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Krita 1.6 — State of the Art
brendan0powers writes to tell us Linux.com is reporting that while Krita 1.6 may have been released with the rest of the KOffice suite this week it is anything but a run-of-the-mill piece of productivity software. Krita is a 'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse' definitely capable of standing up to most anything else available. Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
While the comparisons to Photoshop and The Gimp are inevitable, Krita is one of the more advanced components of KOffice. For me, it long ago replaced The Gimp as my image editor of choice. If you are looking for a good image editor for Linux/BSD, you owe it to yourself to investigate Krita.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Okay, so I've never heard of it. Not unusual - there are lots of killer apps out there I've never heard of. But, um, how does it stack up to the other "'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse'" programs out there. More importantly, what are those others. ATTFA, MS Office Picture Manager isn't one. Okay. So it must be more like...um...anything in the article...no.
.x version now". Which is fine, but really front page news?
Okay, so where does it fit in the Photoshop, PaintShopPro, GIMP arena? Is it simpler, easier? More powerful (it is a fully loaded workhorse, after all)?
Maybe this is just a "hey - all you guys with the old Krita - there's a new
So, is this really sliced bread, or just a little bump in the feature set of KOffice?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
- Fits my theme, since I run KDE, and
- Manages to restrict itself to a sensible one window, with sub panels and panes that can be moved around within the window, or floated without losing focus on the other windows.
Can you tell what I didn't like about using The GIMP?You don't hear about Krita nearly as often as The GIMP (or, of course, Photoshop), but it seems to be a great alternative. I can't speak for graphics professionals (not being one myself), but it gets the job done for what I need to do. I look forward to this new version, and I hope development continues on this hidden gem of an image editor.
GIMP gets a bit irritating after a while. Yes, they've made great improvements on the UI with 2.3 but it's nice to try something fresh sometimes...
Powerful, yet still easy to use?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux? Does Krita handle those format(s)? It doesn't seem to....what does?
"What options are there to edit RAW photo files under Linux? "
A hex editor.
I've been poking around with Krita 1.6, and I'm impressed. The Krita developers seem to have a much better understanding of how a simple-yet-effective FLOSS raster graphics app should work and look like. The GIMP has always seemed too complex for the casual user, but too shaggy and feature-poor for the serious graphics person.
The Krita developers are doing a laudable effort to grow their application carefully and intentionally, just like the Scribus has done, adding high priority features and implementing them well (Krita's new layer-groups implementation worked very well for me without getting in the way).
If it continues this way, Krita is likely to grab significant mindshare from the GIMP.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Very slow and clunky. Ugly as sin. Memory use a-go-go. Irritating KDE-style one-click interface for the file selector. Indispensable for its ability to handle CMYK and 16+bit.
I don't need it often and I'm always glad to close it afterwards, but until the Gimp handles 16bit at least for its working space, there's no way to live without it and do photo-manip under Linux.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
After one month of Kubuntu, I just couldn't take it anymore. Krita was just too... unnatural. I'm not a graphic artist (far from it), but when I picked up the GIMP I was able to find out how to do things by using common sense. Krita felt really clunky and slow, and the buttons were never where you thought they should be. GIMP is the superior open source tool IMHO.
I must be a complete idiot when it comes to KDE apps. I normally use Gnome, but I thought I'd try Krita out. I did a 'yum install koffice-krita' and it installed normally. I tried to load up a photograph in Krita, but I could not figure out how to do it. I tried 'krita somepic.jpg' and that didn't work. I tried a File->Open and that didn't work. Can someone that is a KDE expert tell me how to use a KDE app?
I don't think you quite grasp the power of using KDE with its enormous set of shared libraries. So I'll give you a link to help you along http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/ Read that, then try it out for yourself if your not convinced. Then, come back, and don't make a fool of yourself next time ranting on how KDE has lots of "baggage".
Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived within the GIMP codebase with less effort? E.g. different UI modes?
Surely a name starting with a K instead of a G wan't enough?
