Krita

Digging into the Fast Sketch Cleanup Plugin for Krita

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Fast Sketch Cleanup plugin

Introduction

We started this project with the intent of providing users a tool helpful in inking sketches. It is based on a research article by Simo & Sierra published in 2016, and it uses neural networks (now commonly called simply AI) to work. The tool has been developed in partnership with Intel and it’s still considered experimental, but you can already use it and see the results.

In the section below there are some real life examples of use cases and the results from the plugin. The results vary, but it can be used for extracting faint pencil sketches from photos, cleaning up lines, and comic book inking.

Regarding the model used in the tool, we trained it ourselves. All the data in the dataset is donated from people who sent their pictures to us themselves and agreed on this specific use case. We haven’t used any other data. Moreover, when you use the plugin, it processes locally on your machine, it doesn’t require any internet connection, doesn’t connect to any server, and no account is required either. Currently it works only on Windows and Linux, but we’ll work on making it available on MacOS as well.

Use cases

It averages the lines into one line and creates strong black lines, but the end result can be blurry or uneven. In many cases however it still works better than just using a Levels filter (for example in extracting the pencil sketch). it might be a good idea to use Levels filter after using the plugin to reduce the blurriness. Since the plugin works best with white canvas and grey-black lines, in case of photographed pencil sketches or very light sketch lines, it might be a good idea to use Levels also before using the plugin.

Extracting photographed pencil sketch

This is the result of the standard procedure of using Levels filter on a sketch to extract the lines (which results in a part of the image getting the shadow):

sketch_girl_original_procedure_comparison_small1843×1209 165 KB

The sketch was drawn by Tiar (link to KA profile)

This is the procedure using the plugin with SketchyModel (Levels → plugin → Levels):

sketch_girl_new_procedure_comparison_small1843×2419 267 KB

Comparison (for black lines):

sketch_girl_procedures_comparison_small1920×1260 215 KB

Another possible result is to just stop at the plugin without forcing black lines using Levels, which results in a nicer, more pencil-y look while keeping the lower part of the page still blank:

sketch_girl_after_plugin_small1536×2016 161 KB

Comic book-like inking

Picture of a man made by BeARToys

Here in the pictures above you can see the comic book style inking. The result, which is a bit blurry compared to the original, can be further enhanced by using a Sharpen filter. The dragon was sketched by David Revoy (CC-BY 4.0).

Cleaning up lines

Examples of sketches I made and the result of the plugin, showing the strong and weak points of the plugin. All of the pictures below were made using the SketchyModel.

flower_0011209×739 46.5 KB

flower_001_detail681×456 22.1 KB

portrait_man_portrait_2_comparison_2_small1305×505 139 KB

portrait_man_portrait_2_detail646×1023 26.6 KB

All of the pictures above painted by Tiar (link to KA profile)

On the pictures below, on the scales of the fish, you can see how the model discriminates lighter lines and enhances the stronger lines, making the scales more pronounced. In theory you could do that using the Levels filter, but in practice the results would be worse, because the model takes into account local strength of the line.

fish_square_sketchy_comparison_small1920×968 156 KB

Picture of the fish made by Christine Garner (link to portfolio)

How to use it in Krita

To use the Fast Sketch Cleanup plugin in Krita, do the following:

Prepare Krita:
1. On Windows:
  1. Either in one package: download Krita 5.3.0-prealpha with Fast Sketch Cleanup plugin already included: https://download.kde.org/unstable/krita/5.3.0-prealpha-fast-sketch/krita-x64-5.3.0-prealpha-cdac9c31.zip
  2. Or separately:
    1. Download portable version of Krita 5.2.6 (or similar version - should still work)
    2. Download separately the Fast Sketch Cleanup plugin here: https://download.kde.org/stable/krita/FastSketchPlugin-1.0.2/FastSketchPlugin1.0.2.zip
    3. Unzip the file into krita-5.2.6/ folder (keeping the folder structure).
    4. Then go to Settings → Configure Krita → Python Plugin Manager, enable Fast Sketch Cleanup plugin, and restart Krita.
2. On Linux:
  1. Download the appimage: https://download.kde.org/unstable/krita/5.3.0-prealpha-fast-sketch/krita-5.3.0-prealpha-cdac9c31c9-x86_64.AppImage
(Optional) Install NPU drivers if you have NPU on your device (practically only necessary on Linux, if you have a very new Intel CPU): Configurations for Intel® NPU with OpenVINO™ — OpenVINO™ documentation (note: you can still run the plugin on CPU or GPU, it doesn’t require NPU)
Run the plugin:
1. Open or create a white canvas with grey-white strokes (note that the plugin will take the current projection of the canvas, not the current layer).
2. Go to Tools → Fast Sketch Cleanup
3. Select the model. Advanced Options will be automatically selected for you.
4. Wait until it finishes processing (the dialog will close automatically then).
5. See that it created a new layer with the result.

Advice for processing

Currently it’s better to just use the SketchyModel.xml, in most cases it works significantly better than the SmoothModel.xml.

You need to make sure the background is pretty bright, and the lines you want to keep in the result are relatively dark (either somewhat dark grey or black; light grey might result in many missed lines). It might be a good idea to use a filter like Levels beforehand.

After processing, you might want to enhance the results with either Levels filter or Sharpen filter, depending on your results.

Technology & Science behind it

Unique requirements

First unique requirement was that it had to work on canvases of all sizes. That meant that the network couldn’t have any dense/fully or densely connected linear layers that are very common in most of the image processing neural networks (which require input of a specific size and will produce different results for the same pixel depending on its location), only convolutions or pooling or similar layers that were producing the same results for every pixel of the canvas, no matter the location. Fortunately, the Simo & Sierra paper published in 2016 described a network just like that.

Another challenge was that we couldn’t really use the model they created, since it wasn’t compatible with Krita’s license, and we couldn’t even really use the exact model type they described, because one of those model files would be nearly as big as Krita, and the training would take a really long time. We needed something that would work just as well if not better, but small enough that it can be added to Krita without making it twice as big. (In theory, we could do like some other companies and make the processing happen on some kind of a server, but that wasn’t what we wanted. And even if it resolved some of our issues, it would provide plenty of its own major challenges. Also, we wanted for our users to be able to use it locally without a reliance on our servers and the internet). Moreover, the model had to be reasonably fast and also modest in regards to RAM/VRAM consumption.

Moreover, we didn’t have any dataset we could use. Simo & Sierra used a dataset, where the expected images were all drawn using a constant line width and transparency, which meant that the results of the training had those qualities too. We wanted something that looked a bit more hand-drawn, with varying line-width or semi-transparent ends of the lines, so our dataset had to contain those kinds of images. Since we haven’t been aware of any datasets that would match our requirements regarding the license and the data gathering process, we asked our own community for help, here you can read the Krita Artists thread about it: https://krita-artists.org/t/call-for-donation-of-artworks-for-the-fast-line-art-project/96401 .

The link to our full dataset can be found below in the Dataset section.

Model architecture

All main layers are either convolutional or deconvolutional (at the end of the model). After every (de)convolutional layer except for the last one there is a ReLu activation layer, and after the last convolution there is a sigmoid activation layer.

Python packages used: Pillow, Numpy, PyTorch and Openvino

Numpy is a standard library for all kinds of arrays and advanced array operations and we used Pillow for reading images and converting them into numpy arrays and back. For training, we used PyTorch, while in the Krita plugin we used Openvino for inference (processing through the network).

Using NPU for inference

This table shows the result of benchmark_app, which is a tool that’s provided with Intel’s python package openvino. It tests the model in isolation on random data. As you can see, the NPU was several times faster than the CPU on the same machine.

On the other hand, introducing NPU added a challenge: the only models that can run on NPU are static models, meaning the input size is known at the time of saving the model to file. To solve this, the plugin first cuts the canvas into smaller parts of a specified size (which depends on the model file), and then proceeds to process all of them and finally stitch the results together. To avoid artifacts on the areas next to the stitching, all of the parts are cut with a little bit of a margin and the margin is later cut off.

How to train your own model

To train your own model, you’ll need some technical skills, pairs of pictures (input and the expected output) and a powerful computer. You might also need quite a lot of space on your hard drive, though you can just remove unnecessary older models if you start having issues with lack of space.

Drivers & preparation

You’ll need to install Python3 and the following packages: Pillow, openvino, numpy, torch. For quantization of the model you will also need nncf and sklearn. If I missed anything, it will complain, so just install those packages it mentions too.

If you’re on Windows, you probably have drivers for NPU and dedicated GPU. On Linux, you might need to install NPU drivers before you’ll be able to use it: https://docs.openvino.ai/2024/get-started/configurations/configurations-intel-npu.html .

Moreover if you want to use iGPU for training (which might still be significantly faster than on CPU), you’ll probably need to use something like IPEX which allows PyTorch to use an “XPU” device, which is just your iGPU. It’s not tested or recommended since I personally haven’t been able to use it because my Python version was higher than the instruction expects, but the instruction is here: https://pytorch-extension.intel.com/installation?platform=gpu&version=v2.5.10%2Bxpu .
The sanity check for the installation is as follows:
python3 -c "import torch; import intel_extension_for_pytorch as ipex; print(f'Packages versions:'); print(f'Torch version: {torch.__version__}'); print(f'IPEX version: {ipex.__version__}'); print(f'Devices:'); print(f'Torch XPU device count: {torch.xpu.device_count()}'); [print(f'[Device {i}]: {torch.xpu.get_device_properties(i)}') for i in range(torch.xpu.device_count())];"
It should show more than 0 devices with some basic properties.

If you manage to get XPU device working on your machine, you’ll still need to edit the training scripts so they’ll able to use it: https://intel.github.io/intel-extension-for-pytorch/xpu/latest/tutorials/getting_started.html (most probably you’ll just need to add this line:
import intel_extension_for_pytorch as ipex
to the script on the very top, just underneath “import torch”, and use “xpu” as the device name when invoking the script, and it should work. But as I said, the scripts hasn’t been tested for that.

Dataset

You’ll need some pictures to be able to train your model. The pictures must be in pairs, every pair must contain a sketch (input) and a lineart picture (expected output). The better quality of the dataset, the better the results.

Before training, it’s best if you augment the data: that means the pictures are rotated, scaled up or down, and mirrored. Currently the data augmentation script also performs an inversion with the assumption that training on inverted pictures would bring the results faster (considering that black means zero means no signal, and we’d like that to be the background, so the models learn the lines, not the background around lines).

How to use the data augmentation script is explained below in the detailed instruction for the training part.

Here’s the dataset that we used (please read the license carefully if you want to use it): https://files.kde.org/krita/extras/FastSketchCleanupPluginKritaDataset.zip

Choice of model and other parameters

For quick results, use tooSmallConv; if you have more time and resources, typicalDeep might be a better idea. If you have access to a powerful GPU machine, you might try original or originalSmaller, which represent the original description of the model from the SIGGRAPH article by Simo-Sierra 2016, and a smaller version of it.

Use adadelta as the optimizer.

You can use either blackWhite or mse as the loss function; mse is classic, but blackWhite might lead to faster results since it lowers the relative error on the fully white or fully black areas (based on the expected output picture).

