Krita, a free professional digital painting software
An amazing digital drawing software, especially for beginners
Krita is an amazing software dedicated to painting and illustration. It offers the user a rich and intuitive graphic design framework, providing many tools not included in a classic image processing software such as Photoshop or GIMP.
This is true of its vast array of brushes or original features such as multi-hand painting or mirror painting.
Particular care has been given to color management: support for numerous color spaces, different color management systems and certain cinema standards such as OpenColorIO or HDR painting.
In addition, it has been designed to facilitate exchanges with other applications, supporting import or export formats such as OpenRaster or PSD (Photoshop).
Krita is particularly appreciated for creating storyboards, comics, illustrations, matte painting and special effects. It is increasingly used in video games and animation in the design and graphic research phase.
The result of a collaboration between developers and artists
Initially developed by KDE as part of its Calligra desktop suite, it has acquired its independence and personality under the impetus of a strong community of developers and artists looking for a design tool that is both powerful and free. This is its strength and originality: artists such as David Revoy work closely with the developers to ensure that the software best meets the needs of users.
Since 2014, the Krita Foundation has launched regular crowdfunding campaigns that have greatly contributed to enriching and consolidating the software.
It is beginning to make its entry into the artistic courses of higher education (Arts and Technology of the Image department of the University of Paris 8, Computer Graphics, Web Design and Multimedia of Cergy Pontoise, but also at the ArtFX art school, the ENSAPB architecture school, etc.).
Versions and platforms
Linux compatible since its creation, Krita has been available for Windows since March 2014 and a still incomplete version is proposed for macOS since 2016. You can access the different versions from the Download page of the official website. For Linux users, we recommend the Appimage.
Krita is designed to be able to draw with a graphics tablet.