I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Unfortunately, for me it's just excruciatingly slow and sluggish compared to The GIMP, which is installed and running fine and reasonably quickly on the same Kubuntu Edgy system. Too bad, as I liked pretty much everything about it except for the crippling slowness.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
I installed the filters and it does indeed now load up jpeg's. It's kinda lame for it to ask me what filter to apply when loading the jpg. Shouldn't it just know the file type?
ImageMagick will let you quick convert raw files to PNG or whatnot by specifying the width/height/pixel format/depth as options. You can have it process a whole folder if you want.
GIMP likes tagged formats. I recall there being a RAW import method in the 1.xx series but it looks like they got rid of it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Right, and alternative applications and OSes is always a bad thing. You know, Rehat should be everyone's choice distribution, and Gnome should be the ONLY desktop. Oh, and the Gnome theme you use on your desktop should be the ONLY theme, right down to your choice of wallpaper. Heck, let's take it a step further! Linux, BSD, OS X, and QNX should all be killed off in favor of Windows.
Not everyone likes Gimp. Not everyone likes Krita. Not everyone likes Photoshop. Not everyone likes Paint Shop Pro. Some people like the choices, and some people BUY Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, but still use The Gimp for some tasks. Why shouldn't the KDE folks continue Krita development?
But of course, you posted AC just to troll, so I shouldn't be wasting this bandwidth right now responding to such an assinine comment.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
At an intersection not far from my house there are two strip malls on two of the corners. Each mall has a sandwich shop.
;^)
"Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived within the [one sandwich shop] with less effort? E.g. different [special sauces in the same shop]?
"Surely a [different] name for [each store] wan't enough?
"I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the [sales of sandwiches to the populace] in the long run."
http://koffice.darwinports.com/ http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home
The second one's easier, as it's torrented dmg files :)
Actually, my prediction is this will fail for other reasons. Photoshop is the tool of choice for me. I am the production manager for a newspaper and even if this were 10 times more capable, we still would not budge. Photoshop is part of a larger suite. It is the ability to use Photoshop in conjunction with Quark/Indesign which makes it powerful. There are a number of people who only use raster editors, but they're not in the print world.
What I'm saying is that anyone who would need 8/16 CMYK editing and profiling would still be left empty handed by the Linux world. Before anyone starts getting on my back about Scribus and 'save to PDF' crap, get out in the real world. When your dealing with printers with very specific PDF requirements, you need the customisability provided by Distiller. When they send you a colour profile to work with, It needs to be a easy as hitting Load Colour Space in Indesign. I guarantee they will not send a Scribus compatible file. And finally about Scribus - it is not the defacto industry standard.
Therefore, if you need a raster editor for Linux, you are almost guaranteed of not needing it for the print world - except for a minuscule amount of people - and can do with anything like Gimp which is sufficiently advanced for that sort of work, ie web work, backgrounds, avatars, etcetera...
My Two Cents
Terence Boylen
Production Manager
The Record Newspaper.
(Perth Western Australia)
http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home
.dmg images.
I haven't tried it, but they say "it kind of works". No fink necessary (even though it's in the URL), just bittorrent and
0 1 - just my two bits
It depends. Now that Qt for Windows is free software, when does Krita come out on Microsoft Windows?
Krita is fine but I wish they would do some more work on the object based graphics program, Karbon, it has some great features that the others programs don't (making a large drawing and priting it in tiles) but it is sorely lacking some very basic stuff also (import of bitmap obnjects like in Inkscape and OOo Draw). Oh and providing ANY instructions for it would be a big bonus too.
I just don't do just plain bitmap graphics all that much.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
How thoughtful of you to speak on behalf of an entire industry. By your out-of-hand rejection of applications based only on the reputation of the ones you currently use, I would assume your work is the model of innovation.
I'm not sure what you mean by "poorly formed", but I'm certain the open source PDF exporters do the most compatible PDFs around. They don't tend to implement the newer features that can cause problems (a la Quark 6 compared to Quark 4), until they have stabilised the ones they are using. Also Scribus saves standard pdf files. I did my wedding invitiations in scribus. They printed fine. As I understand it, if your business is in supplying a print service, you should be trying to supply it to as many people as possible, regardless of the file format they use. If you don't, your sending your customers elsewhere.