Training

Clone the repository at https://invent.kde.org/tymond/fast-line-art (at 33869b6)
git clone https://invent.kde.org/tymond/fast-line-art.git
Then, prepare the folder:
- Create a new folder for the training.
- In the folder, run:
  python3 [repository folder]/spawnExperiment.py --path [path to new folder, either relative or absolute] --note "[your personal note about the experiment]"
Prepare data:
- If you have existing augmented dataset, put it all in data/training/ and data/verify/, keeping in mind that paired pictures in ink/ and sketch/ subfolders must have the exact same names (for example if you have sketch.png and ink.png as data, you need to put one in sketch/ as picture.png and another in ink/ as picture.png to be paired).
- If you don't have existing augmented dataset:
  1. Put all your raw data in data/raw/, keeping in mind that paired pictures should have the exact same names with added prefix either ink_ or sketch_ (for example if you have picture_1.png being the sketch picture and picture_2.png being the ink picture, you need to name them sketch_picture.png and ink_picture.png respectively.)
  2. Run the data preparer script:
    python3 [repository folder]/dataPreparer.py -t taskfile.yml
    That will augment the data in the raw directory in order for the training to be more successful.
Edit the taskfile.yml file to your liking. The most important parts you want to change are:
- model type - code name for the model type, use tinyTinier, tooSmallConv, typicalDeep or tinyNarrowerShallow
- optimizer - type of optimizer, use adadelta or sgd
- learning rate - learning rate for sgd if in use
- loss function - code name for loss function, use mse for mean squared error or blackWhite for a custom loss function based on mse, but a bit smaller for pixels where the target image pixel value is close to 0.5
Run the training code:
python3 [repository folder]/train.py -t taskfile.yml -d "cpu"

On Linux, if you want it to run in a background, add “&” at the end. If it runs in a foreground, you can pause the training just by pressing ctrl+C, and if it runs in a background, find a process id (using either “jobs -l” command or “ps aux | grep train.py” command, the first number would be the process id) and kill it using “kill [process id]” command. Your results will still be in the folder, and you’ll be able to resume the training using the same command.
Convert the model to an openvino model:
python3 [repository folder]/modelConverter.py -s [size of the input, recommended 256] -t [input model name, from pytorch] -o [openvino model name, must end with .xml]
Place both the .xml and .bin model files in your Krita resource folder (inside pykrita/fast_sketch_cleanup subfolder) alongside other models to use them in the plugin.

New: the Fast Sketch Plugin for Krita

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Together with Intel, we have been working a new plugin for Krita: the fast sketch plugin, or maybe, better, a fast inking plugin. This is an experimental plugin that makes it (sometimes) possible to automatically ink a sketch, using neural networks.

This plugin uses models to figure out how to ink a sketch: the included models were trained on openly available data: there was no scraping or stealing involved! The plugin comes with a manual that explains how to get the scripts you can use to create a model trained on your own data: what you need are before and after images of your sketch and your uncolored inked drawing, and the training software can run on your own hardware (it will take a lot of time, though).

Throughout the development process we've been discussing this plugin with artists on the Krita Artists forum.

Artwork by @BeARToys (CC BY-SA)

The plugin can be downloaded and extracted in a Windows Krita 5.2.6 folder and should then be enabled in the plugin manager in Krita's settings dialog.

There is also a download of Krita 5.3.0 pre-alpha available that includes the plugin for Windows and Linux. Currently, we don't have a working MacOS version ready, and since the plugin is implemented in Python, there will be no Android packages.

Download

Windows

Plugin: Fast Sketch Plugin 1.0.2 FastSketchPlugin1.0.2.zip
Portable zip file: Krita 5.3.0 pre-alpha krita-x64-5.3.0-prealpha-cdac9c31.zip

Linux

64 bits Linux: krita-x64-5.3.0-prealpha-cdac9c31.zip

Krita Monthly Update - Edition 21

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the @Krita-promo team's November 2024 development and community update.

Development Report

Community Bug Hunt Ended

The Community Bug Hunt has ended, with dozens of bugs fixed and over a hundred bug more reports closed. Huge thanks to everyone who participated, and if you missed it, the plan is to make this a regular occurrence.

Can't wait for the next bug hunt to be scheduled? Neither will the bug reports! Help in investigating them is appreciated anytime!

Community Report

November 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

For the "Fluffy" theme, 22 members submitted 26 original artworks. And the winner is… Most "Fluffy" by @steve.improvthis, featuring three different fluffy submissions. Be sure to check out the other two as well!

The December Art Challenge is Open Now

For the December Art Challenge, @steve.improvthis has chosen "Tropical" as the theme, with the optional challenge of using new or unfamiliar brushes. See the full brief for more details, and find yourself a place in the sun!

Featured Artwork

Best of Krita-Artists - October/November 2024

Seven images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread, which was open from October 15th to November 11th. When the poll closed on November 14th, these five wonderful works made their way onto the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:

Ocean | Krita by @Gurkirat_Singh

Winter palace by @Sad_Tea

Order by @Valery_Sazonov

Curly, 10-24 by @Celes

Afternoon Magic by @zeki

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors.

Visit Krita's funding page to see how user donations keep development going, and explore a one-time or monthly contribution. Or check out more ways to Get Involved, from testing, coding, translating, and documentation writing, to just sharing your artwork made with Krita.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Changes

Notable changes in Krita's development builds from Nov. 12 - Dec. 11, 2024.

Stable branch (5.2.9-prealpha):

General: Fix rounding errors in opacity conversion, which prevented layered 50% brushstrokes from adding up to 100%. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
General: Fix snapping to grid at the edge of the canvas. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
General: Disable snapping to image center by default, as it can cause confusion. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Calligraphy Tool: Fix following existing shape in the Calligraphy Tool. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layers: Fix "Copy into new Layer" to copy vector data when a vector shape is active. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Selections: Fix the vector selection mode to not create 0px selections, and to select the canvas beforing subtracting if there is no existing selection. (bug report, CCbug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
General: Add Unify Layers Color Space action. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layers: Don't allow moving a mask onto a locked layer. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
Linux: Capitalize the .AppImage file extension to match the convention expected by launchers. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Bug fixes:

Color Management: Update display rendering when blackpoint compensation or LCMS optimizations are toggled, not just when the display color profile is changed. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Features:

Text: Implement Convert to Shape for bitmap fonts. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
Filters: Add Fast Color Overlay filter, which overlays a solid color using a configurable blending mode. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
Brush Engines: Add Pattern option to "Auto Invert For Eraser" mode. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Add option to hide the Minimal Shade Selector rows. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Show the Gamut Mask toolbar when the selector layout supports it. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
Layers: Add a warning icon for layers with a different color space than the image. (Change 1, by Dmitry Kazakov, and Change 2, by Timothée Giet)
Pop-Up Palette: Add an option to sort the color history ring by last-used instead of by color. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Export Layers Plugin: Add option to use incrementing prefix on exported layers. (wishbug report) (Change, by Ross Rosales)

Nightly Builds

Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.9-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Or test out the latest Experimental features in "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Krita for Android Update

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We have updated Krita for Android and ChromeOS in the Google Play Store to 5.2.8, an Android/ChromeOS-only emergency release. This release fixes startup problems that happened on some devices with 5.2.6. Krita 5.2.8 for Android is now available both for beta-track users as well as in the "stable" release track. Note, however, that we still recommend treating Krita on Android as a beta release that might have bugs that impair your work, as well as a user interface that is not optimized for touch devices.

Krita Monthly Update - Edition 20

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the @Krita-promo team's October 2024 development and community update.

Development Report

Android-only Krita 5.2.8 Hotfix Release

Krita 5.2.6 was reported to crash on startup on devices running Android 14 or later. This was caused by issues with an SDK update required for release on the Play Store, so a temporary 5.2.7 release reverting it was available from the downloads page only.

However, the issue has now been resolved and 5.2.8 is rolling out on the Play Store. Note that 5.2.8 raises the minimum supported Android version to Android 7.0 (Nougat).

Community Bug Hunt Started

The development team has declared a "Bug Hunt Month" running through November, and needs the community's help to decide what to do with each and every one of the hundreds of open bug reports on the bug tracker. Which reports are valid and need to be fixed? Which ones need more info or are already resolved?

Read the bug hunting guide and join in on the bug hunt thread on the Krita-Artists forum.

Community Report

October 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

For the "Buried, Stuck, or otherwise Swallowed" theme, 16 members submitted 18 original artworks. And the winner is… Tomorrow, contest… I’m so finished by @mikuma_poponta!

The November Art Challenge is Open Now

For the November Art Challenge, @mikuma_poponta has chosen "Fluffy" as the theme, with the optional challenge of making it "The Ultimate Fluffy According to Me". See the full brief for more details, and get comfortable with this month's theme.

Featured Artwork

Best of Krita-Artists - September/October 2024

8 images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread, which was open from September 14th to October 11th. When the poll closed on October 14th, moderators had to break a four-way tie for the last two spots, resulting in these five wonderful works making their way onto the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:

Sapphire by @Dehaf

Sci-Fi Spaceship by @NAKIGRAL

Oracular Oriole by @SylviaRitter

Air Port by @agarad

Dancing with butterflies 🦋 by @Kichirou_Okami

Best of Krita-Artists - October/November 2024

Nominations were accepted until November 11th. The poll is now open until November 14th. Don't forgot to vote!

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Changes

Notable changes in Krita's development builds from Oct. 10 - Nov. 12, 2024.

Stable branch (5.2.9-prealpha):

Layers: Fix infinite loop when a clone layer is connected to a group with clones, and a filter mask triggers an out-of-bounds update. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
General: Fix inability to save a document after saving while the image is busy and then canceling the busy operation. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Resources: Fix crash when re-importing a resource after modifying it. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Brush Presets: Fix loading embedded resources from .kpp files. (bug report, bug report, bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Brush Tools: Fix the Dynamic Brush Tool to not use the Freehand Brush Tool's smoothing settings which it doesn't properly support. (bug report) (Change, by Mathias Wein)(Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Recorder Docker: Prevent interruption of the Text Tool by disabling recording while it is active. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: EXR: Possibly fix saving EXR files with extremely low alpha values. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: EXR: Try to keep color space profile when saving EXR of incompatible type. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: EXR: Fix bogus offset when saving EXR with moved layers. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: JPEG-XL: Fix potential lockup when loading multi-page images. (Change, by Rasyuqa A H)
Keyboard Shortcuts: Set the default shortcut for Zoom In to = instead of +. (bug report) (Change, by Halla Rempt)
Brush Editor: Make the Saturation and Value brush options' graph and graph labels consistently agree on the range being -100% to 100% with 0% as neutral. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Bug fixes:

Vector Layers: Fix endlessly slow rendering of vector layers with clipping masks. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layers: Fix issue with transform masks on group layers not showing until visibility change, and visibility change of passthrough groups with layer styles causing artifacts. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Brush Editor: Fix crash when clearing scratchpad while it's busy rendering a resource-intensive brushstroke. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: EXR: Add GUI option for selecting the default color space for EXR files. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Transform Tool: Liquify: Move the Move/Rotate/Scale/Offset/Undo buttons to their own spot instead of alongside unrelated options, to avoid confusion. (bug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Move Tool: Fix Force Instant Preview in the Move tool to be off by default. (CCbug report) (Change, by Halla Rempt)
Pop-Up Palette: Fix lag in selecting a color in the Pop-Up Palette. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Scripting: Fix accessing active node state from the Python scripts. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Usabillity: Remove unnecessary empty space at the bottom of Transform, Move and Crop tool options. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Nightly Builds

Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.9-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Have feedback?

Join the discussion of this post on the Krita-Artists forum!

New Video by Ramon Miranda: Seamless Templates

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We've released a new video! ..Templates! you can create them with Krita to save time in your digital paintings and be more focused on your artwork. They are seamless, they are useful, and they are really easy to generate. So let´s go with another supercool feature of Krita.

Check out the video for download links for the templates themselves!

Warning: Krita 5.2.6 beta on Android is currently broken

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Update: we have fixed the issue and the update is rolling out in the beta channel. The production channel still uses 5.2.3, but that will be updated later.

On releasing the latest version of Krita in our Android/ChromeOS beta program, we discovered, too, late that there was a problem that could prevent Krita from starting.

Since the Google Play Store Console does not allow revering a release to an earlier version, we are now urgently working on a fix which we will release as soon as possible.

Our apologies for the inconvience.

The currentl nightly builds for Android work again, with some limitations:

take care removing the store version of Krita does not remove the application data: your artwork could be lost.
in the Nightly builds you need to install any brush presets separately

You can get the night builds here: Krita Next Nightly Builds. You will need to select the package that is right for the architecture of your device.

Installing the nightly builds requires enabling developer mode on your device and needs considerable technical insight.

If you do not feel comfortable with this, please wait until the new official release lands in the play store in a about two days.

Krita Monthly Update - Edition 19

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the @Krita-promo team's September 2024 development and community update.

Development Report

Krita 5.2.6 Released

Krita 5.2.5 was released September 25th. However, due to a serious bug where Group Layers in Pass Through mode caused Krita to get stuck endlessly updating, a 5.2.6 hotfix release was made shortly afterward on October 1st.

Check out the 5.2.5 release post for details on the three months' worth of bugfixes, but make sure to update to 5.2.6!

Community Report

September 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

For the Traditional Refreshments and Snacks theme, 12 members submitted 13 original artworks. And the winner is… Sweet Lemonade by @Dott!

