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KDE GUI Graphics Software Linux

Krita/KOffice Preview Version and Video Available 181

Posted by michael from the smiley-face dept.
xiando writes "Developers aim at making Krita a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience with other light-duty image programs like Paint Shop Pro should feel right at home. LinuxReviews has a 5.5 MB preview video by developer Bart Coppens available, showing how the app looks and feels. Check it out or download the source preview packages by Daniel Molkentin to try it yourself. Developers hope to make Krita a part of the KDE office suite KOffice 1.4, scheduled spring 2005."
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Krita/KOffice Preview Version and Video Available More

Krita/KOffice Preview Version and Video Available

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  • Krita Fun Facts (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:13PM (#10363961)

    "Krita" means 'chalk' or 'crayon' in Swedish. "rita" means 'to draw'.

    IKN.

  • finally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dwgranth ( 578126 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:14PM (#10363972) Journal
    after messing with the gimp for a bit (sounds dirty doesnt it).. i am relieved to know there is a simpler program for linux out there where i can do my image editing... not saying gimp is bad.. just a little hard to figure out at certain points
    • Are you sure it's gimp 2.x that you tried. Since 2.x the gimp has come a long way. I started messing with it, in minutes I was doing all sorts of nice affects.

  • Techn-Babelfish Translation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:15PM (#10363990)
    "Developers aim at making Krita a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience with other light-duty image programs like Paint Shop Pro should feel right at home."
    • Translation: We don't know how Adobe does all that other cool stuff, so we're going to just deliver the basics that have been around for about a decade.
    • There is already Gimp for the other stuff.

    • Better Translation (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      For the 60% of people that just want to view their picture, resize it, and do some various simple edits... he's a program for you.

      Seriously, whilst Adobe is an excellent program for high-end image editing, it's not the be-all-end-all. For many users, Adobe is very much overkill.

      While I do use the functionality of strong programs such as PhotoShop every now and then, I've found the PSP interface quite convenient for much of what I use. At this point I'm stuck between PSP and GIMP, with GIMP having been m
      • Seriously, whilst Adobe is an excellent program for high-end image editing, it's not the be-all-end-all. or many users, Adobe is very much overkill.

        Yeah, dude. Microsoft too is an excellent program for low-end disk operating, it's not the be-all-end-all. or many users, Microsoft is very much overkill.
    • Well of course! You don't run before you learn to walk. You don't build the roof before you lay the foundation. While the basics have been around for over a decade, users still demand them. They're not going to accept an automobile that won't drive, no matter how advanced the emission control system is.

  • I have used (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dfiguero ( 324827 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:17PM (#10364020)
    Paint Shop Pro in the past because it was a good and easy program compared to Photoshop and have used Gimp but find it to be a bit more complicated than PSP. Still Gimp is an excellent choice for mst image manipulation operations. I just hope Krita brings the ease of use and intuitive part of PSP to Linux.

  • Nice (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems to be an application linux has been missing. While gimp is great imho it's simply overkill for most users and though I don't think gimp's interface is nearly as terrible as a lot of people want us to believe it is simply unfamiliar for someone who has only experience with paint shop pro for example. /me is looking forward to krita being released.

  • Paint Shop Pro basic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darkwhite ( 139802 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:17PM (#10364026)
    Paint Shop Pro's functionality has been anything but basic for the past three releases. In fact, in some areas (like vector layers) it's been far superior to Photoshop for a long time.
    • Yes, after watching my brother get completely confused with basic stuff such as the concept of multiple types of pasting in PSP I really don't think you could describe it as something a computer-illiterate person could pick up and use.
    • I think Paint Shop pro is called basic because of it's basic pricing. Heck, it can't be good if it costs less than a new car ;)
      I have used PSP since version 5 and I have also played with photoshop. I think psp is very competitive in features people use.

      I especially like the new scripting functionality. You can automate a lot of common fixes/thumbnailing...
      • The other issue is the name is very close to some of the crappiest software you can find known as Print Shop Pro. Back when I used windows, I prefered Paint Shop Pro over Photoshop. My Mac buddy insisted I was using amatuer software since obviously on a Mac he used Photoshop. After explaining the huge difference between Paint Shop Pro and and Print Shop Pro, I got him to atleast believe Paint Shop Pro was just a step below Photoshop. Then once you compare price/features/performance (smaller memory footprint

    • I agree with parent.

