Krita News

Hey Krita fans!

Today we're happy to bring you Krita 4.1.7, the latest bug-fix release in the Krita 4.1 series.

And, as a small gesture of gratitude to all of our dedicated supporters and fans on Steam, we're bringing this update to Steam first, a day before even our own website! As the year draws to a close, we wanted to do something small to highlight the fact that we appreciate all of our Steam users for sticking with us, through the good times and the bad.

Anyway, without further ado, here's a message from Boud:

Originally posted by Maintainer

Today we're releasing Krita 4.1.7, another bug fix release in the Krita 4.1 series.

The most important fix is a weird one: it might help your wifi connection. The problem is that we started building a widget that would show you the news feed from krita.org. The widget isn't active, and doesn't make any kind of network connection... But Qt's network manager class still checks your wifi settings all the time. See these bugs: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-46015 and https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-40332.

Apart from that, we've worked around a bug in Qt 5.12 that would cause an instant crash when using a tablet. Our own builds do not use that version of Qt, so the Windows builds, macOS build and the Linux appimage are fine, but users of rolling Linux releases like Arch would suffer from this issue.

And there are more bug fixes, of course:

• Fix showing wrongly that there is no audio support in the animation timeline audio menu
  
  
• Disable the disk-based animation cache rendering backend on Windows: this would give problems with animations bigger than about 150 frames. (BUG 401326)
  
  
• Don't hang when trying to load recent files thumbnails for files in a location that's no longer accessible. (BUG:401939)
  
  
• Make it possible to use the LUT docker when Angle is enabled on Windows. We have also updated the OpenColorIO library to the latest release.
  
  
• Remember whether anti-aliasing was enabled in selection tools (BUG:401730)
  
  
• Add a shortcut to activate the text tool (BUG:401655)
  
  
• Make the toolbars movable again
  
  
• Make Select by Color Range check the entire image (BUG:346138)
  
  
• Enable HiDPI support by default: the problems with the canvas scaling have been solved.
• Allow krita to import more than file at a time when started from a file manager (BUG:401476)
  
  
• Fix using the scrollwheel in comboboxes on Linux (BUG:399379) Patch by Mykola Krachkovsky.
  
  
• Fix the calculation of Average Desaturation (BUG:400493)
  
  
• Do not crash when exporting Compositions (BUG:400627)
  
  
• Make the move tool show the correct cursor in all modes
  
  
• Let the move tool move invisible layers
  
  
• Fix a crash in the artistic color selector (BUG:399860)
  

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Krita isn't the product of focus groups or corporate boardrooms - it's a community-driven, open development project, made by artists, for artists.

Every new feature and fixed bug is only made possible thanks to our wonderful community of enthusiastic developers and you, the people whose contributions directly support Krita's development!

Krita belongs to all of us. So, as always, on behalf of the entire Krita team, thank you all for your continued support and Happy December to our global community!

- Emmet (Community Krita Developer)

PS: Damn, I knew I'd forget to mention something!

If for whatever reason you don't want to use the latest release (4.1.7), we've also created a new opt-in beta branch called "rollback" that allows our Steam users to load the previous stable version (4.1.5). We're going to try to keep the rollback branch pointed at the previous stable version, just in case you ever need or want it.

To access the new rollback branch, right click on Krita in your Steam Library, go to "Preferences", open the "Betas" tab, and select "rollback" from the drop-down menu. And when you want to return to the latest version, just enable the default branch again by selecting "NONE".

Hey everybody!

I just wanted to make a quick announcement to let you all know about our brand new Q&A support site, ask.krita.org!

This new site, ask.krita.org, is now the best place to ask any question about how to use Krita or it's features, and to get support from our awesome community of developers and knowledgeable users. Even if you're an early bird painter trying capture a sunrise or a night owl pixel pusher working on frame 99 of your latest animation, your questions will be seen, read and, yes, answered!

And even if you're a full-fledged Krita master, you can also join the fun and help out by submitting your own answers and sharing some of your knowledge with others. Just like Krita's development, out new Q&A site is a community-driven operation, so whether you have questions or answers, come check it out!

You will need to sign up for a KDE Identity, the very same that you would use for our forums and other developer sites. We know that signing up for yet another account can seem like a pain at first, but get your favorite password manager going and fill in a few boxes one time and it'll be over before you know it.

Of course, there are tons of other places to discuss and ask questions about Krita, from our official forums and #krita on IRC, to popular unofficial subreddits and discord channels. But we really think that ask.krita.org is going to be the #1 place for asking and answering questions about Krita in the very near future. It's that good!