The October Art Challenge is Open Now

For the October Art Challenge, @Dott has chosen "Buried, Stuck, or otherwise Swallowed" as the theme, with the optional challenge of incorporating a spiral or two. See the full brief for more details, and don't hesitate to uncover some inspiration!

Featured Artwork

Best of Krita-Artists - August/September 2024

10 images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread, which was open from August 15th to September 11th. When the poll closed on September 14th, these five wonderful works were voted into the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:

Study practice by @Gertsa_Ivan

Kiki recruiting for the Monthly Challenge by @Corentin

"Friend from Nowhere" by @Elixiah

XullFA by @tonnybranzza

Portrait of a woman in profile by @Celes

Best of Krita-Artists - September/October 2024

Nominations will be accepted until October 11th. Take a look through the current submissions. If you don’t see your favorite artwork there, why not make a nomination?

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Changes

Notable changes in Krita's development builds from Sept. 6 - Oct. 7, 2024.

Stable branch (5.2.5):

Animation: Fix animations getting stuck when using clone layers with transform masks. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Animation: Fix onion skins' rendering on layers with transform masks. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Animation: Make Render Animation dialog remember previous video container format. (bug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Animation: Allow video animation import process to be canceled. (bug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Compositions Docker: Allow animated composition export to be canceled. (bug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Layer Stack: Fix conversion of Group Layer to Animated Layer. (bug report) (Change 1 and change 2, by Emmet O'Neill)
Undo Stack: Fix quickly undoing and then redoing some actions like Remove Layer to work. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layer Stack: Keep Clone Layers linked when flattening their source group. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layer Stack: Fix updating Pass Through groups when using the Move or Transform Tool on them. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Pasting: Deselect selection when pasting from the clipboard, to avoid leaving anti-aliased selection edges out of Transform or other operations that might happen afterward. (bug report) (Change, Dmitry Kazakov)
Snapshot Docker: Fix wrong layer being selected when activating a snapshot. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Specific Color Selector Docker: Update Specific Color Selector labels in HSX mode, fix RGB sliders changing length, fix holding down spinbox arrows, and set float slider step to 0.01. (bug 475551, bug 453649, CC bug 453366) (Change, by Freya Lupen)
Assistant Tool: Fix undoing changes to Perspective Assistants causing Perspective Distance brush value to be incorrect. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
File Formats: JPEG-XL: Update JXL to 0.11 which includes fixes for speed and lossless encoding, and implement streaming encode which allows cancelling animated and layered export. (Change, by Rasyuqa A H)

Stable branch (5.2.6):

Layer Stack: Fix updating Pass Through groups getting stuck at 0% progress forever, a regression in 5.2.5. (bug 493774, bug 493830, bug 493837) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Python Plugins: Photobash Images Docker: Fix script error when adding images to canvas from the Photobash Images Docker. (Change, by Pedro Reis)

Stable branch (5.2.7-prealpha):

Layer Stack: Fix a crash when trying to merge down a layer created by the Text Tool or Select->Convert to Shape after a reference image addition. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
Layer Stack: Fix issue with position of layers copy-pasted from another document. (bug report) (Change, by Ralek Kolemios and Dmitry Kazakov)
Tools: Let brush shortcuts such as to change size affect the Bezier Curve and Freehand Path tools. (bug report) (Change, by Doreene Kang)
General: Add A1 and A2 predefined image sizes. (Change, by Guillaume Marrec)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Bug fixes:

macOS: Canvas Input: Show macOS modifier key symbols in Canvas Input Settings, as Keyboard Shortcuts already does, instead of the non-Mac names. (bug report) (Change, by Freya Lupen)

Features:

Animation Timeline Docker: Adjust the frame view's zoom level to fit the frame range when it changes. (wishbug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)

Nightly Builds

Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.7-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Have feedback?

Join the discussion of this post on the Krita-Artists forum!

Krita 5.2.6 Released!

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Krita 5.2.6 fixes a critical error with pass-through group layers (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493774).

Download

Windows

If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.

Note: We are no longer making 32-bit Windows builds.

64 bits Windows Installer: krita-5.2.6-setup.exe
Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-5.2.6.zip
Debug symbols. (Unpack in the Krita installation folder)

Linux

64 bits Linux: krita-5.2.6-x86_64.appimage

The separate gmic-qt AppImage is no longer needed.

(If, for some reason, Firefox thinks it needs to load this as text: right-click on the link to download.)

MacOS

Note: We're not supporting MacOS 10.13 anymore, 10.14 is the minimum supported version.

MacOS disk image: krita-5.2.6-release.dmg

Android

We consider Krita on ChromeOS as ready for production. Krita on Android is still beta. Krita is not available for Android phones, only for tablets, because the user interface requires a large screen.

Source code

md5sum

For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/stable/krita/5.2.6/ and click on "Details" to get the hashes.

Key

The Linux AppImage and the source .tar.gz and .tar.xz tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).

Krita 5.2.5 Released!

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Krita 5.2.5 has a critical bug (493774), please dowload Krita 5.2.6 instead!

Krita 5.2.5 is here, bringing over 50 bugfixes since 5.2.3 (5.2.4 was a Windows-specific hotfix). Major fixes have been done to audio playback, transform mask calculation and more!

In addition to the core team, special thanks to Maciej Jesionowski, Ralek Kolemios, Freya Lupen, Michael Genda, Rasyuqa A. H., Simon Ra and Sam James for a variety of fixes!

Changes since 5.2.3:

Correctly adjust audio playback when animation framerate is changed.
Fix no layer being activated on opening a document (Bug 490375)
[mlt] Fix incorrect usage of get_frame API (Bug 489146)
Fix forbidden cursor blinking when switching tools with shortcuts (Bug 490255)
Fix conflicts between mouse and touch actions requested concurrently (Bug 489537)
Only check for the presence of bt2020PQColorSpace on Windows (Bug 490301)
Run macdeployqt after searching for missing libs (Bug 490181)
Fix crash when deleting composition
Fix scaling down image with 1px grid spacing (Bug 490898)
Fix layer activation issue when opening multiple documents (Bug 490843)
Make clip-board pasting code a bit more robust (Bug 490636)
Fix a number of issues with frame generation (Bug 486417)
A number of changes related to qt6 port changes.
Fix black canvas appearing when "Limit animation frame size" is active (Bug 486417)
WebP: fix colorspace export issue when dithering is enabled (Bug 491231)
WebP: preserve color profile on export if color model is RGB(A)
Fix layer selection when a layer was removed while view was inactive
Fix On-Canvas Brush Editor's decimal sliders (Bug 447800, Bug 457744)
Make sure file layers are updated when image size or resolution changes (Bug 467257, Bug 470110)
Fix Advanced Export of the image with filter masks or layer styles (Bug 476980)
Avoid memory leak in the advanced export function
Fix mipmaps not being regenerated after transformation was finished or cancelled (Bug 480973)
[Gentoo] Don't use xsimd::default_arch in the pixel scaler code
KisZug: Fix ODR violation for map_*
Fix a crash in Filter Brush when changing the filter type (Bug 478419)
PSD: Don't test reference layer for homogenous check (Bug 492236)
Fix an assert that should have been a safe assert (Bug 491665)
Set minimum freetype version to 2.11 (Bug 489377)
Set Krita Default on restoring defaults (Bug 488478)
Fix loading translated news (Bug 489477)
Make sure that older files with simple transform masks load fine & Fix infinite loop with combination of clone + transform-mask-on-source (Bug 492320)
Fix more cycling updates in clone/transform-masks combinations (Bug 443766)
Fix incorrect threaded image access in multiple clone layers (Bug 449964)
TIFF: Ignore resolution if set to 0 (Bug 473090)
Specific Color Selector: Update labels fox HSX (Bug 475551)
Specific Color Selector: Fix RGB sliders changing length (Bug 453649)
Specific Color Selector: Fix float slider step 1 -> 0.01
Specific Color Selector: Fix holding down spinbox arrows (Bug 453366)
Fix clone layers resetting the animation cache (Bug 484353)
Fix an assert when trying to activate an image snapshot (Bug 492114)
Fix redo actions to appear when undoing juggler-compressed actions (Bug 491186)
Update cache when cloning perspective assistants (Bug 493185)
Fix a warning on undoing flattening a group (Bug 474122)
Relink clones to the new layer when flattening (Bug 476514)
Fix onion skins rendering on layers with a transform masks (Bug 457136)
Fix perspective value for hovering pixel
Fix Move and Transform tool to work with Pass-Through groups (Bug 457957)
JPEG XL: Export: implement streaming encoding and progress reporting
Deselect selection when pasting from the clipboard (Bug 459162)

Krita Monthly Update – Edition 18

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome back! This monthly ‘zine is curated for you by the @Krita-promo team. This edition covers two months' worth of updates.

Development Report

Grum999 is working on Grids with Unit Management MR 2201 which will allow users to select a grid measurement other than pixels (i.e., inches, mm. pt.). Grum is asking for help with testing in Windows and Linux.

Wolthera introduced Font Selection Properties in the text tool thread on Krita-Artists.

Demo:

There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it.

You can assist by reading the newest post from Wolthera and commenting.

latest update (latest blog post) (updated post on K-A)

Other Development Highlights

Google Summer of Code student Ken Lo's project for a pixel-art line stabilizer was finished successfully.

There’s a new default Python plugin, the Workflow Buttons docker, with customizable buttons that can select a tool, brush, color, or run a script.

The team plans to make a 5.2.5 release in late September, containing various bug-fixes from the past few months. These fixes include issues with no layer being selected, bugs when triggering touch gestures and stylus actions at the same time, broken support for Deflate-using TIFF files on Windows, crashes importing audio on macOS, and many more.

After the release, the developers will lead a community bug hunt effort to reduce the number of open bug reports and fix bugs. Tune in next month for details.

Part 2 of Krita’s 25-year history video released

Krita 25th ANNIVERSARY! 🎉 Journey to the past. Part 2

Community Report

July 2024 Monthly Art Challenge

The theme for July was Still Life from Another World designed by Brinck. We had so many wonderful submissions, it was difficult to choose only two when it was time to vote.

The winner of the July Art Challenge is Alchemy Still Life by @Elixiah.

August 2024 Monthly Art Challenge

Elixiah passed the honour of designing the next challenge to our first runner up, DavidMahl. For the August Art Challenge, DavidMahl has chosen “I am 5-year-old Kiki and I’m scared of …”

https://krita-artists.org/t/monthly-art-challenge-august-2024-i-am-5-year-old-kiki-and-im-scared-of/98020.

And the winner is… 5-year-old Kiki is scared of…the upgrade! by Lynx3d

The September Art Challenge is Open Now

For the September Art Challenge, Lynx3d has chosen Traditional Refreshments and Snacks. And as an additional, optional challenge, something with a seasonal or local relation. See the full brief for more details.

Featured Artwork

Eleven images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread which was open for nominations from June 14th to July 11th. When voting closed on the 14th, these five had the most votes and were added to the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner. These images will be entered into the Best of Krita Artists 2024 competition next January.

The Golden Chamber by @Yaroslavus_Artem

Barn Owl on Faucet by @kacart

Daal by @Neobscura

Pixel Art Waterfall by @Katamaheen

Indiana Jones by @AliceArt

Best of Krita-Artists – July/August 2024

Six images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread which was open from July 15th to August 11th. When voting closed on August 14th, these five had the most votes and were added to the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner.

The last supper by @ahmet_tabak

Piel de mango - Mango skin + process by @Caliche_Miguel

Somewhere in Alaska ~ Finished by @Elixiah

Melody.. using Impression brushes by @RoyKannthali

Fish Tank Sea Monster by @Katamaheen

Best of Krita-Artists – August/September 2024

The poll is open from September 11th to September 14th. Cast your vote for the best of Krita-Artists!

Noteworthy Plugin

New Alignment Tool

Arrange 2: Universal alignment tools for all types of layers by @Celes works on vector layers and raster (paint) layers as well as groups. Elements may be aligned to the active layer, the canvas or all selected layers.

To quote the author:

I’m also still pretty new to Krita and might have overlooked some layer usage situations. Don’t hesitate to let me know!

There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it.

