Krita, the open source project that was born many years ago as mainly an image editor in the style of Photoshop or GIMP, has evolved a lot in recent years and has put the focus entirely on digital illustration.
Its latest version is krita 5.0, and it is one that has arrived loaded with a lot of news, something that in the words of its creators is the biggest and most significant update Krita has ever seen, making it a huge release just before the end of the year.
What’s new in the new Krita
About compatibility: Before talking about the most important new features, it is important to mention that since Krita is a major update of the program, the new version cannot load vector layers created before Krita 3.0 as it has a completely new system of resources. In addition to this, Krita 5.0 has a new format for pixel presets, so Krita 4 and earlier cannot use brushes created in Krita 5.
Highlights in Krita 5:
The way Krita handles things like brushes, gradients, and palettes, as well as labeling, has been completely revamped. The new system is much faster, uses much less memory, and is much more reliable.
Gradients have been improved – they are much smoother and can handle wider gamuts.
The smudge brush engine has been completely rewritten, and they have a new brush engine, based on MyPaint.
The animation system has been overhauled, with improvements to the user interface and new features such as clone frames and animated morph skins.
Krita now has a built-in storyboard editor.
There is now a recorder to create a video of your painting sessions (smells like TikTok this).
Support for AVIF and WebP file formats was added.
Videos and GIFs can now be imported as Krita animations.
Interactive ‘Search Actions’ (aka HUD) added via CTRL + ENTER.
You can read all the specific details of each of these improvements in the full release notes that include multiple informational videos, especially at the level of all animation improvements.
Let’s not forget either that Krita is an open source project that always needs help from the community and you can help by contributing to the development fund or buying the app from the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 and 11, Steam, the Epic Games Store or Google Play. Y from Krita 5.0 you can also find the app in the Mac App Store.
For everything else, you can always download Krita 5.0 completely free of charge for Windows, Linux, macOS, or Android from Krita’s official download website.