
FOSS Photoshop killer Krita may release on Steam [video] - adityab
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=225403385
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archagon
Great to hear! Krita is one of the few art programs that has real-time tiling,
which seems like a great way to work on textures:
[http://krita.org/item/196-new-wraparound-tool](http://krita.org/item/196-new-
wraparound-tool)

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nitrogen
Nice. I've wanted a tiling tool like that for ages.

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anonymfus
IIRC PaintCAD 4Windows had it, but it was added after developer became insane
so it's usable only for him.

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zeruch
I actually think this is great. I've enjoyed using Krita (even though its
sometimes a PITA to get setup) and its rapidly surpassing everything GIMP
spent a dozen years trying to pull off.

Make it crossplatform and you have a BIG win.

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GigabyteCoin
_it[ ']s rapidly surpassing everything GIMP spent a dozen years trying to pull
off._

Standing on the shoulders of giants certainly makes it easier to see.

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sho_hn
Krita was started in 1999, only four years after GIMP. For most of their
existence, these two programs have been developed in parallel.

[http://slangkamp.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/10-years-of-
krita/](http://slangkamp.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/10-years-of-krita/)

[http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/kde/krita_10_years.h...](http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/kde/krita_10_years.html)

Part of the reason Krita development has accelerated massively in the last
couple of years is that its team decided on a clear mission statement at some
point, one very different from GIMP: Krita is a painting app first. The main
use cases are painting, illustration and texture-making. That it's also quite
useful for cases GIMP traditionally aims at (photo editing, web graphics) are
down to toolset overlap between the use cases and a robust, modern tech
foundation (colorspace-independent implementation strategies, etc.), but Krita
isn't actually trying to compete with GIMP and ventures into territory GIMP
doesn't really serve.

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a-nikolaev
Can you compare Krita and MyPaint[1]? (In terms of features, completeness, UI,
etc.) From the video, it seems that Krita is a bit more advanced, with image
transformations, texture tiling and probably other features. But both programs
are digital painting applications, much more than GIMP, which is a generic
graphics editor.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPaint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPaint)

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mkr-hn
Krita bogged down when I tried using a 12,000x12,000 canvas. It also took
several minutes just to show the canvas. MyPaint handles frames several times
larger with no slowdown on the same hardware. Krita has a better interface
overall, but I like to work big.

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delian66
Just curious, what do you use a 12 000 x 12 000 canvas for ?

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mkr-hn
It's a useful digital illustration trick. You work big and scale down to your
target resolution so you don't have to do as much line cleanup.

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pekk
Serious question: how is Krita a "Photoshop killer" and GIMP not one?

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justin66
Not once in that demo video did I see the usability monster leap out and try
to stomp on anyone's balls. So it doesn't really invite comparison with the
GIMP.

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pekk
Do you have any criticism more specific than that you don't like GIMP? Does
Krita's interface closely mimic Photoshop's or what? What is your actual
point?

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CalRobert
Not about Krita, but the steaming pile of fail that is GIMP.

No adjustment layers, and with that no non-destructive editing. No actions
that somebody who doesn't know a scripting language can write. (Guess what! I
CAN write Python but sometimes I just want to say "oh hey I need to do this
200 more times, I'll just hit record, click the buttons I want, stop
recording, and make that action Cmd-F2"). Annoying save dialog. No "Just copy
the damn Photoshop keyboard shortcuts" option out of the box. Deafness on the
part of the GIMP community that their product is still horrible. The
development effort that could have gone in to making a decent photo editor
went in to people trying to salvage the disaster that is Gimp. Mediocre Mac
support.

I love open source, and use Ubuntu primarily (the Mac references above are due
to using a Mac, and therefore Gimp on a Mac from time to time, at work). The
user experience is actually BETTER running Photoshop on Windows 7 inside
Virtualbox than it is running Gimp. That's just pathetic.

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dfc
The script record bug[1] was entered into bugzilla on 2001-03-09. Reading the
discussion is painful. This is targeted for 3.6, which one of the devs admits
is most likely 4-8 years away.

[1]:
[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937)

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jonah
Does it have the "magic" tools like content aware fill, patch tool, and spot
healing brush that Photoshop does? These are kinds of things my professional
artist and photographer friends appreciate about the app.