Tutorial of the Month

Parallax Scrolling Animation

https://youtu.be/gsmcNqDpGJE?si=m8ITgkc-xBen-ypy

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is a Free and Open Source application, mostly developed by an international team of enthusiastic volunteers. Donations from Krita users to support maintenance and development is appreciated.

Visit Krita’s funding page to see how donations are used and explore a one-time or monthly contribution.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Code Changes

This section has been compiled by freyalupen.

(July 21 - Sept 6, 2024)

Stable branch (5.2.3+): Bugfixes:

[Layer Stack] Fix no layer being activated on opening Krita directly into a document, or opening a new view on a document, also when opening multiple documents and switching between them. And prevent a crash when pasting into a document with no layer active. (BUG:490375, BUG:490843, BUG:490636) (commit 1, commit 2, commit 3, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Layer Stack] Make sure that older files with simple transform masks load fine and fix endless updates with clone layer + transform mask. (BUG:492320, BUG:443766) (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Animation Audio] Fix a freeze when playing audio while scrubbing the timeline. (BUG:489146) (commit 1, commit 2, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Input] Fix an input bug when triggering touch gestures and stylus at the same time. (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Brush Engines] Fix a crash in the Filter Brush when changing the filter type. (BUG:478419) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Animation] Fix black canvas appearing in animation when "Limit cached frame size" is active and canvas filtering mode is Bilinear or Nearest Neighbor. (BUG:486417) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[File Formats: WebP] Fix issue in WebP colorspace export when dithering is enabled. (BUG:491231) (merge request, Rasyuqa A H)
[File Formats: PSD] Don't let Show Guides prevent saving as PSD in a non-default colorspace. (BUG:492236) (commit, Halla Rempt)
[Windows: File Formats: TIFF] Fix opening and saving TIFF files using Deflate compression on Windows, a regression in 5.2.3. (BUG:489596) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[macOS: Animation Audio] Fix crash on importing audio on macOS, a regression in 5.2.3. (BUG:490181) (commit, Ivan Yossi)
[Non-Windows: Display Settings] Enable HDR settings only on Windows, as Krita does not support HDR on other platforms and enabling it there will cause a crash. (BUG:490301) (commit, Halla Rempt)
[Compositions Docker] Fix crash when attempting to delete a composition after the last one has already been deleted. (merge request, Ralek Kolemios)
[Popup Palette] Fix the On-Canvas Brush Editor's decimal sliders to not round external changes. (BUG:447800, BUG:457744) (commit, Freya Lupen)
[File Formats: TIFF] Ignore resolution in TIFF if set to 0. Also don't allow setting an image's resolution to 0. (BUG:473090) (merge request, Freya Lupen)
[Grids and Guides Docker] Fix scaling down an image to less than 50% size with 1px grid spacing enabled to not crash or have the grid disappear. (BUG:490898) (merge request, Freya Lupen)
[Preferences Dialog] Make sure restoring default Canvas Input profile shows Krita Default. (BUG:488478) (commit, Halla Rempt)
[Welcome Page] Fix loading translated News and add missing languages. (BUG:489477) (CCBUG:489477) (commit 1, commit 2, Halla Rempt)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha): Features:

[Text Tool] Add Text Properties Docker for styling text. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
[Python Plugins] Add Workflow Buttons docker Python plugin. This docker consists of customizable buttons that can select a tool, brush, color, or even run a script. (merge request, Timothée Giet)
[Brush Engines] Add the ability to set brush sensor curve points as corners, by holding Ctrl while clicking a point, or pressing "s" while a point is selected. (merge request, Deif Lou)
[Freehand Brush Tool] Add Pixel stabilizer setting for drawing 1px-width pixel art lines. (merge request, Ken Lo)
[Touch Input] Implement an option to disable touch pressure reading, in case it is being reported incorrectly: Settings->General->Tools->Enable Touch Pressure Sensitivity. (BUG:474523) (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Color Selectors] Save global color history, and add option to save color history per document in Settings->Color Selector Settings->Color History. (WISHBUG:357493) (merge request, Bourumir Wyngs)
[Reference Images Tool] Add tool options to create a reference image from the current layer or visible canvas. (WISHBUG:399058, WISHBUG:403111) (merge request, Tom Wu, Agata Cacko)
[Usability] Add ability to change unit of decimal spinboxes in their right-click context menu, and fix some rounding issues when changing units. (merge request, Grum 999)
[Usability] Reduce delay of Overview Docker, Histogram Docker and Layer Thumbnails updates. (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov, Zhiqi Yao)
[Usability] Change text to clarify "Merge selected layers" being different from "Merge with layer below". (merge request, Ralek Kolemios)
[Export Layers Plugin] Improve Export Layers dialog to select the current document, allow selecting exporting multiple documents at once, and show the full path only in the tooltip. (merge request, stib bork)
[Scripting] Add Python API for painting brushstrokes on a Node with the current brush: paintLine, paintRectangle, paintEllipse, paintPolygon, paintPath. (merge request, Freya Lupen, Samuel Simplicio, Scott Petrovic)
[Scripting] Expose stroke and fill styles to the painting API. (merge request, Freya Lupen)
[Scripting] Add pressure setting to the Node.paintLine() function. (merge request, Anna Pavlyuk)

Bugfixes:

[Export] Fix Advanced Export of the image with filter masks or layer styles to scale those as expected.(BUG:476980) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[File Layers] Make sure File Layers are scaled when the image is scaled. (BUG:467257, BUG:470110) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Transform Tool] Fix layers below a transformed layer appearing blurred when using Accurate Instant Preview mode. (BUG:480973) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Animation] Fix using Fill Tool on color-labeled layers of animation being very slow due to unnecessary checking of all frames. (BUG:438607) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Usability] Make sure the Layer Properties dialog can only be opened once, instead of allowing the same dialog to be opened multiple times. (merge request, Maciej Jesionowski)
[Python Plugins] Fix Ten Scripts to keep script position when there are empty slots, and add ability to clear a slot. (merge request, Robert Moerland)
[Python Plugins] Comics Manager: In the language chooser, list all regional variations and automatically select the best variation based on locale. (merge request, Alvin Wong)
[General] Fix wrong thumbnail in "Save New Brush Preset" after "Switch to Previous Preset" shortcut. (BUG:475020) (merge request, Doreene Kang)

These changes are made available for testing in the following Nightly builds:

Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.3+): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64
Unstable "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Like what we are doing? Help support us

Krita is a free and open source project. Please consider supporting the project with donations or by buying training videos or the artbook! With your support, we can keep the core team working on Krita full-time.

Donate Buy something

Picky Pixels: Krita's GSoC 2024!

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Well, somehow another summer* has come to a close and, with it, this year's Google Summer of Code has all but wrapped up!

A little GSoC speedrun

If you aren't familiar with Google Summer of Code ("GSoC", for the rest of this post to save my weary fingers), it's a yearly program that Google runs in which they pay people to successfully contribute features and improvements to free and open source software ("FOSS") projects like ours. It's hopefully a win-win for all parties involved: it's a decent summer gig and learning experience for the contributor, it incentivizes new people to dip their toes into the world of FOSS contribution, and it theoretically strengthens the ecosystem of FOSS software that companies like Google rely heavily on.

Like many other FOSS projects, Krita has been a participant in GSoC for a number of years, and successful projects have brought about a smattering of nice improvements, like the improved Resource Manager, the all new Storyboard Docker, the Recorder Docker, and so on.

Best of all, in recent years Google has opened the door to everybody (not just higher education students anymore!), so that people from every walk of life and background can participate. Of course, you probably need to have at least a foundational knowledge of programming and solid communication skills to succeed, but I really appreciate that the program has become much more open to equitable. (Good move Google!)

So, if that sounds at all interesting and you think you have what it takes, GSoC can be a good way to get paid to contribute to your favorite FOSS projects.

Pixel almost-perfect

This year's GSoC was a bit of a quiet one, as we only had one project: "Pixel Perfect Lines" by Ken Lo, with the simple goal of creating a better workflow experience for pixel/sprite artists by allowing for "perfect" single-pixel lines.

You might be asking yourself, what makes a "perfect" single-pixel line?

At its core art is about expression, so there really is no such this as objectively good or bad, right or wrong, and so on. Pixel art is no different in that regard, but just like any medium there are certain conventions and traditions that people just like to see. For spriters, one of those conventions is the appeal of clean and legible single-pixel lines, like you might use as the outline of a character or other object. Generally, as I understand it, a conventionally good quality single-pixel line for to pixel artists is one that has minimal right-angle changes of direction (L-shapes, T-shapes, and so on). Avoiding right-angles can give you beautiful and graceful curves--something that you can easily take for granted until you're working at a super low resolution.

Which brings us back to Ken's goal with GSoC 2024: adding a new feature for Krita which allows pixel artists to draw smooth, flowing, single-pixel lines with the stroke of a pen! And I'm happy to share that he pretty much succeeded in that goal, adding a new "Pixel" smoothing option to the Brush Tool which should significantly help the pixel art workflow in Krita. (Coming soon to the Tool Options Docker!)

See for yourself:

As for whether the lines produced are "pixel perfect", well... not yet, but they're damn pretty close! Ken and I really hoped to achieve truly "pixel perfect" pixel art lines to Krita during this GSoC, and Ken did quite a bit of good research into how he might go about achieving that result. Ultimately, however, we came to the conclusion that true pixel perfect would probably require bigger changes to Krita's brush logic than the remaining GSoC time would probably allow. That's alright, and I think a good lesson, too--sometimes the plan you start with hits a dead end and just have to adapt!

In other words, you're still likely to run into an occasional stray pixel that you may want to erase. But what I know for sure is that Ken's contribution to Krita via GSoC 2024 is a much-improved single-pixel line quality that I'm sure will be a big workflow improvement for all of the spriters, pixel artists and game developers who use Krita as one of their tools.

Of course, we don't plan on giving up until we reach the pinnacle of pixel perfection, so if anyone out there has ideas for how to bring this feature to the next level please drop us a line!

Ok, cool! But... how?

I almost forgot to tell you how to use it... But the good news is that it's pretty simple.

To turn on the new pixel line stabilizer, select the Brush Tool or similar, open up the Tool Options Docker, and set the "Brush Smoothing" dropdown to "Pixel". You probably (hopefully) won't notice any change to performance or line quality when drawing with a regular brush on a regular canvas, but with the 1px pixel art brush preset active you'll find that drawing flowing strokes produces nicer pixel art lines.

And that's a wrap!

That'll be it for GSoC 2024!

Thanks to Google for partnering with projects like Krita once again for another successful GSoC, and of course a major thanks is in order to this year's Krita GSoC contributor, Ken!

Finally, whether it's through a program like GSoC, our Development Fund, or the absolutely massive number of volunteer contributions that we constantly receive from members of the community, projects like Krita rely on the generosity and support of people like you. So, as always, a GIANT thank you to all of you who have supported this project in any way so far this year! :)

Emmet

*Here in the Northern Hemisphere, but I see you Southern Hemisphere people!

Krita Monthly Update – Edition 17

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the latest development and community news curated for you by the @Krita-promo team.

Development report

5.2.3 Released June 26, 2024

This is mainly a bugfix release following weeks of beta testing. Thank you to everyone who tested and reported feedback and a big thank you to everyone who contributed code. Here are just a few highlights:

Fix copy-pasting selection of File Layer (Bug 459849)
Reworked default FFmpeg profiles (Bug 455006 , 450790, 429326, 485515, 485514). Thanks @Ralek!
Tablet Tester: Fix extreme lag with S Pen on Android – Thanks Joshua Goins!

Read the full release notes on Krita.org.

New Features and fixes

A new python painting API by @freyalupen based on previous unfinished work was merged. Now you can utilize python to programmatically draw objects and other stuff on the canvas.
@YRH fixed an issue with audio and frame rate.
Related to the python API, some parts of @Grum999’s API work have been merged (2160 and 2167). Here are a few highlights:
- Document: Grids & Guides implementation review (dedicated classes available) + miscellaneous minor improvements
- Palette: minor improvements (try to get something more consistent in API)
- Manage class cast properly for Python class bindings (always get expected Python class instead of QObject)
- Updated API documentation for some classes (get more detailed documentation about class & methods)
@Deif_Lou has implemented a new feature which will help those who paint UV maps. It is called propagate colours. As the name suggests it propagates colours into nearby transparent areas which can be useful in the creation of UV maps.