      I have been using PSP professionally in both web graphics design and photographic work for years. The last few releases have had both macro language capabilities at the top end and customizable filters at the pixel by pixel bottom end. I haven't done much with PSP's vector graphics, but I understand that it, too, is solidly done. There is no way that PSP can be called "basic". These are amazing features for a package that can also be used by a graphics neophyte.

      Krista will have to prov

      • My Canon A40 works just fine in Linux, using Digikam [sourceforge.net] (via gphoto2 [gphoto.org]). A large number [teaser.fr] of Canon and Minota cameras are supported under Linux. Also, many Canon [linuxprinting.org] and Minolta [linuxprinting.org] printers are supported.

        I agree about a native PSP for Linux - that would rock - but have you tried it with Wine [winehq.com]?

        • many Canon and Minolta printers are supported.

          I spent a fair bit of time trying to find a workable linux driver for a Canon i560 printer a few months ago. There isn't one. Since then, I've upgraded to the Canon i9900, which does awesome large format photographic prints, but AFAIK there is no linux driver for this one either.

          I think it would be easy to get most of the Canon office printers to work under linux, but their newer line of photographic printers is another story.

          OTOH, you are right about the Mi

    • I would agree. PSP can do some amazing things. Even though this may get me modded into oblivion - I think it's functionality is at least as good as GIMP, and the interface is more intuitive.

      If Jasc would come out with a linux version, it would probably be the first commercial product for linux I would buy.

  • Looks Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:18PM (#10364029) Homepage Journal
    It looks like this project has been going for some time and potentially very interesting. I am primarily a KDE user although I run GIMP under KDE and have done for several years. I've learned enough of GIMP to be fairly competent with it. I kinda like it now I've learned how to use it. Although I've always hoped for a "Kimp" using the QT toolkit although with the exact same functionality.

    I might give this thing a try but as of yet I'm not about to unlearn my Gimp!

    Nick...

    • Re:Looks Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

      by Illissius ( 694708 )
      Try the GTK-Qt [kde-look.org] Theme Engine [freedesktop.org]; with it, widgets in the GIMP (and GTK apps in general) look exactly the same as widgets in any other Qt app ;).
      • I havent tried this yet; but does it integrate menu's also (I have KDE set up like an Amiga or Mac (Where the applications menu's appear accross the top bar of the screen.

        Nick.

        • Re:Looks Interesting (Score:3, Informative)

          by Illissius ( 694708 )
          I doubt it. All this does is make GTK widgets look like Qt widgets; as I understand it, it draws GTK things by first getting Qt to draw the same thing offscreen, and then copying it to where the GTK thing is. Works damn well, though.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <stevehenderson@NOspam.gmail.com> on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:18PM (#10364030)
    Developers aim at making Krita a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience...

    Are these people running Linux?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by telstar ( 236404 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:25PM (#10364107)
      "Developers aim at making Krita a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience...

      Are these people running Linux?"
      • Which came first ... the chicken or the egg?

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by StevenHenderson ( 806391 )
        Exactly...very well said. If only it were a different way, but you know your [insert computer-illiterate family member] isn't going to be running this.
      • the omelette.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by H0p313ss ( 811249 )

        Which came first ... the chicken or the egg?

        A good question, but getting people like my kids to want to use Linux means they have to be able to do what they want and need to do. OpenOffice is solving lots of this, so is gaim and FireFox. Can you imagine trying to teach a 12 year old to use GIMP? I showed my kids ms paint when they were less than 10 and they got it, this would not be true of the GIMP. Any application that requires a whole website as a tutorial is not going to attract the casual users.

        • Can you Imagen giving a kid TRS-DOS and a BASIC Interpreter? how about even just MS-DOS? I learned a lot when I was 10-12 working on these same environments. What makes GIMP so much more difficult. For the most part the GIMP is a fairly simple application that I learned to use in less than an hour. Previous experience was watching someone use Paint shop pro for a few minutes to edit a picture with some cool effects.
          • No shit. When did people get so lazy? (I was about to use "dumb" instead of lazy, but I don't think that would be accurate.)

            15 years ago, the average computer user was comfortable with the command line (DOS) and the hot word processor was Word Perfect 5.1.

            Nowadays, people bitch and moan when one mentions the command promp or having to learn a new desktop or word processor GUI. Oh, the horror!

