Krita for Mac

Krita for Mac is a FREE digital painting and illustration application. The app offers CMYK support, HDR painting, perspective grids, dockers, filters, painting assistants, and many other features you would expect.



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Highlights

• Multiple brush types for different art styles
• Layers, drawing assistants, stabilizers
• Animation tools to transform your artwork
• Brushes, patterns, and vector libraries
• Texture packs and page templates
• Plugins that add new functionality
• Share your artwork and get feedback to improve
• Give feedback to developers when new features and plugins are being created

Features

Interface and Workspace
The app has a user-friendly interface. In the settings menu, you can choose the color theme, which toolbars and dockers you want to use, and edit keyboard shortcuts. Save a given set of dockers as a workspace and switch between them. The canvas can be easily rotated and mirrored. The OpenGL canvas supports high-bit depth monitors. There is a large set of options available to create a no-distractions canvas-only painting mode.

Wrap-Around Mode
It is easy to create seamless textures and patterns now. Press the ‘W’ key while painting to toggle wrap-around mode. The image will make references of itself along the x and y axis. Continue painting and watch all of the references update instantly. No more clunky offsetting to see how your image repeats itself. You can even paint off the edge and it will automatically start painting on the top. It is one of those features you have to see for yourself.

Multiple Brush Engines and Blending Modes
A brush engine is more than just a typical brush pattern with settings changed. Each brush engine has its own logic and behavior. The included engines are pixel, smudge, duplicate, filter, hairy, hatching, texture, chalk, color smudge, curve, deform, dyna, experiment (Alchemy), grid, particle, sketch, and spray brushes. Brush settings can be saved as presets and shared. There are a staggering amount of blending modes available. The blending modes are arranged by category and have your favorites stored at the top of the list.

Advanced Selection and Masking Tools
Krita for Mac comes with many methods of selecting parts of your canvas in order to edit them. You can select with shapes such as rectangles and circle, paint your selection, polgon selection, select by color, select by Bezier. You can add, remove, or intersect to your selection. You can also make selection by layer contents by context clicking the layer and clicking “select opaque”. You can create a transparency layer by itself, or add one to an existing layer. This is great tool for non-destructive changes.

Symmetry Tools and Drawing Aids
Symmetry tools that go much further than basic mirroring. Take full control by being able to determine how many axis you need. Modify the origin center, angle, and smoothing parameters. Easy to toggle x and y mirror buttons in the top toolbar. Drawing aids such as perspective grids and shapes that have magnetic settings.

Filters and Effects
Filters can be used directly on a layer, or as filter masks or layers. The effect of a filter is previewed on the image itself. There are special effects like wave, oil paint, and emboss. Adjustments such as levels, brightness/contrast, and HSV are also included. Additional tools that can be useful for making selections like color to alpha and color transfer.

Layer and Color Management
Krita has raster, vector, filter, programmatic, group, and file-backed layers. Each layer has settings for visibility, edit lock, transparency lock, and alpha locking. Layers can be dragged and dropped to and from other applications. Vector layers support text, vector shapes and filters on vector shapes. The tool supports the following color models for creating and editing images: RGBA, Gray, CMYKA, Lab, YCbCr, XYZ in 8 bits integer, 16 bits integer, 16 bits floating point, 32 bits floating point. The app always uses color management.

Krita 5.2 Release Highlights (What`s New)

Focus Areas: Krita 5.2 builds on previous releases by addressing significant pain points, improving foundational systems, and introducing new features for enhanced functionality. Key areas include animation, text handling, tools, dockers, and file formats.

1. Animation Enhancements:

Synchronized Playback: Audio-visual synchronization now uses the robust MLT framework, ensuring precise alignment between keyframes and audio.

Simplified Video Export: Integrated FFmpeg into this program, streamlining video export and eliminating setup difficulties for most users (except on Android).

2. Text Tool Overhaul:

New Layout Engine: Features like text-in-shape, text-on-path, and color font support are now available.

Future Plans: In Krita 5.3, a redesigned text tool will allow on-canvas text editing with enhanced controls.

3. Tool Improvements:

Cumulative Undo Overhaul: Intuitive merging of undo operations for efficient painting.

Anti-Aliasing for Sketch Brush: Produces smoother results.

Transform Tool Update: Enables transformation of multiple selected layers simultaneously.

Fill Tool Upgrades: Added new fill modes and blending options for better precision.

4. Shortcuts and Selection Tools:

New Actions: Added eraser toggle, color sampling from the screen, and layer selection via canvas menu.

Selection Tool Enhancements: Options for opacity and DPI-aware decorations.

5. Docker Updates:

Wide Gamut Color Selector: Supports wide-gamut color selection for advanced workflows.

Layers Docker Improvements: Enhanced display options, including blending mode and opacity details.

6. File Format Support:

CMYK Improvements: Alignment with Photoshop blending modes for better PSD compatibility.

JPEG-XL and WebP Enhancements: Improved compression, metadata handling, and CMYK support.

RAW and EXR Updates: Faster processing and improved multi-layer handling.

7. Other Notable Changes:

Brush Settings Rewrite: Introduced the Lager library to simplify and extend brush settings.

FAQ

Is Krita free?
Yes, this program is entirely free and open-source. It operates under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Can I use Krita for professional work?
Absolutely. It offers professional-grade tools for digital art, including color management, vector support, and animation features.

Does Krita support Photoshop files?
Yes, it can open and save .psd files, though certain complex layers or effects might not translate perfectly.

Does Krita work on tablets?
Yes, it supports pen tablets and even has a version optimized for Android tablets.

How can I learn Krita?
It offers built-in tutorials and an extensive online user manual. Additionally, the community provides numerous guides and YouTube tutorials.

Alternatives

Adobe Photoshop - A feature-rich but expensive software known for its versatility in digital art and photo editing.

Adobe Illustrator - Create logos, icons, sketches, typography and other vector art!

Inkscape: Free vector graphics and design software.

GIMP - Another open-source alternative, though its primary focus is photo editing rather than painting.

Canva: Easy online graphic design platform.

PROS

• Free and open-source
• Extensive brush engine customization
• Professional-grade layer management
• Active and supportive community
• Cross-platform compatibility

CONS

• Occasional performance issues with large files
• Limited support for certain file formats

Note: Requires 64-bit processor.

Also Available: Download Krita for Windows