KritaDevelopersKrita Foundation, KDEInitial release21 June 2005; 20 years ago (2005-06-21)Stable release5.2.14[1] / 11 December 2025 Repositoryinvent.kde.org/graphics/krita Written inC++, QtOperating systemLinux, macOS, Windows,[2] Android, ChromeOS,[3][4] HaikuPlatformIA-32 and x64Size111–201 MiB (varies by operating system)TypeRaster graphics editorLicenceGPL-3.0-only[5]Websitekrita.org
Krita (/ˈkriːtə/ KREE-tə)[6] is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. Originally created for Linux, the software also runs on Windows, macOS, Haiku, Android, and ChromeOS, and features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management support, an advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support, and switchable customisation profiles.
The software is also ailable as paid software, distributed on Microsoft Store, Steam, Epic Games Store, and Mac App Store. Payments support the development of the software. The paid version has automatic updates.
Name[edit]The project's name "Krita" is primarily inspired by the Swedish words krita, meaning "crayon" (or chalk), and rita which means "to draw" as well as Sanskrit कृत (kṛta) which means "made"/"done".
History[edit] The Krita team in 2014 Free web comic Pepper&Carrot artwork by Did Revoy (left) is drawn in Krita. In 2022, Revoy made an interpretation of Krita's mascot, Kiki (right).Early development of the project can be tracked back to 1998 when Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE, showcased a Qt GUI hack for GIMP at Linux Kongress. The idea of building a Qt-based image editor was later passed to KImage, maintained by Michael Koch, as a part of KOffice suite. In 1999, Matthias Elter proposed the idea of building the software using CORBA around ImageMagick. To oid existing trademarks on the market, the project underwent numerous name changes: KImageShop, Krayon, until it was finally settled with "Krita" in 2002. The first public version of Krita was released with KOffice 1.4 in 2004.[7] In years between 2004 and 2009, Krita was developed as a generic image manipulation software like Photoshop and GIMP.[8]
A change of direction happened to the project in 2009, with a new goal of becoming digital painting software like Corel Painter and SAI. Also from that point, the project began to experiment with various ways of funding its development, including Google Summer of Code and funded jobs for students. As a result, the development gained speed and resulted in better performance and stability.[9]
The Krita Foundation was created in 2013 to provide support for Krita's development. It collaborated with Intel to create Krita Sketch as a marketing campaign and Krita Studio with KO GmbH as a commercially supported version for movie and VFX studios. Kickstarter campaigns he been used to crowdfund Krita's development since 2014.[citation needed]
Time Version Raised Kickstarter campaign Stable release July 2014 2.9.x €19,955 Faster development, better PSD support, layers, masks, brush, resource manager, display, etc. February 2015 May 2015 3.0.x €30,520 Better performance, animation support, layer, workflow, transform, filter, brush, etc. May 2016 May 2016 4.0.x €38,579 Better text tools and vector art capability, python scripting support, etc. March 2018[10] 5.0.X Brushes, Gradients and Pallets get revamped, animation system improvements, screen recorder.[11] December 2021On May 23, 2020, the beta version of Krita was released for Android and ChromeOS.[12][13][14]
Design and features[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)The current version of Krita is developed with Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5. It is designed primarily for concept artists, illustrators, matte and texture artists, and the VFX industry. It has the following key features:[15]
User experience design[edit] XP-PEN Deco 01V3 with Krita Krita's right-click HUD, the Popup-paletteKrita's UX was designed with graphics tablet users in mind. It uses a combination of pen buttons, keyboard modifiers and an icon-based HUD to ensure frequently-used functions can be accessed by fewer clicks, without the need to search through text-based menus.