I don't think this is a question of "failure". I could see an illustrator using this to create an editorial cartoon and passing it to you in whatever Photoshop-readable format you asked for, to be included as part of a layout on your end. Having a CMYK mode at all means less whining about the colours looking wrong when printed.
You have noticed that it's part of an office suite, right? It's not even pretending to be a Photoshop killer! IMO apps like these are never intended to unseat or usurp the app of choice for people who use entire suites like CS2 day in and day out, but I fully support anything that can help to cut down on the number of scary folks who think they really know how to use their pirated copy of Photoshop, do amazing graphic design in Word, etc etc etc... (yes I know, wishful thinking)
That reminds me also that whilst new versions of the software come out regularly, the machines we press on are 10 years old. We are using a system we know works with an obsolete press. Why reinvent the wheel?
The one thing Krita cannot - run on Windows, wheras Gimp does.
That one feature is enough for me, as we have several computers in my family, and not all of them run Linux. Yes, it is installed on the Linux box.
Your absolutely right, given that the most progressive medium of the day is print, and that will never change. It's also the only thing in the world that people could possibly be using a graphics program for, so we'll just end all discussion with your insightful peek into the mystical world of newspapers. There, that should wrap up this discussion for a decade or so. Would the mods please mark everything else as 'redundant'.
..
Now, where did I put my chisel so I can bang out my signature block....
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
I'd like to thank the parent for this comment. My experience as tech support for my graphic designer wife is that the publishing industry is a total pain to deal with even when you are using the same OS and app suite. One printer wants PDF done this way, one wants Quark files, one provides accurate color profiles, another makes me do "guestimate profiles by comparing prints to the original file and creating kinda-right correction curves by hand. I've been unable to figure out how to make our colorimeter work to generate a profile for my Ubuntu system; and, Scribus feels like going back to PageMaker on Mac OS 6 in the late 80s. I use the GIMP for messing with my personal digital pix; but, for anything going to press, Creative Suite / Xpress are the only viable solution I have discovered. Any bets on how long until Adobe ports CS to Linux?
WARNING: Smoking this sig may cause lowered IQ, insanity or short term memory loss. It is also really bad for your monit
Sure, but I think you are wrong on both accounts. There is not a single CMYK color space for starters and just because someone used a CMYK process to create the image, doesn't mean it will appear the same in my CMYK space. Realistically, the colour space of RGB is much larger and therefore it's arguably better to create the document as an RGB then do the conversion.
Secondly, of course I noticed it's part of an office suite. However CMYK process' are the realm of print professionals, not the DTP or average office user. I am a strong advocate of using the correct tool for the job. I think applications should be like the iPod, good at what they do and not over the top. This is the original philosophy behind Unix and I stand by it.
There are two very nice importer plug-ins. (FYI, both are supplied by Debian) I can mess with things as desired during the import, properly handling color temperature and such before dealing with it like any other image.
If you mean to save something back as RAW format, well that is nonsense.
Also, Google provides photo software with some raw format support.
A gimp is a midget or dwarf used for homosexual purposes.
You didn't want to know that, did you?
When your dealing with printers with very specific PDF requirements, you need the customisability provided by Distiller
This is rubbish. I owned a small newspaper for a while. We used an free PDF renderer that used to print our final output in PDF format. This was perfect for our printing partners (a large national newspaper printer)
We also ran our entire operation (with the exception of layout and design on Apple) on Ubuntu Linux LTS with linux terminals serving most of the organisations IT requirements.
The parent poster should consider that there are alternatives. Krita replaces another piece in the puzzle, possibly initially replacing Freehand in our case, and even Quark in the future.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
"rita" is Swedish for "draw". Add the KDE K to get "Krita", which means "crayon" in Swedish. A coincidence?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
By the way I just found this on the web.. a little outdated, but fairly interesting and promising:
g imp.html
OpenUsability Sponsored Student Project: GIMP
OpenUsability is proud to announce the offering of a series of sponsored student projects. As the first project, the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) has been chosen. We are looking for a student in usability or interaction architecture who wants to work on designing the user interface for the next generation of GIMP.
