Krita 2.9

Krita is a feature-rich open-source digital painting and sketching application packed up with editing tools, effects, brushes, dockers, and filters. It can work with both existing images and with your own freehand creations to help you produce pro-looking comics, concept art, and textures. Its use of masks and filters in a layer-based environment allows for non-destructive editing of the original image.

Though image manipulation is also part of Krita, this comprehensive utility has been mainly designed to help you produce your own digital paintings, concept art, and illustrations. Though developed for all types of users, amateur and professional alike, mastering Krita requires a learning curve. The fact that the “Krita Shop” sells a number of tutorials and training materials on DVD and that the web site is full of videos explaining various techniques and features tells you that this excellent open-source app is far from being a “plug-and-paint” software tool. You need to familiarize with layers and masks first, then with its 9 brush engines, then with its many tools, effects, assistants, and filters, and then with its full color management utility. However, once you manage to master all these and start creating your own art, you’ll find it hard to stop.

Krita offers a user-friendly environment designed as much for the artists as for the art. Its pop-up palette will open at a click of the right button, showing you brushes and colors that you can configure and customize at any time. Its canvas is also fully customizable, allowing you to create your own workspace and save it for future use. Dockers, panels, shortcuts, etc., are also easy to configure, and the program’s brush stabilizers will allow you to create smooth and firm strokes even when your hand is a bit shaky.

With a plethora of sketching and painting features and tools, an attractive and fully customizable interface, and a sophisticated layer-based approach, you won’t find out there a free tool that can compete with Krita. The nearly 35,000 YouTube videos about Krita and the many possibilities it offers to all kinds of artists say something about its popularity.