From left to right: the original image; the expanded image with expanded alpha channel; the expanded image preserving the alpha channel (note that it looks like the original one, although the color components were propagated into the transparent areas); the third image after applying a levels filter that makes the transparent areas semi-opaque to clearly see how the colors were truly propagated. Images by @tomjk and @Deif_Lou.

Other Development Highlights

@Tiar has put out a call for artwork donations for the Fast Line Art tool currently in development. This is an experimental feature sponsored by Intel. The tool’s purpose is to speed up the creation of line art from the artist’s rough sketch using neural networks. The donated work will be used to train the tool.
Google Summer of Code (GSOC) Pixel Perfect Line Setting for Pixel Art Brushes is moving forward. @Ken_Lo published a Week 5 Recap outlining a proposed vector approach.

Krita’s 25-year Anniversary Celebration Continues

@RamonM released a second video commemorating this incredible milestone. He is joined by Lucas Tvrdy, an early Krita developer, and @Animtim, creator of Krita’s first book and training DVD. There is even a brief musical message from @Deevad, a professional artist and long-time Krita supporter. Watch the video to see who else pops in with a greeting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DifqGFFAnsE

June 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

Participation in “Magnificent Dragon” was fabulous with 32 members submitting 36 original artworks. Thank you, @Elixiah, for giving us a great challenge. The resulting tie for first place between @Elixiah and @Brinck was decided on by the moderators and @Brinck was named the winner .

The July Art Challenge is Open Now

For the July Art Challenge, @Brinck has chosen this topic: Still life from another world . There is also an additional, optional challenge to produce the work in gauntlet mode. Read the brief for a full description.

Featured artwork

Best of Krita-Artists May/June

Ten images were nominated and then voted on in the May/June Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread. When the poll closed on June 14th, these five received the most votes and were added to the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner and were also shared on social media sites (with permission, of course).

Sunset on the quay by @Sad_Tea

Sculpture study 1 by @024XS

Cosmos LTD by @Yaroslavus_Artem

Sparkle by @My.last-charade

Rippling Ribbons by SylviaRitter

Noteworthy plugin

Theme Creator Extension by @freyalupen.

This plugin allows users to create a basic version of a color theme file, with partial previewing while choosing colors (Note: a restart is required to apply all effects).

Tutorial of the month

The ultimate guide to printing digital art accurately: Eliminate Color Shifts! by @CelticCoco.

How to:

Achieve color-accurate prints every time
Calibrate your digital workflow
Ensure Krita and your devices all speak the same “color language”

Ways to help Krita

Krita is a Free and Open Source application, mostly developed by an international team of enthusiastic volunteers. Donations from Krita users to support maintenance and development is appreciated.

Visit Krita’s funding page to see how donations are used and explore a one-time or monthly contribution.

Notable changes in code

This section has been compiled by @freyalupen.

Jun 11 - Jul 7, 2024

Stable branch (5.2.3): Bugfixes:

[Windows: Canvas] Fix canvas fading out when zooming out on 16-bit images when using ANGLE canvas renderer on Windows, a regression present in 5.2.3-beta1. (BUG:488126) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Touch Docker] Implement a QWidget version of the touch docker with less features that isn’t completely broken, until a proper QML version can be reimplemented. (BUG:476690 ) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Tools: Color Sampler] Fix color sampler to work in wrap around mode. (BUG:478190) (merge request, Freya Lupen)
[Layer Stack] Fix copy-pasting a selection of a File Layer. (BUG:459849 ) (commit, Freya Lupen )
[Plugins: Batch Exporter] Fix Batch Exporter plugin ignoring trimming in some cases. (BUG:488343) (merge request, Nathan Lovato)
[Tablet Tester] Fix extreme lag in the Tablet Tester with S Pen on Android. (merge request, Joshua Goins )
[Animation] Fix animation playback freezes when pausing past the end of audio. (BUG:487371) (BUG:478185)) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
[Recorder Docker] Prevent some tools from being interrupted by the recorder, by disabling the recorder when they are active. The following tools’ actions won’t be recorded: Transform, Polyline, Polygon, Enclose and Fill, Freehand Path, Crop, Freehand Selection, Polygonal Selection, Bezier Curve Selection, Magnetic Curve Selection. The following tools completely disable recording while they are active: Move, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, Rectangular Selection, Elliptical Selection. (BUG:477715, BUG:484783) (merge request, Firstname Aqaao)

Stable branch (5.2.3+): Bugfixes:

[Animation] Fix audio duration not being updated after animation framerate is updated. (merge request, Maciej Jesionowski )

Stable branch (5.2.3) backports from Unstable: Bugfixes:

[File Formats] WEBP & JPEG-XL: Prevent crash/error when attempting to export a non-animated image as animated. (BUG:476761) (merge request, Rasyuqa A H)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha): Features:

[Filters] Add Colors->“Propagate Colors” filter, which expands colors into transparent areas, while optionally keeping the alpha value untouched. (merge request, Deif Lou )
[File formats] Implement CSS Palette support. (WISHBUG:367694) (merge request, Thomas K/BIDI)
[Layer Stack] Enable setting colorspace of Group Layers. (merge request, killy |0veufOrever)
[Canvas Input] Add Zoom In To Cursor and Zoom Out From Cursor canvas input shortcuts, as an alternative to regular Zoom In/Out which use the center of the canvas. (merge request, Mr. xk1000)
[Scripting] Add functions to modify the state of Grids and Guides to the Document API. (merge request, Grum 999)
[Scripting] Add functions to change the autosave state to the Document API. (merge request, Grum 999)
[Templates] Add two new Japanese comic format templates. (merge request, Jun Shiozawa )

Bugfixes:

[Android: Usability] Fix applying size adjustments to the Android system font, improving readability of docker text in small spaces by giving it the intended 90% size as on other platforms or with a custom UI font. (merge request, Freya Lupen )
[File formats: EXR] Partially fix loading XYZ channels on EXR import. (CCBUG:487103) (merge request, Rasyuqa A H)

These changes are made available for testing in the following Nightly builds:

Stable “Krita Plus” (5.2.3+): Linux - Windows - macOS [unsigned currently] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)
Unstable “Krita Next” (5.3.0-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS [unsigned currently] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)

Like what we are doing? Help support us

Donate Buy something

Krita 5.2.3 Released!

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Krita 5.2.3 is released after several weeks of testing of the beta. This is a bugfix release, that primarily brings a complete overhaul of our build system, making it so that our CI system can now build for all 4 platforms (a Continuous Integration system basically builds a program after every change, runs some tests and based on that helps us track down mistakes we made when changing Krita's code).

Beyond the rework of the build system, this release also has numerous fixes, particularly with regards to animated transform masks, jpeg-xl support, shortcut handling on Windows and painting assistants.

In addition to the core team, special thanks goes out to to Freya Lupen, Grum 999, Mathias Wein, Nabil Maghfur Usman, Alvin Wong, Deif Lou, Maciej Jesionowski and Rasyuqa A. H. for various fixes, as well as the first time contributors in this release cycle (Each mentioned after their contribution).

Changes since 5.2.3 beta:

Various fixes to tool canvas input shortcut behaviour (Thanks, Aqaao)
Improved icons for Android (Bug 463043, thanks Jesse 205!)
Various fixes to how we use MLT for synchronising audio to animation.
Python SIP type stub generation, this will help autocompletion in external python editors that support using these stubs (Thanks Kate Corcoran)
Crash fix with adding animation keyframe column on locked layer (Bug 486893)
Fix update of "read-only" state of the document when loading and saving (Bug 487544)
Ask to use PSD data in TIFF only if any was found (Bug 488024)
Reworked default FFmpeg profiles (Bug 455006, 450790, 429326, 485515, 485514, thanks Ralek Kolemios!)
Fix issue in KisMergeLabeledLayersCommand when masks where involved (Bug 486419)
Update batch exporter Python plugin to fix trim option issue (Bug 488343, thanks Nathan Lovato!)
Welcome Page: Fix "DEV BUILD" button going to a 404 (Thanks Joshua Goins!)
Tablet Tester: Fix extreme lag with S Pen on Android (Thanks Joshua Goins!)
Fix canvas fade-out when in 16-bit-uint mode on Angle (Bug 488126)
WEBP & JPEG-XL: preemptive check for animation (Bug 476761)
Fix copy-pasting selection of File Layer (Bug 459849)
Fix color sampler in wrap around mode (Bug 478190)
Replace old QML touch docker with QWidget-based touch docker to avoid problems on Android (Bug 476690)
Add support for XSIMD13
Redraw layers docker thumbnails if the canvas checkers color was changed
Fix animation playback freezes when pausing past the end of audio (Bug 487371 and 478185)

Download

Windows

If you're using the portable zip files, just open the zip file in Explorer and drag the folder somewhere convenient, then double-click on the Krita icon in the folder. This will not impact an installed version of Krita, though it will share your settings and custom resources with your regular installed version of Krita. For reporting crashes, also get the debug symbols folder.

Note that we are not making 32 bits Windows builds anymore.

64 bits Windows Installer: krita-5.2.3-setup.exe
Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-5.2.3.zip
Debug symbols. (Unpack in the Krita installation folder)

Linux

64 bits Linux: krita-5.2.3-x86_64.appimage

The separate gmic-qt AppImage is no longer needed.

(If, for some reason, Firefox thinks it needs to load this as text: to download, right-click on the link.)

macOS

Note: We're not supporting MacOS 10.13 anymore, 10.14 is the minimum supported version.

macOS disk image: krita-5.2.3.dmg

Android

We are no longer building the 32 bits Intel CPU APK, as we suspect it was only installed by accident and none of our users actually used it. We are hoping for feedback on this matter.

Source code

md5sum

For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/stable/krita/5.2.3/ and click on Details to get the hashes.

Key

The Linux AppImage and the source .tar.gz and .tar.xz tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).

Krita Monthly Update – Edition 16

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the latest development and community news curated for you by the Krita-promo team.

Development report

Krita is 25 years old!

Artwork by David Revoy (CC BY-SA)

May 31, 2024 marks Krita’s 25th birthday. As one would expect, there have been many changes over the years – even the name changed several times. You can get a look inside Krita’s history in this blog post written by @Halla, Krita’s Maintainer for more than 20 years.

In honour of this milestone, @RamonM prepared a special treat for all Krita users: a video interview with @Halla.

Your feedback is requested

5.2.3-Beta1 was released June 5th. This release represents a complete rework of the build system and numerous fixes by the core Krita developer team as well as freyalupen, Grum999, NabilMaghfurUsman, Deif_Lou, Alvin Wong, Rasyuqa A. H. and Mathias Wein. There are a number of first-time contributors whose names appear next to their contribution in the release notes.
Testing packages for every platform are provided on the release notes page. Please report your findings and feedback in the Testers Wanted thread.
Text property editing: Merge request 2092 is almost finished, awaiting review. Testing builds are now available on the CI. @Wolthera is requesting user feedback on the UX. Please read this post and share your comments there.
Google Summer of Code (GSOC) @Ken_Lo is seeking input on the Pixel Perfect project https://krita-artists.org/t/pixel-perfect-line-setting-for-pixel-art-brushes/42629/16

Other Development Highlights

Free transform bounding box rotation by Stuffin has been merged. This completes the feature request Adjusting the transform box to match the object angle in the drawing and can be tested in the 5.3.0-prealpha nightly. (Note to testers: Adjusting the bounding box is activated with Ctrl+Alt.) Thanks stuffin!

There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it.

Grum999 is improving the python API so that it is more robust for python developers and they can access more of krita’s internal features through python. There is a work-in-progress MR to add new scripting functions for accessing Grids, Guides, and Mirror Axes from the document, and signals for changes in the document and view. Check the MR
@Ralek has added lossless transformation conditions - Rotations in increments of 90 degrees, and perfect x and y mirrors should now be lossless. This should greatly help out pixel artists, who I believe previously could not use these functions at all. Check the MR

Community Report

May 2024 Monthly Art Challenge

And the winner is… Cat Reflection by Elixiah.

For the June Art Challenge, Elixiah has chosen Magnificent Dragon with an interesting optional challenge for any who care to give themselves an added stretch.

Featured artwork

Ten images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread which was open from April 14th to May 11th. When voting closed on May 14th, these five had the most votes and were added to the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner.