If you are a student of usability, user-interface or interaction design and want to enrich your education with a hands-on experience don't hesistate to apply:
http://www.openusability.org/studentprojects
http://openusability.org/projects/gimp/
http://www.gimp.org/announcements/open-usability-
From the article: "Nevertheless, the vision is for Krita to be more about creating images than about manipulating them."
I think you missed his point - it wasn't to rag on Krita but to explain the challenges any new software program faces against an entrenched standard, namely:
1. People know the current one, how it works and its limitations
2. They are familiar with its tools, interface, and how to use it
3. They don't have the time nor want the risk and expense of solving problems switching brings when they can avoid that with their current tools
For most companies the software cost is a small investment relative to the ongoing production costs so being free is generally not enough; you need a compelling productivity gain or cost advantage to make it worthwhile. In addition, my experience with OOS software is that its design often does not take into account real world user needs - in terms of ease of use, features, etc. Companies can't or won't wait for something to be implemented in the future when their is something that has it now. There is a significant infrastructure built around the tools used in publishing that represent a significant barrier to entry. While abrubt shifts do happen they are much less likely to occur than a gradual evolution of the existing tools. In Quarks case I wonder what they broke in new additions that drove the shift.
Does that make Krita a bad program - no; but it does mean it faces some significant hurdles to becoming a standard.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The Cimg homepage is here. But if you want to see what it can do, check out some of the sample image restorations on page 6 of this paper. It does a very credible job of restoring missing parts of images, e.g. features hidden behind text.
1) No, the ui hasn't been "fixed" -- in 2.0 it'll be possible to drag & drop the palettes in different constellations (Qt4 provides that out of the box). And, in 2.0, you'll have only see the palettes that belong to the active view, but that's all. I like it this way and it's the standard for KOffice. There are people who like it, there are people who hate it, but I think spending development time on making it possible to accommodate both preferences is not worth it compared to features like better filters, speed improvements and so on.
2) It should be pretty good, we spent a lot of time making it possible to draw with different pressure curves for darkness, size and opacity. It is also possible to have a different current tool for your mouse, eraser and stylus (I tend to draw with the mouse set to pan and the stylus to brush). Oh, and the "paint directly checkbox" should fix your issues with the brush tool.
3) Gimp and Krita use the same gradients, patterns and brushes. File format exchange is problematic, hence the OpenRaster effort that is being spearheaded by Cyrille Berger for Krita and Oyvind Kolas for Gegl.
Sure, that's great. However, Adobe provides flexibility. That is necessary when you print a number of publication at different printers or when you need/want to print at a certain size and there are a limited number of providers. Try finding options when you print broadsheet (sorry about the Australian size).
...I live in 2006.
Trust me, I work for the government.
For those wondering about the parent post, I've lived in Perth most of my adult life, and if The Record is the one I'm thinking of (pretty damn likely, given the poster's sig), it is a very small newsletter circulated within Catholic churches.
By newsletter, I mean a couple of pages. Take of that what you will.
I don't think it will "fail" at all, since it is OSS and ergo if a sufficiently large user base evolves, then that is all that it needs. It does not require becoming a defacto standard to be a success. While I agree that for it to make the crossover it needs to be part of a functionally integrated suite of apps, I think even for just web-work,it could pose as a replacement for GIMP on *nix (even though it has been improving, GIMP seems to be suffering under its own collective weight).
Actually, Adobe products use a CSF file, not an ICC file. These can be imported into all adobe and quark products and not scribus.
There's no reason why they shouldn't continue Krita development, choice is a good thing, there are however a number of reasons why Krita shouldn't be tagged State of the Art in a slashdot story title.
Software Freedom Day!.
This is not a personal criticism, just a slight tweak in your wording...