            I just don't buy the ease-of-use argument in most cases.

            • 15 years ago or more, the only people using computers were generally more technically inclined than the average and very motivated. Or they didn't accomplish very much!

              That's the point.

              If you want high levels of adoption in the 21st century you have to aim a little lower.

          • GIMP is a fairly simple application
            Stunned silence
          • Most people seem to have trouble understaning ANYTHING which they don't get paid for. At least, that's my experience. For example: I'm 14, one of my computers runs linux (RH8). I spend a weekend or two learning the basic stuff, and when I'm finished, and go to have lunch, I leave it at the console, because that's what I've been working on. My parents, however, only understand how to use programs in X. I say to press Alt+F7, and that goes back into X. I have to say this again EVERY TIME I leave the co
        • Don't underestimate your kids - they are smarter than you.

          By 10 I was coding spectrum basic, and by 12 had a qualification from college in C, advanced C and advanced C++.

          Jeeez
    • My mother runs Linux, because Windows kept getting destroyed by worms and viruses. She could definitely use a really simple image viewer and editor.

      In fact, what I'd *really* like is a simple drag-drop application that prepares digital camera images to make them suitable for e-mailing. It would resize them to be no bigger than (say) 600 pixels in any dimension, apply a little sharpening, and save the result in the same directory as the original image, in JPEG format, with a "-email.jpg" file suffix.

      Explai
      • Imagemagick?

        You could probably do something along those lines with a really simple shell script (heh), which could live on her desktop as a little icon.

        Drag the images on, and watch the new files magically appear...
        • Yeah, it's getting it to appear as a drag-drop icon that's the hard part.

          If someone could make a tool to turn Perl or shell scripts into drag-drop KDE applications, I could do the rest...

  • Screenshots (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here [koffice.org].

  • Coral link (Score:5, Informative)

    by g-to-the-o-to-the-g ( 705721 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:20PM (#10364047) Homepage Journal
    I managed to coralize the first video just before the server went bye-bye: here [nyud.net]

  • Good grief (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Looking at that video this app looks very similar to photoshop! this would be a great app to get people to move from windows to linux, and leave photoshop behind... now we just need the ever important CMYK support and some poweruser features, and we'll finally have a photoshop killer, maybe?

    I know the gimp is too different for many people to replace photoshop, but maybe this will do it. Well, if it can't replace photoshop, at least it will take the place of paintshop pro. Very nice job!

  • Paint Shop Pro (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ZephyrXero ( 750822 )
    "light-duty image programs like Paint Shop Pro"... What the hell are they talking about!? PSP can do everything Photoshop can! I think it's a far superior program b/c of it's ease of use. I do tons of graphics and I never touch that Adobe filth... Thank God that someone is trying to make a better art program for Linux, Gimp tries to be Photoshop way too much, so I have to boot into Windows when I want to do graphics....
    • Thank god that there still are people like you who think psp is enogh for their needs. It's called "competitive advantage", knowing how to fully understand and work with Photoshop. Even if you only talk about the low-level optimizations that the Adobe team does for some operations (for example, it has MMX optimizations since version 4) - this makes Photoshop one of the fastest editors. What about layer styles (no-one else have those), layer sets, a powerfull brush engine, tons of freely available training o
    • I agree entirely. The only thing Photoshop is better at IMHO is image compression. Photoshop's "save for web" is simply beautiful. PSP wins every other battle though. My favorite PSP feature is the scroll wheel zooming.

      Take a large image, something huge, say 3200x2400. It will open zoomed at a faction of its actual size. But much of the time, you're not going to want it that small. In PSP, just place the mouse cursor in the the direction you want to go to and zoom in and out via the scroll wheel. Because t
      • To do this in other image editing programs, you have to mess with moving scrollbars around, which is ridiculously clumsy compared to PSP's elegant solution.

        Or how about Photoshop's 'Hold down spacebar, click and drag to move the viewport'. I think most of the people who find Photoshop unwieldy haven't discovered the keyboard shortcuts (z selects the zoom tool for example (and Why oh Why isn't there a keyboard shortcut for the zoom tool in Gimp)). Once you start to use them you'll find the workflow very

  • Shortcuts please (Score:2, Interesting)

    by . visplek . ( 788207 )
    As a shortcut junkie I really hope it uses some similar shortcuts as Photoshop or Paintshop Pro by default. This will make the switch much easier and make it more productive.
    • Every action in KDE can be assinged a shortcut. If there isn't one by default or you dislike the default, simply change it to use your favourite shortcut.

