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Krita 5.0 Beta 1 Out Now!

Hey again Krita community,

Today I'm happy to let you all know that we've put out the very first beta version for Krita 5!

It's so totally packed to the brim with new features, changes, bug fixes and other improvements that I kind of don't know where to start... Just about every part of Krita (from brushes and gradients, to animation and assistants, to the user interface and the resource system) has seen refinements, big and small, and we wanted to get it into artists' hands as soon as possible.

If you're interested, you can jump right into testing Krita 5.0 Beta 1 through Steam: just right click on Krita in your Steam Library, click on "Properties", switch to the "Betas" tab, and then select the "beta" branch from the drop down menu.

First, there are a few important points we want to warn you about:

  • Krita 5 has a completely new resource system. Krita no longer loads all brushes, patterns, gradients and so on start-up, but caches the information during the first run. Krita 5 will be slower starting on the first run, quicker on subsequent runs.
  • The way Krita 5 keeps a version history for resources that are edited by the user is not compatible with Krita 4. After using Krita 5, going back to Krita 4 might cause Krita 4 to show duplicate resources.
  • Krita 5 can no longer load vector layers created in Krita 3 and older.
  • Krita files (.kra) and krita brush preset files (.kpp) created with Krita 5.0 are not guaranteed to be compatible with Krita 4!
  • Krita 5.0 fixed an issue with text size in documents. However, opening files created with earlier versions of Krita may require changing a setting to get the originally expected text size.
  • Known issue with this beta: If you run a G’Mic filter, Krita’s settings are temporary reset to default: the settings will be the customized ones again after restarting Krita.


As always you can get an idea about what's changed by reading the full release notes for Krita 5.0 right here. It's got tons of great pictures

Anyway... Give the first beta a try, let us know what you think, and please report any bugs that you come across so together we can make sure Krita 5.0 is one of the best updates yet!

Thanks again,
Emmet