Quiet Morning by @Gurkirat_Singh.

Pollinatrix Terrae by @jimplex.

The Lone Rider-2 by @rohithela.

005 (Spider in the web) by @HappyBuket.

Challenge Horn by @MangooSalade.

In addition to their place of honour on the banner, all five will be entered into the Best of Krita-Artists 2024 competition next January. The Best of Krita-Artists May/June Nominations thread will be open for submissions until June 11, 2024. You are invited to join in by nominating your favourite piece of Krita artwork!

Noteworthy Plugin

Create a New View as Window and Topped by Cliscylla saves steps by opening a new view and setting it to always stay on top.

Tutorial of the month

How to record video directly from Krita and post to social media by Deevad is a comprehensive tutorial for beginner and intermediate Krita users. It takes the viewer through the initial screen set up and recommended canvas dimensions right through to the export process.

Ways to help Krita

Krita is a Free and Open Source application, mostly developed by an international team of enthusiastic volunteers. Donations from Krita users to support maintenance and development is appreciated.

Visit Krita’s funding page to see how donations are used and explore a one-time or monthly contribution.

Notable Changes in the code

This section has been compiled by freyalupen. (May 6 - June 6, 2024)

Stable branch (5.2.3-beta1):

Bugfixes:

General Don't waste memory generating empty animation frames on images with no animation. This was a regression in 5.2.x. (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
Storyboard Docker Fix reordering storyboard scenes causing all frame data to be deleted while still appearing to be present. (BUG:476440) (merge request, Freya Lupen)
Android: Animation Fix crash when attempting to load audio on Android, a regression present in 5.2.2.1. (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)

Stable branch (5.2.3-beta1+):

Bugfixes:

Animation Fix crash when adding a keyframe column with a locked layer selected. (BUG:486893) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
Keyboard shortcuts While continuing making a Selection, ignore other modifier shortcuts to avoid conflicts. (merge request, Aqaao)
File Formats: TIFF Ask to use PSD data in TIFF only if any was found. (BUG:488024) (commit, Freya Lupen)
General, macOS Fix update of "read-only" state of the document when loading and saving. Fixes a crash on macOS when loading TIFF or JPEG-XL recent file icons (which load a temporary document). (BUG:487544) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
Android, Recorder Docker Fix saving Recorder frames as JPEG on Android, a regression present in 5.2.2.1. (BUG:487667) (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
Android, General Improve Krita's apk icons to follow Android design guidelines. (BUG:463043) (merge request, Jesse 205)

Features:

Scripting Generate a Python type stub file for Krita's API, which can be used to setup type auto-completion in IDEs, located inside the Krita package at /lib/krita-python-libs/PyKrita/krita.pyi. (merge request, Kate Corcoran)

Stable branch (5.2.3-beta1+) backports from Unstable: Bugfixes:

Recorder Docker Reworked default recorder docker FFmpeg profiles. If canvas size changes during recording, the export profiles now keep aspect instead of stretching (BUG:429326). Issues with resize, result preview, and extend result are avoided (BUG:455006, BUG:450790, BUG:485515, BUG:485514). For MP4, detect whether openh264 or libx264 is present instead of using separate profiles. Also, prevent an error when using FFmpeg 7. (merge request, Ralek Kolemios)
Selection Tools Fix issue making selections on color-labeled reference selections. (BUG:486419) (commit, Deif Lou)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Features:

Transform Tool Allow rotating the free transform bounding box with Ctrl+Alt, in order to make transformations along an arbitrary axis. (WISHBUG:383587) (merge request, Stuffins)

Bugfixes:

Transform Tool Make sure perfect mirrors and 90-degree rotations are transformed losslessly. (merge request, Ralek Kolemios)
Shortcuts Fix Sample Screen Color getting stuck if activated multiple times without completing. (BUG:485739) (merge request, Deif Lou)
Scripting Fix setting Color Adjustment (perchannel) and Cross-Channel filters from Python scripts. (merge request, Deif Lou)

These changes are made available for testing in the following Nightly builds:

Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.3-beta1+): Linux - Windows - macOS [unsigned currently] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)
Unstable "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS [unsigned currently] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)

Like what we are doing? Help support us

Donate Buy something

First Beta for Krita 5.2.3 Released

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are releasing the first Beta of Krita 5.2.3. This release primarily brings a complete overhaul of our build system, making it so that our CI system can now build for all 4 platforms (a Continuous Integration system basically builds a program after every change, runs some tests and based on that helps us track down mistakes we made when changing Krita's code).

In addition to the core team, special thanks goes out to to Freya Lupen, Grum 999, Mathias Wein, Nabil Maghfur Usman, Alvin Wong, Deif Lou and Rasyuqa A. H. for various fixes, as well as the first time contributors in this release cycle (Each mentioned after their contribution).

Fix docker ShowOnWelcomePage flag (Bug 476683)
windows: Exclude meson in release package
Fix integer division rounding when scaling image (Patch by David C. Page, Thanks!)
Fix Comic Manager export with cropping TypeError
WebP: properly export color profile on RGBA model (Bug 477219)
WebP: properly assign profile when importing image with non-RGBA model (Bug 478307)
Fix saving animated webp
Added missing layer conversion options to layer docker rightclick menu (Patch by Ken Lo, thanks! MR 2039
Fix Last Documents Docker TypeError
Replace the Backers tab with a Sponsors tab
Comic Project Management Tools: Fix crash in comic exporter due incorrect api usage. (Bug 478668) Also turn off metadata retrieval for now.
Properly check color patch index for validity (Bug 480188)
Fix build with libjxl 0.9.0 (Bug 478987, patch by Timo Gurr, thanks!)
Included Krita's MLT plugin in our source tree, as well as several fixes to it.
Possibly fix ODR violation in the transform tool strategies (Bug 480520)
Fix framerate issue when adding audio to the image (Bug 481388)
Fix artifacts when drawing on a paused animation (Bug 481244)
Fix issues generating reference image in KisMergeLabeledLayersCommand (Bug 471896, Bug 472700)
Simplify similar color selection tool and add spread option
Fix artifacts when moving a layer under a blur adjustment layer (Bug 473853)
Make sure that tool-related shortcuts have priority over canvas actions (Bug 474416)
Refactor KisLodCapableLayerOffset into a reusable structure
Fix current time loading from a .kra file with animation
Clone scalar keyframes when creating a new one in the GUI
Refactor transform masks not to discard keyframe channels on every change (Bug 475385)
Fix artifacts when flattening animated transform mask (Bug 475334)
Fix extra in-stroke undo step when using Transform and Move tools (Bug 444791)
Fix rounding in animated transform masks with translation (Bug 456731)
Fix canvas inputs breaking due to inconsistent key states (BUG: 451424)
Make wave filter allowed in filter masks/layers (Bug 476033)
Fix an offset when opening files with animated transform masks (Bug 476317)
Fix transform mask offsets after running a transform tool on that (Bug 478966)
Fix creation of keyframes before the first frame for scalar channels (Bug 478448)
Support xsimd 12 (Bug 478986)
Fix new scalar frames to use interpolated values (Bug 479664)
Don't skip updates on colorize mask props change (Bug 475927)
Fix restoring layer's properties after new-layer-from-visible action (Bug 478225)
Fix transform masks being broken after duplication (Bug 475745)
Fix a crash when trying to open multiple files with one D&D (Bug 480331)
Fix cache being stuck when adding hold frames (Bug 481099)
Make PerspectiveAssistant respect snapToAny parameter
Fix logic in 2-Point Perspective Assistant
Remove unnecessary locking code from several assistants
Move a bunch of code repeated in derived classes to KisPaintingAssistant
Fix wg selector popup flickering with shortcut
Fix updating KoCanvasControllerWidget's canvas Y offset when resizing the canvas
Fix esthetics of the Welcome Page, remove banner.
Re-enable the workaround for plasma global menu (Bug 483170)
Improvements to support for Haiku OS.
Fix crash on KisMergeLabeledLayersCommand when using color labeled transform masks (Bug 480601)
PNG: prevent multiple color conversions (Bug 475737)
Fix crash when pasting font family in TextEditor (Bug 484066)
Fix grids glitches when subdivision style is solid (Bug 484889)
Add 1px padding to rects in KisPerspectiveTransformWorker to account for bilinear filtering (Bug 484677)
Fix activation of the node on opening .kra document (Bug 480718)
Various snapcraft fixes by Scarlet Moore
Fix sequence of imagepipe brushes when used in the line tool (Bug 436419)
tilt is no longer ignored in devices that support tilt (Bug 485709, patch by George Gianacopoulos, thanks!)
Make Ogg render consistently check for Theora
Fix issue with appbundle builder using libs.xml from arm64-v8a (Bug 485707)
Don't reset redo when doing color picking (Bug 485910)
Show and error when trying to import version 3 xcf files (Bug 485420)
Remove a bogus warning about Intel's openGL driver
Fix incorrect inclusion of "hard mix softer" blend mode in layer styles
Fixed issue on S24 ultra regarding S-pen settings when HiDPI is turned off (Patch by Spencer Sawyer, thanks!).
Revive code path in perspective ellipse and 2pp assistant draw routine
Don't try to regenerate frames on an image that has no animation
Fix data loss on reordering storyboards.
Improving the quality of icons for Android (Patch by Jesse 205, thanks! Bug 463043)
Enable SIP type stub file generation (Patch by Kate Corcoran, thanks!)

Download

Windows

Note that we are not making 32 bits Windows builds anymore.

64 bits Windows Installer: krita-5.2.3-beta1-setup.exe
Portable 64 bits Windows: krita-5.2.3-beta1.zip
Debug symbols. (Unpack in the Krita installation folder)

Linux

64 bits Linux: krita-5.2.3-beta1-x86_64.appimage

The separate gmic-qt AppImage is no longer needed.

(If, for some reason, Firefox thinks it needs to load this as text: to download, right-click on the link.)

macOS

Note: if you use macOS Sierra or High Sierra, please check this video to learn how to enable starting developer-signed binaries, instead of just Apple Store binaries.

macOS disk image: krita-5.2.3-beta1.dmg

Android

We are no longer building the 32 bits Intel CPU APK, as we suspect it was only installed by accident and none of our users actually used it. We are hoping for feedback on this matter.

Source code

md5sum

For all downloads, visit https://download.kde.org/unstable/krita/5.2.3-beta1/ and click on Details to get the hashes.

Key

The Linux AppImage and the source .tar.gz and .tar.xz tarballs are signed. You can retrieve the public key here. The signatures are here (filenames ending in .sig).

25 Years of Krita!

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Halla Rempt

Twenty-five years. A quarter century. That's how long we've been working on Krita. Well, what would become Krita. It started out as KImageShop, but that name was nuked by a now long-dead German lawyer. Then it was renamed to Krayon, and that name was also nuked. Then it was renamed to Krita, and that name stuck.

I only became part of Krita in 2003, when Krita was still part of KDE's suite of productivity applications, KOffice, later renamed to Calligra... And I became maintainer of Krita in 2004, when Patrick Julien handed over the baton. That means that I've been around Krita for about twenty of those twenty-five years, so I'll hope you, dear reader, will forgive me for making this a really personal post; a very large part of my life has been tied up with Krita, and it's going to show.

But let’s first go back to before when I needed a digital painting application; the first seeds for Krita were laid in 1998, even earlier than the first bits of code. There was this excitement around Linux back then, and there were lots of projects that attempted to create great applications for Linux. One of those projects was GIMP, and another project was Qt. The first was a digital image manipulation application, the other was a toolkit to create user-friendly applications in C++. But GIMP didn't use Qt, it used its home-grown user interface toolkit (although it originally used Motif, which wasn't open source). A Qt fan, Matthias Ettrich, did an experimental port of GIMP to Qt, and gave a presentation about it at the 1998 Linux Kongress. That wasn't received well, and resulted in the kind of spat that is typical of the open source community. People were young and tempers were hot.

Well, in cases like this, the only solution is to go at it yourself, and that's what happened. It took several false starts, but on the last day of May 1999, Matthias Elter and Michael Koch started KImageShop: read the mail, because it's quite funny how we did and didn't follow the original vision (KOM was a Corba-like thing, and if you have never heard of Corba, that's probably because Corba was a terrible idea.).

