Krita 2.8 Released 75
JDG1980 writes "Krita, an open-source graphics editor, has been around since 2005, but no stable version existed for Windows users — until today. With the release of Krita 2.8, full and stable support for Windows users is finally a reality, thanks to input from KO GmbH and Intel. Krita brings some things to the table that GIMP does not: 16 bit per channel color support, adjustment layers, and a name that won't set off red flags at HR, just to list a few. You can download the Windows version here. Might be worth looking into, if you're tired of the lack of progress on GIMP and don't want to pay monthly "cloud" fees to Adobe."
Why so Anti-Gimp? (Score:5, Informative)
Krita is not competing with Gimp. Gimp is an image manipulation program like Photoshop. Krita is an image creation software like Illustrator. They are slightly different categories of software. Has the author, JDG1980, even looked at Krita's website? Since the author clearly has not read the site, please read "What are Krita's Development Goals?" for yourself here [krita.org].
Re:Why so Anti-Gimp? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, not Illustrator. More Corel Painter. Illustrator does vectors, Krita does raster and vectors.
GIMP has 16 and 32 bit editing support since 2.8 (Score:4, Informative)
So I don't know if the author entirely knows what he's writing about.
Re: tired of the lack of progress on GIMP (Score:5, Informative)
GIMP is very feature-rich already and to me seems to be in the stage where change is more incremental.
The single feature that prevents my wife from moving from Mac/Photoshop to Linux/GIMP is the lack of adjustment layers. This is the ability to non-destructively modify brightness/contrast/colour/etc. In GIMP, if you edit the contrast, then edit in another way, there is no way to re-manipulate the contrast again without losing information. As per the summary, Krita does have this capability. Apperently it's in development for GIMP.
Krita is used for "digital painting". (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GIMP has 16 and 32 bit editing support since 2. (Score:3, Informative)
No; 2.8 had the 16-bit GEGL engine, but the ability to import all the bits of a 16-bit TIFF and save in a 16-bit XCF is pending 2.10 - although you can check it out from git now.
Full suite (Score:5, Informative)
GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Darktable, Krita.
Complete amateur/semi-professional graphics artist toolkit.
Free of cost. Source code also available. Enjoy.
Re: tired of the lack of progress on GIMP (Score:4, Informative)
It gets worse. GIMP also has an atrocious, screen hogging interface that was clearly designed by someone who doesn't really understand the workflow of most professional users.
I agree it has a strange interface, which seems to be different to almost any other app, but I would not say screen-hogging. In fact one of the advantages of the wirerd design is that you can have a full-screen image and float the various toolboxes in front as you need them.
It's also slow. Very slow. For example, a 64 pixel Gaussian blur takes twice as long in GIMP to compute as it does Photoshop, the same for most other operations.
I don't know how it compares with other apps but a 64 pixel Gaussian blur on a large image [edmullen.net] takes just under 3 seconds.
The text tool is awful too.
It's a fair cop - yes it is pretty awful - difficult to position text, size at anything apart from a point size, etc.
GIMP is way over-promoted by FOSS zealots who usually can't accomplish much more than cropping a picture and applying a few filters to the entire image.
There are some real artists [libregraphicsworld.org] using it.
Re:Workflow Issues (Score:4, Informative)
One thing that immediately jumped out is the archaic (i.e. 1980's) method of drawing a straight line. In Gimp, this is super-easy...the last place you were drawing is where the origin of a straight line is. In Krita, it looks like you're stuck having to do it the old-fashioned way of dragging the line from one point to another
I'm guessing this is what you're looking for? http://userbase.kde.org/Krita/... [kde.org]