Krita
Encyclopedia
Krita is the digital painting
and illustration
software included based on the KDE Platform
and Calligra Suite libraries. Designed as a digital painting and illustration suite, Krita is free software
and distributed under GNU General Public License
. It was released for the first time as a part of KOffice
version 1.4.0, on June 21, 2005.
Krita's design emphasizes creating artwork from beginning to end as opposed to manipulating existing images, and as such has been influenced to an extent by software such as Corel Painter
. Krita, however supports a very different feature set than the most comparable applications, for example Krita developers included the ability to work with both bitmap
and vector
illustration on one hand, but deliberately choose to avoid high end photography plugins in favor of more painting / drawing specific features.
"Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end–to–end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters.
Fields of painting that Krita explicitly supports are concept art, creation of comics and textures for rendering.
Modelled on existing real-world painting materials and workflows, Krita supports creative working by getting out of the way and with snappy response."
A "KImage Shop" was proposed by KDE founder Matthias Ettrich
on 24 May 1999, following dissatisfaction with the GIMP
's user interface. As that name clearly indicates, KImageShop was meant to be a Photoshop clone. Before any public release, it was called KImageShop and then later Krayon, until legal matters motivated a change from these names. As early as 2004 a desire for a change of focus was apparent: "I want Krita to occupy the niche Corel Painter has in the Windows world, not Photoshop."
s, with bit depth
s from 8 to 32 bits per channel.
Krita 1.5 also integrated with KOffice
, allowing (among other things) embedding of KWord text components into images.
in drawings, including perspective transformation, perspective grid and perspective clone, layer masks, some enhanced tools such as a new magnetic selection tool and a bezier curves tool, many new filters and a PDF import tool.
4, this release included new brush engines such as Sumi-e, chalk and dynadraw, an OpenGL
based canvas, clone layers and physically based image resolution display. Marked as a primarily a developers release for testing the port and new features.
brushes, a stable version of Krita for the Microsoft Windows operating systems, pervasive hotkeys, OpenCL
, GPU hardware acceleration and further speed and stability optimizations.
Digital painting
Digital painting is an emerging art form in which traditional painting techniques such as watercolor, oils, impasto, etc. are applied using digital tools by means of a computer, a digitizing tablet and stylus, and software. Traditional painting is painting with a physical medium as opposed to a...
and illustration
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...
software included based on the KDE Platform
KDE Platform
KDE Platform is a set of frameworks by KDE that serve as technological foundation for all KDE applications. Ever since KDE’s brand repositioning the Platform is released as separate product in sync with KDE’s Plasma Workspaces as part of the KDE Software Compilation 4...
and Calligra Suite libraries. Designed as a digital painting and illustration suite, Krita is free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
and distributed under GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. It was released for the first time as a part of KOffice
KOffice
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...
version 1.4.0, on June 21, 2005.
Krita's design emphasizes creating artwork from beginning to end as opposed to manipulating existing images, and as such has been influenced to an extent by software such as Corel Painter
Corel Painter
Corel Painter is a raster-based digital art application created to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance and behavior of traditional media associated with drawing, painting, and printmaking. It is intended to be used in real-time by professional digital artists as a functional creative...
. Krita, however supports a very different feature set than the most comparable applications, for example Krita developers included the ability to work with both bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
and vector
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
illustration on one hand, but deliberately choose to avoid high end photography plugins in favor of more painting / drawing specific features.
Vision
Krita's vision is defined on the official website as:"Krita is a KDE program for sketching and painting, offering an end–to–end solution for creating digital painting files from scratch by masters.
Fields of painting that Krita explicitly supports are concept art, creation of comics and textures for rendering.
Modelled on existing real-world painting materials and workflows, Krita supports creative working by getting out of the way and with snappy response."
Origin of name
A "README" file accompanying Krita's source code states:
Krita is a paint application for raster images. It's also, according to the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
The first of four Hindu periods contained in the great Yuga, when the genius of Truth and Right, in the form of bull, stood firm on his four feet, and man gained nothing by iniquity.
In the Mahabharata, the name 'krita' is used in a context where this can be translated with 'perfect' - the perfect age.
Krita is Swedish for chalk and rita means "to draw".
History
| Krita sprint | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Venue | Date |
| 2005 | Deventer Deventer Deventer is a municipality and city in the Salland region of the Dutch province of Overijssel. Deventer is largely situated on the east bank of the river IJssel, but also has a small part of its territory on the west bank. In 2005 the municipality of Bathmen Deventer is a municipality and city in... , Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... |
|
| 2010 | Deventer Deventer Deventer is a municipality and city in the Salland region of the Dutch province of Overijssel. Deventer is largely situated on the east bank of the river IJssel, but also has a small part of its territory on the west bank. In 2005 the municipality of Bathmen Deventer is a municipality and city in... , Netherlands Netherlands The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders... |
2/26-3/7 |
| 2011 | Amsterdam Amsterdam Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population... , Netherlands |
5/20-5/22 |
A "KImage Shop" was proposed by KDE founder Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich is a German computer scientist known for his contributions to the KDE and LyX projects.- School :...
on 24 May 1999, following dissatisfaction with the GIMP
GIMP
GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
's user interface. As that name clearly indicates, KImageShop was meant to be a Photoshop clone. Before any public release, it was called KImageShop and then later Krayon, until legal matters motivated a change from these names. As early as 2004 a desire for a change of focus was apparent: "I want Krita to occupy the niche Corel Painter has in the Windows world, not Photoshop."