Development started, and believe it or not, there's still some actual code dating back to then in Krita's codebase, though most of the remaining code is opening and closing brackets.

And then development stopped, because, well, doing a proper image manipulation application isn't easy or quick work. And then it started again, and stopped again, and started again. There were several maintainers before I was looking for a nice, performant codebase for a painting application in 2003. I didn't know C++; but I had written the first book on using Python and Qt together.

Krita had been rewritten to the point where it didn't even have a paint tool, so that was the first thing I wanted to have. That was not easy!

But... Being open about it not being easy meant people got interested, and we started gaining contributors. And so, in 2004, we had a small team of enthusiastic people. A lot happened in that year; Camilla Boemann rewrote the core of Krita so we had autosizing layers, Adrian Page wrote an OpenGL based backend, Cyrille Berger added the first inklings of plugins and scripting. Our approach was still pretty technical, though, and we didn't manage to make a release.

It was only in 2005 that we released Krita as part of KOffice 1.4. Still very immature, but everyone agreed that it was promising, and we got nice reviews in some Linux magazines -- that was still a thing in 2005.

Then came 2006. And Krita 1.5 was released with support for color managed CMYK. Krita 1.5 also had the short-lived real color mixing watercolor layer feature, but that was too complex to maintain. And in the same year, we released Krita 1.6: Linux Journal called it State of the Art. We thought it was a pretty mature release, but artists who gave us feedback still found it lacking a lot.

And then disaster struck. Qt3 reached end-of-life, and Qt4 was released. The porting effort was huge and took ages, also because we, foolishly, decided to rewrite a lot of the 1.x code to make it possible to share components between KOffice applications. The rewrite took all of 2007, 2008 and half of 2009.

In the meantime, when we were desperately trying to fix all the bugs the porting and rewrite were introducing, we held our first fundraiser: that was to get Wacom tablets for testing Krita with, complete with art pens. I am still using the Wacom Intuos 3 we got way back then!

In 2009, we then released Krita 2.0. It was not really usable, but it was important for us to have something out that we could get people to test. Krita 2.1 was also released in 2009. We also got our first sponsored developer, Lukáš Tvrdý, whose task specifically was to fix all bugs. Later on, he also improved the performance of Krita's brushes.

As Krita gained recognition, we got more and more feedback, and in 2010, we decided to have a big sprint in Deventer where we were going to determine what we wanted Krita to be for our users. A Photoshop clone? A GIMP clone? A Corel Painter Clone? Or something that was itself. Who were we making Krita for?

The answer is true to today: we are making Krita for digital artists who are making art, mostly from scratch. Painting with Krita should be fun for artists of all kinds, all over the world.

But it would be some time before we'd reach that goal. 2010 saw Krita 2.2 and Krita 2.3: we thought that Krita 2.3 was ready for artists, but it was only with Krita 2.4 and 2.5 in 2012 that Krita really became pretty good! In fact, we had a laser-precise focus: for some years our rallying call was “Make Krita usable for David Revoy!” – partly silly, but also partly serious. We spent time during dev sprints observing artists and allowing them to live comment on what they liked and didn’t like, without the observing developers being allowed to open their mouths, wether in rebuttal or to help the artist out.

In the meantime, I had created the Krita Foundation so we could do fund-raisers to sponsor full-time developers. The first developer we sponsored was Dmitry Kazakov, who is still the lead developer for Krita.

Back then, Krita was still part of KDE's office suite, but it was called Calligra now, because of an interminable conflict with just one KOffice developer, the KWord maintainer. All that energy spent on that conflict could have gone into development, it was a huge waste. From the Calligra days onwards, development went much smoother. Nokia was now involved with Calligra's development, and the resulting improvement in the central libraries all applications used also helped improve Krita, though, conversely, the complexity needed to support a very diverse set of applications is still burdening us today.

Years went by. 2013 was completely uneventful. We made our releases (2.6, 2.7), did our fund-raisers, added features (like animation support), created a version of Krita with a special user interface for touch/tablet users (sponsored by Intel: we still have a great relationship with Intel, our main development fund sponsor). It was great to see the art people were creating, great to get feedback from users and just plain fun to tackle development.

In 2014 we ported Krita to Windows, also because of the touch/tablet version of Krita. And we released eleven versions of Krita 2.9, which was really a very fine release.

Also in 2014, we had our first Kickstarter campaign. Kickstarter was new and fresh back then, and it was really exciting. We got nearly 700 people to sponsor Krita! And we ported Krita to MacOS. For some time we would do a Kickstarter campaign every year, and they were fun both for us and for our developers, we'd set stretch goals and let people vote on what they wanted us to work on.

I still had a day job back then, so it was all work done in the evenings and weekends, and on the train during my commute.

We also started porting Krita, again, this time to Qt5. That wasn't as hard as the port from Qt3 to Qt4, but we lost support for the tablet version of Krita because Qt5 made it impossible to properly integrate our OpenGL based canvas in the touch version of Qt5's libraries. We spent months and quite a bit of money on that, but it was no-go.

Then I broke my shoulder and lost my day job, with Blue Systems, and suddenly the Krita Foundation needed to pay me, too. Fortunately, we found a sponsor for the port to Qt5, and that was my first sponsored project.

In 2016, we released Krita 3.0 -- it wasn't as good as Krita 2.9, but thankfully we still remembered the pain we had when doing a rewrite combined with a port, so we simply did the port first, and didn't combine it with a huge rewrite. This had animation!

We also released our first and last paper artbook. A huge amount of work for me, which already started in 2015 and in the end, a huge money sink, too.

We worked on improved versions of Krita 3.0 all through 2016 and 2017. 2018 rolled by, and we released Krita 4.0, with the results of Kickstarter-sponsored work. Though not all of it, because in 2017, I was preoccupied with the Great Tax Disaster. The Dutch tax office wanted us to pay tens of thousands of euros in VAT for the work Dmitry had done; that's when we hired a proper accountant instead of a small business administration office in a local town.

When we went public with the problems, donations streamed in and PIA made a huge donation: they basically covered the bill.

To avoid having this happen again, I brought all commercial activities into a separate one-person company. That became even more important, because in 2017, we put Krita in the Windows Store. That was the second store, after we put Krita on the Steam Store in 2014. Since then, we have released Krita on Epic Store, the Google Play Store and now even on the Apple MacOS Store.

Time went on, and in 2018, we released Krita 4.1, in 2019 4.2, in 2020 Krita 4.3 and 4.4. Reasonably quiet years of active development, growing user base and popularity. More and more sponsored developers joined in, and Krita made a lot of progress.

Although the Krita YouTube channel already existed, in 2019, we asked Ramon Miranda to work on regular videos for our channel:

By now we've built up quite a list of impressive tutorials of all kinds, teaching everything from digital painting itself to creating brush presets!

And then development slowed down. In 2020, the effects of Covid19 became more and more clear. We couldn't have sprints anymore, so no hyper-productive in-person development sessions anymore. Team members got sick, for some, really sick. Long Covid has crashed my own productivity: there are many days when I can do nothing but lie down in a darkened room.

By 2021, even though we hadn't had to port Krita to a new version of Krita, we still decided to change vector layers from ODG to SVG, which made Krita files incompatible between versions 4 and 5. A major change in file format, in other words. We're still working on new versions of Krita 5: 5.1 in 2022, 5.2 in 2023.

The future promises a very nice Krita 5.3!

And also, groan, a Krita 6.0 because we have started porting Krita to Qt6. And that's no fun, because Qt6 is again a huge change in what Qt offers and allows.

And that was 25 years of working on something I started dabbling in because I wanted to draw a map for a fantasy novel on my laptop!

Join the Development Fund with a monthly donation. Or make a one-time donation here.

Krita Monthly Update – Edition 15

Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It is time for the monthly news update brought to you by the Krita-promo team. Let us take a look at the highlights of krita community and development for this month.

Development report

Our users on chromebooks faced a nasty bug which crashed krita on startup. So we made a 5.2.2.1 hotfix release for Android Play Store only to fix this bug. It also contains other fixes from the stable branch, but be warned there is a known crash regression with importing audio.
A proper 5.2.3 release for all supported platforms will be made as soon as possible, hopefully in the next few weeks.
At the time of writing, nightly builds for macOS are still blocked by a signing-related issue. Once that is resolved, automated builds for all supported platforms will be up and running again. That is the culmination of months of work by lead developer Dmitry Kazakov, together with macOS developer Iván Yossi, Android developer Sharaf Zaman, Windows contributor Simon Ra, and others, in a refactor of Krita’s build system.
Feature Request: Palette in Toolbar has been marked “solved” by freyalupen’s most recently merged code. Add docker box toolbar widget allows the user to add any docker to the toolbar in a temporary popup widget similar to the “choose brush preset” one in Painter’s Tools.
A problem with certain RBGA brushes has been solved and will be part of the next release. Users were experiencing lagging and freezing when accessing these brushes. The thread makes an interesting read as it’s a “live” look at an issue being revealed and it shows how helpful it is when users conduct testing. You can read the thread here.
Ken_Lo has been accepted as a student for Google Summer of Code, to work on pixel perfect hand-drawn lines.
In addition to various recorder related fixes by @freyalupen, the FFmpeg profiles in the recorder docker are improved by @Ralek. We congratulate @Ralek on their first contribution to Krita.
When entering canvas-only mode, the document used to jump abruptly and reposition itself. @YRH helped in solving this issue.
Deif_Lou has improved performance of the fill tool making it faster.
Ken Lo added an option in the settings to pick default export file type.

Grum999 has looked into improving Krita’s API for python plugins and as a start, chose to implement a scratchpad API that adds functionality to the scratchpad.
Emir Sari sent patches to help Krita build on Haiku OS.

Community report

March 2024 Monthly Art Challenge

The April Monthly Art Challenge, Animal Curiosity, inspired submissions from 26 artists. @jimplex was voted the winner with this creative piece: Firefly by jimplex

The theme for the May 2024 challenge is “reflection.” You can get all the details here. We already have some ideas and pre-work flying around in the discussion and WIP thread. Have a look – something might inspire your creativity.

Featured artwork

Krita-Artists members nominated 9 images for the featured artwork banner. When the mid-month poll ended, these are the 5 that won a place on the banner. All 5 will be entered into the Best of Krita-Artists 2024 competition next January.

Cabin in the woods-RH by Rohit Hela

Detailed Portrait by denjay5

Nier Automata by IvanGilbertt

Alien Senator by DavB

My uni project by smollbirb

Nominations for the April/May poll are open until May 11, 2024.

Noteworthy plugin

Blender-Krita link plugin for texture editing by heisenshark

This plugin has a fresh update that the author describes as a “big overhaul of how the plugin works.” Check out the thread on Krita-artists.org here.

Tutorial of the month

Krita’s newest tutorial by Ramon Miranda features an interview with Rakurri, the creator of Rakurri’s brush pack containing more than 200 brushes made just for Krita. Ramon demonstrates his favorite ones such Glow FX, Liquid Bristle and the vegetation brushes.

