Krita is a digital painting application designed for illustrators, concept artists, comic creators and animators. It provides a comprehensive painting environment with extensive brush customisation, layer management and drawing tools.
The application is particularly well suited to creating artwork from scratch. It supports graphics tablets and pressure-sensitive input, with a configurable workspace that helps artists concentrate on drawing rather than navigating menus.
Krita also offers tools for frame-by-frame animation, vector artwork and high dynamic-range painting. Its colour management capabilities make it suitable for demanding illustration and professional artwork workflows.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- More than 100 included brush presets covering painting, sketching, inking and texturing.
- Multiple configurable brush engines with custom brush tips, textures and dynamics.
- Brush stabilisers and smoothing options for producing controlled strokes.
- Pressure-sensitive tablet input, including configurable pressure and tilt behaviour.
- Painting assistants for perspective, vanishing points, ellipses and other geometric constructions.
- Layer management with paint, vector, filter, group, file and transparency mask layers.
- Non-destructive editing using filter masks, transform masks and adjustment operations.
- Selection tools supporting feathering, inversion, masking and geometric selections.
- Built-in vector tools for shapes, text, comic panels and speech bubbles.
- Wrap-around mode for creating seamless textures and repeating patterns.
- Frame-by-frame animation with a timeline, onion skinning, audio and playback controls.
- Animation export to image sequences and supported video formats.
- ICC colour management, CMYK workflows and OpenColorIO integration.
- High dynamic-range painting with OpenEXR and extended colour depth support.
- Import and export artwork using formats including PNG, TIFF, PSD and OpenRaster.
- Customisable dockers, workspaces, keyboard shortcuts and resource bundles.
- Extend functionality using Python scripting and plugins.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: krita.org
Support:
Developer: Krita Foundation, KDE
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Krita is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Painting Tools | |
|---|---|
| Krita | Edit and paint images; part of the KOffice office suite |
| MyPaint | Paint program with dynamic brushes for graphic tablets |
| GIMP | GNU Image Manipulation Program |
| Drawpile | Draw, paint, sketch and animate |
| AzPainter | Full color painting software |
| Tux Paint | Drawing and painting software designed for children |
| Milton | Infinite-canvas paint program |
| Vara | Minimalist digital painting tool |
| CorePaint | Paint app for C Suite |
| InfiniPaint | Collaborative, infinite space, infinite zoom, canvas note-taking/drawing app |
| BlockPaint | Terminal-based painting tool |
| Alchemy | Non-orthodox painting tool experimenting with alternative ways of drawing |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.