Thanks again, on behalf of the Krita team,
- Emmet (Volunteer Krita Developer)

Hi,

We have finally updated Krita on Steam to the latest stable version. We're really sorry for the long delays, but we plan to keep Krita up to date from now.

That means that Krita Gemini has been replaced by the regular desktop Krita: no matter where you get Krita, you get the same experience. Getting Krita on Steam helps support Krita's full-time development, and from now on gets you updates whenever we create a new version.

We're also considering plans to support MacOSX and Linux through Steam, though we can't quite make any commitments yet.

Boudewijn Rempt, Krita maintainer

by Boudewijn Rempt, Krita Maintainer

It has been a long time since Krita Gemini has had an update. I wanted to let everyone know what has been going on. The last Krita Gemini released happened in 2014 and a lot has changed! We owe everyone an explanation.

First let’s go through the past 4 years…

When Krita first appeared on Steam, we had created two special versions of Krita: Krita Gemini and Krita Sketch. This was not done by the Krita Foundation, but rather by a company called KO GmbH. I was one of the founders of this small company.

The company was mainly founded to work on Maemo and Meego, the new mobile linux based operating systems championed by Intel and Nokia. When Nokia quit, we tried to focus on Krita, but in 2014, KO GmbH went under. There was too little income, and we were too much geeks to be good at sales. KO GmbH handed the Steam account over to the Krita Foundation for a consideration in euros.

In 2015, we released Krita 2.9. It turned out to be very challenging to port Krita Gemini to the Krita 2.9 codebase, because Krita 2.9 could show more than one image in a window, and Gemini was from the ground up built on the assumption that there would never be more than one image per windows. And that was not all. I was out of a job, and Krita did not generate enough income to support me.

I took the step to become a freelance Qt developer. My day job no longer was related to Krita, but outside jobs with things such as Plasma Phone and smart thermostats. In the evenings and during my commutes I tried to keep up with Krita, but I couldn't find the time to port Gemini to the 2.9 codebase. There also wasn’t enough time to keep up with the Steam community. I felt really bad about that. The more time that went by the worse I felt.

In the second half of 2015, we started porting Krita to the latest version of our toolkit, Qt 5. That was a lot of work all by itself, and I found a sponsor ready to allow me to work on that for three months. Now, in addition to the problems we already had, the technical solution we used to display the image in tablet mode in Krita Gemini became impossible.

The Krita Foundation next sponsored another Qt developer to port Krita Gemini to the next version of Krita's codebase and the next version of Qt. We spent a couple of thousand euros on that, which is a large amount of money for us. Our budget is really tiny!

The developer, who used to work at KO GmbH failed to make it work, and we had to conclude that Krita Gemini as a two-in-one application with a tablet gui was dead.

2016 arrived, we had a Qt5 based Krita 3.0, but no replacement for Krita Gemini. At that time, I was still working on smart thermostats. By mid 2016, I was burned out, trying to subsidize my work on Krita through a hectic day job. I failed, and hard. And it was getting harder and harder to contemplate Krita on Steam. I decided to at least halt the lifetime DLC, since it was clear we weren't giving people value for money.

Then came 2017, which was the year the tax authorities descended on us., and it was clear the Krita Foundation would have to stop doing anything that looked like sales, including Steam, so we had to transfer Steam again. By the end of the year, we had recovered, and could start looking at the future. However, all knowledge of how to publish Krita on Steam had vanished. We had found a volunteer who was looking into it, but he was more interested in putting the training dvd's from the shop on Steam.

Now it's 2018. We have decided to put the regular version of Krita Desktop in the Steam shop and try to keep it updated. Similar to how you can get Krita on the Windows store. The funds that we collect from Krita Gemini will continue to go towards new features and bug fixes like it always has.Keep an eye out with future updates as we transition this page into our normal Krita Desktop application.

Again, I really want to apologize for the mess we've been through in the past years. We will do the best we can to straighten things out and be as transparent as possible.

Boudewijn

Today, the Krita project releases Krita 3.0. We've worked over a year on the port to Qt5, implementing animation support and much, much more. There is Instant Preview, which makes it possible to work on bigger canvases, there is an improved layer panel, new filters, g'mic now works reliably. It's a huge release!

You can get Krita 3.0 on steam by right-clicking your Krita Gemini entry in the software library, clicking on Properties and in the Beta tab selecting desktop30.

We will likely replace the current Krita Gemini 2.8 with Krita Desktop 3.0 down the road: with the port to Qt5, the tablet part of Krita Gemini broke irreparably. We spent a lot of time (and money) trying to rewrite it, but it needs a full redesign, and that will take even more time.