Version 1.5 release
Notable features introduced in the 1.5 release included CMYK, L*a*b and many more color spaceColor space
A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components...
s, with bit depth
Bit depth
Bit depth may refer to:* For bit depth in graphics, see color depth* For bit depth in audio, see audio bit depth* For bit depth in drilling for petroleum, see drilling rig...
s from 8 to 32 bits per channel.
Krita 1.5 also integrated with KOffice
KOffice
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...
, allowing (among other things) embedding of KWord text components into images.
Version 1.6 release
The 1.6 release added support for handling perspectivePerspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
in drawings, including perspective transformation, perspective grid and perspective clone, layer masks, some enhanced tools such as a new magnetic selection tool and a bezier curves tool, many new filters and a PDF import tool.
Version 2.0 release
The first release based on the KDE PlatformKDE Platform
KDE Platform is a set of frameworks by KDE that serve as technological foundation for all KDE applications. Ever since KDE’s brand repositioning the Platform is released as separate product in sync with KDE’s Plasma Workspaces as part of the KDE Software Compilation 4...
4, this release included new brush engines such as Sumi-e, chalk and dynadraw, an OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
based canvas, clone layers and physically based image resolution display. Marked as a primarily a developers release for testing the port and new features.
Version 2.1 release
Largely a stability release, version 2.1 was marked as a release for early adopters, rather than general users. It featured new brushes including the deform and spray brushes (which has a similar functionality to image hose on other applications). It also included 3D representations of tools being used, an infinite canvas that let artists paint without a finite fixed canvas area and the dyna tool, used to simulate tablet pressure by instead using mouse velocity.Version 2.2 release
Including over 1600 changes since Krita 2.1, Krita 2.2 included the first phase of fixes and features done by community sponsored coder, Lukáš Tvrdý. Version 2.2 introduced more new brush engines, a new brush settings preset system, new file filters for xcf, jpeg2000 and OpenEXR, action recording, a new core image handling system and a quick-access popup palette for recently used colors and brushes. 2.2 introduced many speed enhancements, mainly targeted at large scale brushes and canvases.Version 2.3 release
Krita 2.3 (code named Chagall) was released on 30 December 2010 with 1120 updates. Chagall was notable for being the first KDE4 based release stated as being "ready for end users". It included new brushes such as the sketch and hatching brush, a transform / shear tool, a grid based warp tool and a new color space aware color selector which introduced a range of selector shapes, last used colors swatches, automatic color variant swatches (eg complimentary colors, triads, contrasting colors etc). Chagall included speed increases such as a 400% increase in performance of the standard autobrush tool as well as pervasive multithreading. 299 bugs were also closed over version 2.2. Navigation enhancements included a stylus / middle mouse button only pan and zoom, openGl based, lossless canvas rotation and an on canvas draggable brush size.Future Development
Krita 2.4 is currently in development, with planned features including: Realistic simulation of paint color mixing, use of MyPaintMyPaint
MyPaint is a free software graphics application for digital painters, similar to Corel Painter.- History :The project has been under development since before August 11, 2004 * Version 0.1 was released March 12, 2005...
brushes, a stable version of Krita for the Microsoft Windows operating systems, pervasive hotkeys, OpenCL
OpenCL
OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors. OpenCL includes a language for writing kernels , plus APIs that are used to define and then control the platforms...
, GPU hardware acceleration and further speed and stability optimizations.
See also
- Comparison of raster graphics editorsComparison of raster graphics editors- List :- General information :Basic general information about the editors: creator/company, license etc.- Operating system support :The operating systems on which the editors can run natively , meaning which operating systems have which editors specifically coded for them - List :- General...
- Linux color managementLinux color managementLinux color management has the same goal as the color management systems for other operating systems: to achieve the best possible color reproduction throughout an imaging workflow from its source , through imaging software , and finally onto an output medium...
- Comparison of office suites
- OpenRasterOpenRasterOpenRaster is a file format proposed for the common exchange of layered images between raster graphics editors. It is meant as a replacement for later versions of the Adobe PSD format. OpenRaster is still in development and so far is supported by a few programs...
- Blender (software)Blender (software)Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games. The current release version is 2.60, and was released on October 19, 2011...