Evolution has nothing to do with producing the "BEST" anything. Evolution produces the "most fit for survival". Saying that "evolution is (...) varying the combination of a lot of existing stuff ever so slightly to see which one produces the best" implies a higher purpose or thought behind the random mutations that evolution exploits. The truth is that most of this "varying" produces less fit entities and they quickly die. That doesn't mean they were worse, just less fit.
There could arise a disease tomorrow that kills off everybody but hemophiliacs. Eventually, only hemophiliacs would survive. Does that make them the "best" humans? No, simply the most fit to survive that particular threat. Think that's a silly example? Tell that to all the people with sickle cell anemia who have a natural resistance to malaria.
Richard Dawkins once said, "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism". Thinking that evolution produces things which are better is one of those misunderstandings. It simply produces things which are more fit to survive and reproduce given a particular environment.
I tried it too (1.5 though, I am not going to pull kde libs from Debian unstable). It feels so slow and non-responsive! Set of tools on the toolbar seems "mspaint-ish" (rectangle, star, zigzag...). In addition, layer blending is not working for me.
So, GIMP stays for most of the tasks, for 16+ bit and HDR color I use Cinepaint.
P.S. I don't like some of the GIMP UI features, e.g. huge crop dialog, which closes significant part of my laptop screen and stays on top of the image. New window placement is not very convenient. New windows often open just over the toolbar (I think GIMP should suggest WM where to open windows). Toolbars do not "pop-up" as I switch to image window. However, GIMP seems to be more capable and polished than Krita at this moment.
It's just an attempt at a pun, go easy on the poor editors.
> Krita
Man, I hated Krita!
She told me she would help me regain my strength, but it turns out she was the bitch Darth Trayus -- the Betrayer.
And you "get Jedi powers from the beginning" -- how misleading! It actually takes longer to get your lightsaber in the second game.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I did my wedding invitations in InDesign, and while that was in the suite they were using at the printer, they were able to make a mess out of it, just because one of the workers wanted it in Illustrator and copy-pasted every element apart (thereby misplacing them).
They had to do a second job since I rejected it. They were pretty mad at ME for that and wanted to charge double. Which didn't happen in the end.
The tools you use are a major problem when dealing with the printers world. But problem with people are always more prominent.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
K=min(1-R, 1-G, 1-B)
C=1-R-K
M=1-G-K
Y=1-B-K
Easy as pie.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It's likely patented, or copyrighted, or otherwise illegal to support.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Filter -> Adjust -> Brightness/Contrast... I don't think there are any for 1.6 yet, but you could try reading the handbook [F1] in the meantime.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The Record is one of three independant newspapers in Australia. I would suggest you buy it and read it. It pays to be educated.
I would also suggest you compare the amount of news content vs advertising to any other local newspaper in Western Australia. I think you would find that not only is the calibre of reporting higher than most locals, but it is also far less profit driven.
You say that The Record is a couple of pages - I would say that is unsubstantiated BS. Your position is indefensable and probably more motivated by your personal beliefs than anything else. It is certainly not fact. The Record has won a large number of ACPA awards and has an international distribution.
Points taken, though I do believe it's nigh on impossible to tell "the DTP or average office user" what they can and can't do, regardless of whether the print professional is tearing their hair out or not further down the line. :)
I'm interested in Krita's potential to create images - in illustration there is no such thing as a "correct tool", and the best strategy is actually to try out whatever you can damn well get your hands on. You may demand that an image be sent to you in a Photoshop-readable format, but you're in no position to tell your illustrator what software they should use to make the image. If Krita's development continues to go in this "image creation" direction, maybe tablet support for Linux will improve further and give more chances to young, studying and/or struggling artists that don't involve pirating Photoshop.
As I mentioned somewhere else in this thread, CPaint is what really piques my interest. Digital Chinese brush painting with undo and without the mess? Count me in!
Indeed. In 1999, I talked about GNU/Linux to a relative who managed four different operating systems at work. He said:
"Linux is a hobbyist OS. It will never measure up to an industrial strength UNIX like SCO."
Snicker.