Most-used drawing commands can be accessed via touch by combining keyboard modifiers with pen/mouse buttons and gestures:
Command Input Brush size +/- Shift + Pen drag Pick colour Ctrl + Pen tap Pan Pen button + Pen move Zoom Ctrl + Pen button + Pen move Rotate Shift + Pen button + Pen movePop-up Palette is Krita's right click HUD. It enables instant access to the following functions:
Brush Colour View 10 loaded brush presets Colour ring selector Zoom Load other preset groups FG/BG colour display Rotate Brush size, opacity, flow, spacing, angle Recent colour Mirror Controls of one of Krita's many brush engines Krita's stock brushes Painting tools[edit]Krita's core digital painting tools include:
Brushes Drawing assistants Selection tools Transformation tools Graphics tablet support Adjustable interference intensity Rectangle Free position 9 different brush engines Infinite and parallel straight rulers Ellipse Rotate Modelled after real tools Splines (curves) Freehand (lasso) Scale Highly adjustable Ellipses Polygon Shear Remembers settings for each physical pen Perspective Outline Perspective Pen stabilizer Vanishing point Fill Warp Multibrush painting support Fish-eye point Color Cage Krita's animation workspace (4.0 version) Animation tools[edit]Krita's animation tools are designed for frame-by-frame raster animation. They he the following features:
Interface Import Export Similar interface to Adobe Animate Batch import of frames Render with FFmpeg Timeline controls Output to individual frames Real-time animation playback controls Output to GIF, I, MP4, etc. Onion-skin display Krita's vector tools Vector tools[edit]Krita uses vector tools for non-destructive editing of the following objects:
Path Selection Text (artistic, multiline, calligraphy) Vector art Fill and gradient Krita's layer and mask controls Layers and masks[edit]Krita's layer and mask features include:
Layer management Mask applies to Non-destructive layers Non-destructive masks Multiple-level layer groups Raster layers Clone layers Transparency masks Select multiple layers Vector layers Filter layers Filter masks Drag-and-drop layers Layer groups Fill layers Colourise masks Layer highlighting Non-destructive layers File layers Transform masks Customisation[edit] Krita's resource managerKrita's resource manager allows each brush or texture preset to be tagged by a user and quickly searched, filtered and loaded as a group. A collection of user-made presets can be packaged as "bundles" and loaded as a whole. Krita provides many such brush set and texture bundles on its official website.
Customisable tool panels are known as Dockers in Krita. Actions include:
2 customisable toolbars Toggle display of each docker Attach any docker to any sides of main window, or detach to float free Buttons to collapse/expand each docker panel Group dockers by tabsCustomisable Brushes and Brush Engine[16] allows advanced users to create custom scripts on brush behior, patternlike textures, geometrically shaped brushes and simulated blending through programming, most notably via Python[17] plugin support however, other programming languages are also supported like Lua.
Workspaces allow UI customizations for different workflows to be sed and loaded on demand.
Text quality on Krita's OpenGL canvas with non-integer zooming, rotation and mirror Display[edit]OpenGL accelerated canvas is used to speed up Krita's performance. It provides the following benefits:
Better framerate and response time: pen actions can be reflected without delay Better-quality, fast and continuous zooming, panning, rotation, wrap-around and mirroring Requires a GPU with OpenGL 3.0 support for optimal experience. In the case of Intel HD Graphics, that means Ivy Bridge and above. Krita's colour space loaderFull colour management is supported in Krita with the following capabilities:
Assign and convert between colour spaces Realtime colour proofing, including colour-blind mode Colour model supported: RGBA, Grey Scale, CMYKA, Law, YCbCr, XYZ Colour depth supported: 8-bit integer, 16-bit integer, 16-bit floating point, 32-bit floating point Filters[edit] Krita's G'MIC filter controlsKrita has a collection of built-in filters and supports G'MIC filters. It has real-time filter preview support.
Filters included in a default installation: levels, colour adjustment curves, brightness/contrast curve, desaturate, invert, auto contrast, HSV adjustment, pixelise, raindrops, oil paint, gaussian blur, motion blur, blur, lens blur, colour to alpha, colour transfer, minimise channel, maximise channel, top/left/bottom/right edge detection, sobel, sharpen, mean removal, unsharp mask, gaussian noise removal, welet noise reducer, emboss horizontal only/in all directions/(laplacian)/vertical only/with variable depth/horizontal and vertical, small tiles, round corners, phong bumpmap.
File formats supported[edit]Krita's native document format is Krita Document (.kra). It can also se to many other file formats including PSD.
File formats Se to Krita Document, OpenRaster document, PSD image, PPM, PGM, PBM, PNG, GIF, JPEG, JPEG XL, Windows BMP, XBM, XPM, TIFF, EXR, Gimp image, WebP, SCML, ICO, TGA, CSV, QML Import only ODG draw, Krita Flipbook, Adobe DNG, Camera RAW, JPEG 2000, PDF, SVG, XML, XCF Sprint events[edit]Krita sprints are events during which Krita developers and artists get together for a few days, exchange ideas and do programming face-to-face, in order to speedup development and improve relationships between members.