  • Much needed IMHO: GIMP for digital photographers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by egghat ( 73643 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:34PM (#10364201) Homepage
    IMHO the open source world needs a simple piece of software that does what every digital photographer needs:

    * Eliminate red eyes
    * Lighten, darken picture (or areas of the picture)
    * change contrast
    * sharpen contrast of picture
    * cut picture frames
    * import pictures from camera
    * archive pictures
    * send pictures to online printer

    Every piece is there. But not in one package and not user friendly.

    When you read about GIMP, many people think it's not as good as Photoshop, cause it does no colour separation. But GIMP is featurewise more than enough for millions of digital photographers. But sadly not usable for Joe Sixpack.

    IMHO open source could attract much more new users by making specialized solutions, that are simple to use, than by making the featurewise ultimate solution. But of course every developer is free to do what he wants to do ...

    Bye egghat.

  • I always liked... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:39PM (#10364240) Homepage
    Koffice, although its import/export filters historically have left something to be desired. Unlike OpenOffice, you just get a "clean" feel when you start it up. Not super bloated, and the default layout doesn't waste lots of screen space with wide margins around the image of the paper (I know that's a stupid nitpick, but it's been driving me nuts about OpenOffice.org)

    Now the KDE integration efforts for OO have made it quite a bit nicer to look at under KDE, for which I am grateful. But I still have to say I hope KOffice becomes a front runner for Linux office suites. If everybody uses the OO XML document standard that's in the works they can all compete on an equal footing, and Koffice documents could be read by OO on Windows. Koffice is a nice piece of work, but (partially due to their KDE only status) they have had a hard time getting the critical mass of developers needed to do what they're trying to do. Without the power of KDE+QT they wouldn't be anywhere NEAR where they are now, as far as I can tell.

    I wish Apple or someone would decide to use the KOffice setup (yeah that would be a lot of work, but still...) and give KOffice enough full time developers to get all the annoying little features stuffed in. Feature parity with OpenOffice.org is a must, and with MSOffice would be ideal. People are used to those features, and in a game like Office software that's all that matters.

    • Re:I always liked... (Score:3, Informative)

      by tyrione ( 134248 )

      The day Apple uses Qt for an Office setup will be the day OS X is dead.

      Either people are dense or just too damn lazy to learn Cocoa/Objective-C or they just don't understand the direction Apple intends for its Operating System and Applications--100% Cocoa.

      It's taken too damn long and like myself many former NeXT/Apple employees got tired of waiting for this transition but it is beginning to be exactly what Steve assured us during the merger between NeXT and Apple.

      Apple didn't develop Xcode so folk

  • Version "pre-development" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:41PM (#10364262)
    "Pre-development", do you mean this is before any code is written? Were those screenshots drawn in crayon? If you're releasing code for public consumption it's no longer pre-development. Call it alpha/beta whatever, but it's time to stop hedging bets and call everything "pre-pre-pre-release".

    If part of the greatness of the open source model is people using code early and often and giving you feedback, then punting all issues back saying "we're not going to support you, this is pre-pre-pre-release" just goes against that model.

  • Kai's Photo Soap (Score:5, Informative)

    by nuxx ( 10153 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:49PM (#10364341) Homepage
    If they want to make it easy, they are going to need to do something like what was done in Kai's PhotoSoap [scansoft.com]. This is the *only* image editing app (besides iPhoto) that I've seen computer novices be able to figure out. The tools were simple, made sense, and the UI was great. And it worked well, too.
  • KOffice being good and all, I still find OpenOffice better to use than KOffice.The features that openofice gives are excellent.
    For a windows migrator(is that a word?) like me I found OpenOffice the perfect office suite.Maybe its got to do with me like Gnome. :-P
  • those movies are great quality. you can see whats going on perfectly. anyone know how they did the screencapture? who do i talk to to ask how those movies were made for krita?

    kudos to the software writers. wow. simple and nice.

  • The Ugly Duality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GroundBounce ( 20126 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @01:06PM (#10364554)
    From the web page regarding "Why another paint program":

    "This program will integrate with KDE better than GIMP does."

    Great. Half of my applications integrate with KDE, and half integrate GNOME. (Actually, a few integrate with nothing).