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rmc
GIMP has a content aware fill, Gimp Synthesiser AFAIR

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henningtegen
I am the lead developer of a application called Leonardo that we hope will be
a future "Photoshop killer" when it comes to digital painting:
[http://www.getleonardo.com](http://www.getleonardo.com) The main focus for us
is speed and Leonardo is way faster then any other application including
Photoshop (and it is still raster based).

Leonardo is not finished yet, but it is possible to sign up on out beta list.

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Yrlec
What does "way faster" mean more specifically? E.g. how does it handle a
100mpixel image?

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henningtegen
It handles a 100 mega pixel image very well.

The trick Leonardo use to be this fast is that your screen only has a fixed
amount of pixels and it is enough to update does pixels super fast for the
application to feel fast. Then you have a lot more time to update the rest of
the pixels.

This makes Leonardo kind of "resolution independent" and is always super fast
whatever the canvas size and brush diameter. On top of this we also have a
streaming mechanism of tiles between RAM and file so that you never run out of
memory.

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kendalk
Photoshop "killer"?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

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wingerlang
"Krita" means crayon in Swedish.

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WoodenChair
Is there anything about this tool that is superior to an inexpensive
commercial app like Pixelmator other than being FOSS? I'm interested in
comparisons to Pixelmator specifically.

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TillE
Wouldn't be a hugely useful comparison, since Pixelmator is Mac-only, while
this is Windows/Linux-only. You might compare it to Paint.NET

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WoodenChair
Unfortunately, it can't be a "Photoshop killer" if it doesn't run on the Mac
since Mac sales are like 1/3 of Photoshop sales I think last time I saw a
stat.

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alexdowad
I've tried using Krita before, and it sure didn't seem like a "Photoshop
killer" to me.

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trackofalljades
It seems to me like someone excitedly posted this without really understanding
what Krita actually does, or perhaps the differences between an app like
Photoshop, an app like Illustrator, and an app like Corel Paint.

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frik
Just tried Krita out on Win7 x64 with 16-bit colors. It works fine with
default white background.

But if I set the background color to 0% opacity (aka transparent) the drawing
becomes ultra-slow like 1 pixel per second :/

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frik
Would be great if they port the whole Calligra office suite to Windows:
[http://calligra-suite.org](http://calligra-suite.org)

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erikb
I don't think something like Photoshop can be killed so easily. If Photoshop
is Facebook, then this doesn't look like the successor, but like G+. Might
have better features, but doesn't have the community.

And PS also has a huge set of commercially created plugins, filters, etc.

It's a pity, though. I really wish some FOSS project would make an end to PS!

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llii
> I really wish some FOSS project would make an end to PS!

Then start using them if you aren't already. A community doesn't come out of
thin air.

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coldtea
Photoshop killer? This is for 1/10 of the COMMON use cases for Photoshop.

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dutchbrit
Do they or are they planning on supporting OSX?

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wlesieutre
Sounds like it's planned:
[http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=118888&p=298709](http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=118888&p=298709)

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ye
Photoshop is not mainly a painting application, though it can be used as one.

The strength of Photoshop is in its automation, ability to integrate with all
kinds of things, ability to open a hundred different formats by default,
plugins, 16-bit-per-channel support, color management, work with huge files,
etc etc etc.

This looks like a competitor for ArtRage or Corel Paint.

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berkes
Honestly curious:

> The strength of Photoshop is in its automation, ability to integrate with
> all kinds of things, ability to open a hundred different formats by default,
> plugins, ....

This, as far as I can see, sums up Gimp very well. With its open scripting and
plugin system (Python) which not only allows anyone to write simple automation
scripts, but allows people like me to find importers, exporters, filetype
support, scripts and plugins for free, for about anyhting thinkable.

How does Photoshop compare to the Gimp in these areas? I am aware of the
differences in usability, obviously. But purely on technical grounds: is the
automatability and extensability of the Gimp comparable to that of Photoshop?

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ye
The problems with GIMP, the last time I checked, were - no support for 16 bit,
problems with color management, slow (photoshop is extremely optimized, and
now has GPU support). Plus I hate the default UI - they need to redo it
completely.

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zephjc
There's [http://www.gimpshop.com/](http://www.gimpshop.com/) which is gimp
with a Photoshop-like UI

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galaktor
I think GIMP has had a single-window photoshop-esque UI built in since 2.8