Year Date Place 2005[18] —N/a Deventer, Netherlands 2010[19] 26 February to 7 March Deventer, Netherlands 2011[20] 20 to 22 May Amsterdam, Netherlands 2014[21] 16 to 18 May Deventer, Netherlands 2016[22] 23 to 24 January Deventer, Netherlands 2016[23] 26 to 28 August Deventer, Netherlands 2018[24] 17 to 21 May Deventer, Netherlands 2019[25] 5 to 9 August Deventer, Netherlands Variations[edit] Krita Gemini: optimised for tablets and touch interaction.[26] Krita Studio: commercially supported version for movie and VFX studios.[27] See also[edit] Free and open-source software portal Comparison of raster graphics editors List of 2D animation software List of 2D graphics software List of digital art software List of free and open-source software image editors List of computing mascots Similar programs GIMP Pixia MyPaint Clip Studio Paint Photoshop Paint Tool SAI References[edit] ^ "Krita 5.2.14 bugfix release!". 11 December 2025. Retrieved 11 December 2025. ^ "Krita Desktop". Krita Foundation. Archived from the original on 24 June 2020. Retrieved 30 May 2016. ^ "First Krita Beta for Android and ChromeOS in Play Store". Krita. 23 May 2020. Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020. ^ "Krita - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020. ^ "Update the licensing info: Krita is effectively GPLv3-only". GitHub. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 8 June 2021. ^ "r/krita - How do you pronounce "Krita"?". reddit. 8 December 2018. Archived from the original on 2 September 2021. Retrieved 13 November 2020. ^ "History | Krita". Krita. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2017. ^ Foundation, Krita (16 July 2014). "History | Krita". krita.org. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2023. ^ "History | Krita". Krita. Archived from the original on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 22 July 2017. ^ "Krita 4.0 Now Available for Open-Source Digital Painting - Phoronix". Archived from the original on 7 July 2019. Retrieved 22 March 2018. ^ Foundation, Krita (23 December 2021). "Krita 5.0 released!". Krita. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2021. ^ "Krita, a FOSS digital drawing app, is now ailable for Android tablets and Chromebooks". xda-developers. 25 May 2020. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020. ^ "First Krita Beta for Android and ChromeOS in Play Store". Krita. 23 May 2020. Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020. ^ "Krita - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020. ^ "Highlights | Krita". krita.org. Archived from the original on 25 January 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2017. ^ Wang, Lu (2 August 2022). "[proof-of-concept] Scriptable Brush". Krita Artists. Retrieved 18 October 2024. ^ "How to make a Krita Python plugin — Krita Manual 5.2.0 documentation". docs.krita.org. Retrieved 17 October 2024. ^ Boudewijn Rempt (30 July 2005). "And on the fifth day..." valdyas. valdyas.org. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 20 June 2011. ^ Boudewijn Rempt (15 March 2010). "Second Krita Sprint Ends With Tea". KDE. Archived from the original on 23 November 2020. Retrieved 21 May 2011. ^ Boudewijn Rempt (2 June 2011). "What happens When Artists and Developers Come Together: The 2011 Krita Sprint". KDE. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2011. ^ "2014 Krita Sprint in Deventer, Netherlands". KDE.news. 4 June 2014. Archived from the original on 3 December 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2016. ^ "Kicking off 2016 — the first Krita Sprint". krita.org. 25 January 2016. Archived from the original on 24 September 2020. Retrieved 23 July 2017. ^ "2016 Krita Sprint: Day 1". krita.org. 26 August 2016. Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. Retrieved 23 July 2017. ^ "2018 Krita 2018 Sprint Report". krita.org. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 23 July 2017. ^ "2019 Krita 2019 Sprint". krita.org. 12 August 2019. Archived from the original on 29 November 2019. Retrieved 12 August 2019. ^ "Krita Gemini". krita.org. Archived from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2017. ^ "Krita Studio". krita.org (in French). Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 23 July 2017. External links[edit] Wikimedia Commons has media related to Krita. 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