    I've had to explain this to my Windows-using friends who I am trying to convince to use Linux, and not surprisingly they answer "Well, why not just use Windows, where everything integrates with everything else?". They don't buy the idealistic "more choice" argument when more choice means less functionality.

    • if you REALLY want "everything to integrate with everything else".
      True story: A friend retired his powerbook, bought a new one. He linked them via Firewire, and _dragged his home folder from 1 to the other_. That's it, it just magically copied all his settings, desktop setup, applications, EVERYTHING.
      Ever try to back up a Windows box? Look at Mozilla, some stuff in C:\Docuements and Settings\Foo\Application Data\Mozilla, others in C:\WINDOWS\mozilla.org, some other stuff, well, who knows where. MS apps
      • Funny, I did the same thing with my last Intel based PC running FreeBSD. Drag over home directory from NFS. Done!

        Of course not all of the application got copied over, nor did system-wide configurations. But it was the same with your Mac if you would be honest. Not every Mac app is installed to a specific user's desktop, and not every Mac configuration is user specific.

    • Re:The Ugly Duality (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mabinogi ( 74033 )
      You mean windows where Adobe have their own interface, every media player has a different interface, and Microsoft invent a new interface with each release of MS Office?

    • Except for every release of Microsoft Office since Office 97. And Visual Studio.NET and above. And of course .NET applications, which use the classic UI by default. And don't forget Media Player! Not to mention every third party DVD player I've seen on the platform. Oh, and Winamp.

      I won't even go in to detail about how every single App on Windows seems to invent its own standard dialog boxes.

      At the end of the day, if you want to use KDE, but find yourself running Gnome apps, then it sounds like you have a
  • I wonder if the author has, by any chance, had the possibility to play around with PaintShopPro lately. To call it a "light-duty" is one of the biggest over-simplifications I have ever seen. Just have a look at its features, it almost beats Gimp and is as close to Photoshop as one can get (treating, of course, PhotoShop CS as a reference point!)

  • Krita doesn't even touch GIMP in capabilities (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @01:45PM (#10365028) Homepage

    Given: I use Debian Sid/KDE 3.3 daily

    Observations: Krita has years to go. GIMP is not difficult to use. What people are describing as difficult seems to be weighed on the amount of time one has to read up on the GIMP tutorials versus reading up on the Help for Krita.

    Note: Digikam is what you want if you just want to touch up your digital images recently shot from your personal camera.

    GIMP and Cinepaint are what you want to use if you want to utilize your digital images and turn them into a portfolio.

    Comparing Krita to GIMP and declaring Krita the easy-to-use alternative is really misleading people. That's like comparing Scribus 1.2 to LaTeX/Kile and declaring Scribus 1.2 the only choice for PDF documentation publishing. Any one can tell you that if you are doing large technical documentation (books, presentations, etc..) you want to leverage LaTeX. But then you might have to get off your butt and learn it. Scribus isn't a breeze to learn but nothing like that visual feedback mechanism of instant gratification to give one a sense it is more intuitive, powerful and thus easier to utilize.

    Both Scribus 1.2 and LaTeX are wonderful tools. I recommend learning both and leveraging them where they make sense.

    Scribus 1.2 is like a poor man's scaled down version of Create 11, by Stone Design that runs only on OS X (100% Pure Cocoa app).

    Stone Design Create
    http://www.stone.com/Create_Screenshot.html

    • Comparing Krita to GIMP and declaring Krita the easy-to-use alternative is really misleading people.

      Indeed, when according to the Krita FAQ [kde.org] itself:

      Yet another Paint Program?

      ...different projects can work towards different design goals. The Gimp isn't designed for the creation of original art; it is an image manipulation application, not a paint application. Krita could become that free paint application that is still missing.

      What are Krita's Development Goals?

      Krita is primarily a painting p

  • honestly, it looks hella cool to me..

    one thing that I like about it, is that its not GTK!!! jesus.. i just freakin hate the way gtk apps look, feel, and operate.. the dialouge is definitely not my cup of tea.. so this, is like a blessing..

    the layout in itself, seems much more presentable, easier, and modern..

    i'm looking forward to atleast giving it a shot when I get home..

    i'll still love GIMP for some of the more technical things its able to do.. but i do get tired of gtk apps randomly crashing from tim

  • sweet! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    this and the QT/cocoa bindings will make it a good alternative to photshop on OSX.

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