the Windows color management system, for the photoshop file format, implement touch-based interaction -- and more.
It's a new step for Krita -- we have Google Summer of Code and we have had community-sponsored developers, but we haven't done anything on this scale before. It'll be an interesting experience for our community, that's for sure! Initially, it'll be three people from KO working on Krita:
When Krita Sketch is done and ready for release, we will make an "official" KO GmbH-blessed download available through Intel's AppUp application store. It'll be a free download.
I am confident that this project will finally make both versions of Krita, Krita and Krita Sketch, really stable and viable on Windows, making it possible for Windows-based artists to join our community and create great art!
(Oh -- and I put a new version of the current Krita for Windows installer on http://www.kogmbh.com/download.html)