Notable changes in code

This section has been compiled by freyalupen. Apr 3 - May 2, 2024

Stable branch (5.2.2+):

Bugfixes:

Android: x86_64 - Fix crash on startup on x86_64, which was being encountered on Chromebooks. (BUG:485707) (merge request, Sharaf Zaman)
Brush Presets - Speedup loading of GBR brushtips, and brush presets with embedded resources. (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
Brush Engines - Fix animated brushtips' sequence order in the Pixel Engine. This also introduces a small change to Color Smudge animated brushtips, where the first dab is now used for getting smudge information instead of painting. (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
Color Sampler - Don't reset redo when doing color picking. (BUG:485910)(merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)
Calligraphy Tool - Fix "Use tablet angle" Calligraphy Tool ignoring tilt. (BUG:485709) (merge request, George Gianacopoulos)
Grids - Fix Grid visual glitches with Solid subdivision style. (BUG:484889) (merge request, Grum 999)
Transform Tool - Fix bug where transformed image had aliased left edge. (BUG:484677) (commit, Deif Lou)
File Formats: XCF - Show an error when trying to import unsupported version 3 xcf files instead of loading an empty canvas. (BUG:485420) (commit, Halla Rempt)

Nightly build regression bugfixes:

Layer Stack - Fix wrong layer being active on opening document. In the case of single-layer documents, no layer was active, which caused crashes under some circumstances. (BUG:480718) (merge request, Dmitry Kazakov)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Features:

Toolbars, Shortcuts - Add Docker Box action that shows a docker in a temporary box, which can be added to a toolbar or assigned to shortcut. (merge request, Freya Lupen)
Canvas Input Shortcuts - Add new Tool Invocation action, "Activate with Other Color". This can be bound to a key+mousebutton, where holding those keys will cause, for instance, the Freehand Brush to paint with the background instead of foreground color. (merge request, ziplantil)

Bugfixes:

Fill Tools - Improve performance of fill tools, so that time taken depends on fill size and not image size. Filling also now starts on mouse-press and not mouse-release. (merge request, Deif Lou)
Brush Engines - Fix assert on selecting RGBA brushes in incorrect format. (BUG:484115) (commit, Agata Cacko)
Transform Tool - Fix free transform inverted rotation when flipped over in perspective. (merge request, Stuffins)
Transform Tool - Fix Vector Layer scale+shear transforms behaving incorrectly. (BUG:485689) (merge request, Stuffins)
Selection Tools - Fix issue making selections on color-labeled reference selections. (BUG:486419) (commit, Deif Lou)
General - Make Export's default file type changeable, in Configure->General->File Handling. (merge request, Ken Lo)
Recorder Docker - Reworked default recorder docker FFmpeg profiles. If canvas size changes during recording, the export profiles now keep aspect instead of stretching (BUG:429326). Issues with resize, result preview, and extend result are avoided (BUG:455006, BUG:450790, BUG:485515, BUG:485514). For MP4, detect whether openh264 or libx264 is present instead of using separate profiles. (merge request, Ralek Kolemios)
Recorder Docker - Make sure Recorder export duration label updates when FPS is changed. (merge request, Ken Lo)
Comics Manager Docker - Fix Comic export crop margins' right and bottom being swapped. (merge request, Bob Raskoph)
Scripting - Fix waitForDone() not waiting for transform mask update. (BUG:485053) (merge request, Agata Cacko)

Nightly build regression bugfixes:

Recorder Docker - Fix automatic timelapse recording checkbox. (BUG:482378) (merge request, Freya Lupen)
Recorder Docker - Fix recording stopping when another document was opened. (merge request, Freya Lupen)

These changes are made available for testing in the following Nightly builds:

Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.2+): Linux - Windows - macOS [not yet] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)
Unstable "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS [unsigned currently] - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)

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Krita Monthly Update – Edition 14

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the latest development and community news curated for you by the Krita-promo team.

Development report

Official Recap of February’s Online Development Meeting

Last month we provided highlights of the video meeting led by Halla, Krita’s Maintainer. She has since published a post on Krita.org presenting the challenges and opportunities that came out of that meeting.

One of the largest projects this year is porting Krita from Qt5 to Qt6 (Qt is the framework upon which Krita is built). This is a major change and will require serious development time. We invite you to read more about the considerations of this project as well as other ideas the Krita team is currently discussing and changes that have taken place within Krita’s development team. You can access it here.

Highlights of this month

YRH tackled a feature request to prevent the canvas from shifting position when toggling canvas-only mode. Deif_Lou assisted by also merging a fix addressing a jump in canvas position.
Grum999 identified an opportunity to improve grids and guides management such that settings are now saved in Krita documents. The grid offset on/off toggle was improved so that user settings are retained. Isometric grids may now be measured more accurately (Note: the original code was preserved and is now called “Isometric Legacy” to ensure compatibility with older documents).
The most recent text tool merge from Wolthera for 5.3 means Krita can now store units (relative units for letter spacing and font size). Wolthera reports that about half the properties are now implemented.

There should have been a video here but your browser does not seem to support it. (Video created by Wolthera)
Stable and unstable nightly builds are back following the migration to GitLab CI, with the exception of macOS which is being worked on. On Android, Krita will no longer be built for the 32-bit x86 architecture.

Community report

March 2024 Monthly Art Challenge

Krita-Artists members outdid themselves by creating 41 images for Mythmaker’s challenge: Marvellous Metal. The quality and calibre of the entries made it tough to choose only two when it was time to vote. Elixiah emerged the winner with these two images:

Vintage Forgotten Ford by elixiah

Wildkat-Engine by elixiah

Elixiah asked MangooSalade and jimplex, who tied for second place, to choose the April challenge and they have come up with a good one! Our new topic is Animal Curiosity and this time there is an additional challenge. Read all about it here.

We’re Asking for Ideas

Mythmaker started a very positive conversation about improving the way images are selected for the featured artwork banner on krita-artists.org website. We have had nomination processes in place for some time which have been somewhat effective (and you’ll see the results of our first featured artwork poll in the next section) but we haven’t landed on a system that makes it easy to nominate artwork and is manageable administratively. Take a glance at some of the proposed ideas – something in there might trigger a new idea for you to share.

Featured artwork

We held our very first monthly poll for the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner. Five images were added to the banner so thank you for nominating and voting. Dragon Courier by desenhunos was the #1 pick.

The March/April nomination thread will be open until April 10, 2024. Here’s how you can participate.

Noteworthy plugin

HCL Sliders by Lucifer “HCL Sliders is a color slider plugin with various hue/colorfulness/lightness models for use with the sRGB color profile and its linear counterpart.” More details about the plugin’s capabilities can be found in Lucifer’s post.

Tutorial of the month

Wrap Around Mode by David Revoy In just two minutes, you’ll learn what makes this feature so powerful.

Notable changes in code

This section has been compiled by freyalupen. Mar 6 - Mar 31, 2024

Stable branch (5.2.2+):

Bugfixes:

File Formats: PNG - Fix lines in export of 32-bit CMYK images to PNG, by preventing multiple color conversions. (BUG:475737) (merge request, Rasyuqa A H (Kampidh))
Usability - Fix a jump in canvas position when panning after going to Canvas-Only mode. (commit, Deif Lou)
Linux: KDE Plasma - Fix Krita's menu not appearing in Plasma's global menu. (BUG:483170) (merge request, Halla Rempt)
Text Tool - Fix a crash when pasting font family name into rich text editor and saving changes without hitting enter first. (BUG:484066) (merge request, Igor Danilets)

Features:

General - Tweak the Welcome Page. New/Open File labels moved beside the icons. Recent file thumbnails have a tinted background. (merge request, Agata Cacko)
General - Remove the development fund banner from the Welcome Page, as it was ineffective. (commit, Halla Rempt)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Features:

Text - Allow keeping track of relative font units (em). (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
Enclose and Fill Tool - Support gap closing in the Enclose and Fill tool. (commit, Deif Lou)
Enclose and Fill Tool - Add "Include contour regions" option to the "All regions" method in the Enclose and Fill tool. (commit, Deif Lou)
Vector Layers - Add an option to disable/enable anti-aliasing on Vector Layers. (merge request 1, merge request 2, Grum 999)
Grids and Guides Docker - Various improvements to Grid and Guides. Grid and Guide properties are now saved into .kra files. New type of isometric grid that ensures the cell lengths match. (merge request, Grum 999)
Animation Dockers - Add Lock Docker button to animation dockers. (merge request, reinold rojas)
Scripting - Add various methods to Scratchpad API related to fill, zoom, and pan. (merge request, Grum 999)

Bugfixes:

Layer Stack- Fix a crash when using color labeled layers as a reference for selection if color label includes a mask. (BUG:480601) (commit, Deif Lou)
SVG - Fix saving 'paint-order' tag for non-text shapes. (commit, Dmitry Kazakov)
Wide Gamut Color Selector- Fix Wide Gamut Color Selector shortcut popup closing immediately if the cursor is moving while triggering it. (merge request, reinold rojas)
Usability - When switching to and from Canvas Only mode, keep the canvas in the same position. (merge request, Maciej Jesionowski)

These changes are made available for testing in the following builds:

Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.2+): Linux - Windows - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)
Unstable "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha): Linux - Windows - Android (arm64-v8a / arm32-v7a / x86_64)

(macOS builds will be available in the future.)

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What We're Up To In 2024

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It's 2024 already, and even already March. Like last year, we had a video call with all sponsored developers, artists and volunteers to discuss what we achieved last year, figure out the biggest issues we're facing and set the priorities for this year.

Challenges

A very serious issue is that the maintainer of the Android and ChromeOS port of Krita has become too busy to work on Krita full-time. The Android and ChromeOS versions of Krita both use the Android platform, and that platform changes often and arbitrarily. This means that Sharaf has spent almost all of his time keeping Krita running on Android (and ChromeOS), instead of, as we had planned, work on a dedicated tablet user interface for Krita on Android. And since that maintenance work now is not being done, we're having a really big problem there. Additionally, since KDE has retired the binary factory and moved binary builds to invent.kde.org's continuous integration system, we don't have automatic builds for Android anymore.

We've also lost another sponsored developer. They were sick for quite some time, but recently they blogged they had started to work a different job. Since they were especially working on maintaining the libraries Krita is dependent on and were very good at upstreaming fixes, they will also really be missed.

Finally, we got Krita into the Apple MacOS store last year. However, two years ago, Krita's maintainer, that's me, changed her legal name. Now the certificates needed to sign the package for the store have expired, and we needed to create new certificates. Those have to have the signer's current legal name, and for some reason, it's proving really hard get the store to allow that the same developer, with the same ID and code but a different legal name to upload packages. We're working on that.

What We Did Last Year

Of course, we released Krita 5.2 and two bugfix releases for Krita 5.2. We'll do at least one other bugfix release before we release Krita 5.3.

The audio system for Krita's animation feature got completely overhauled, ported away from Qt's QtMultimedia system to MLT, The storyboard feature got improved a lot, we gained JPEG-XL support just in time for Google's Chrome team to decide to drop it, because there was nobody supporting it... We also refactored the system we use to build all dependent libraries on all platforms. Well, work on MacOS is still going on, with PyQt being a problem point. Of course, there were a lot of other things going on as well.

Wolthera started rewriting the text object, and mostly finished that and now is working on the tool to actually write, modify and typeset text. This is a huge change with very impressive results!

What We Hope To Do This Year

Parts of this list is from last year, part of it is new.

One big caveat: now that the KDE project has released the first version of KDE Frameworks for Qt6, porting Krita to Qt6 is going to have to happen. This is a big project, not just because of disappearing functions, but very much because of the changes to the support for GPU rendering. On Windows, OpenGL drivers are pretty buggy, and because of that, Qt5 offered the possibility to use the Angle compatibility layer between applications that use OpenGL and the native Direct3D library for GPU rendering. That's gone, and unless we rewrite our GPU rendering system, we need to put Angle back into the stack.

All in all, it's pretty likely that porting to Qt6 will take a lot of time away from us implementing fun new features. But when that is done we can start working on a tablet-friendly user interface, provided we can still release Krita for Android.

That's not to say we don't want to implement fun new featurs!

Here's the shortlist:

Implement a system to create flexible text balloons and integrate that with the text object so the text flows into the balloons
Implement a new layer type, for comic book Frameworks
Provide integration with Blender. (This is less urgent, though, since there is a very useful third-party plugin for that already: Blender Layer)
Replace the current docker system with something more flexible, and maintained.
Implement a system to provide tool presets
Create a new user interface for handling palettes
Add an animation audio waveform display
Add support for animation reference frame workflow.

We also discussed using the GPU for improving performance. One original idea was to use the GPU for brushes, but the artists argued that the brush performance is fine, and what's way too slow are the liquefy transform tool, transform masks and some filters. In the end, Dmitry decided to investigate

optimizing transform masks on the GPU

And there's the most controversial thing of all: should we add AI features to Krita? We have had several heated discussions amongst developers and artists on the mailing list and on invent.kde.org.

The artists in the meeting argued that generative AI is worthless and would at best lead to bland, repetitive templates, but that assistive AI could be useful. In order to figure out whether that's true, we started investigating one particular project: AI-assisted inking of sketches. This is useful, could replace a tedious step when doing art while still retaining the artistic individuality. Whether it will actually make it to Krita is uncertain of course, but the investigation will hopefully help us understand better the issue, the possibilities and the problems.

Note: we won't be implementing anything that uses models trained on scraped images and we will make sure that the carbon footprint of the feature doesn't exceed its usefulness.