Krita News

Hi again, everyone. As we wrap up another spring in the northern hemisphere, I'm happy to announce the release of Krita 4.2.0.

If I had to use a single word to describe Krita 4.2.0, it would undoubtedly be "solid". While the development team is always grinding away at improving various aspects of Krita, one of the bigger goals of the last year has been to focus on the bug fixes and performance improvements that play such an huge role in making this a better tool for digital artists. While there are always new bugs to be squashed and other ways to wring out every last drop of performance, Krita 4.2.0 is, without a doubt, our most stable, smooth, and solid version yet. If nothing else, I think that you'll quickly feel the difference.

But Krita 4.2.0 is no one-trick pony!

Not only are there a boatload of bug fixes and performance improvements (oh, and did I mention tablet improvements?), 4.2.0 also comes with a bunch of interesting new features, including an overhauled palette docker, gamut masking in the artistic color selector, new and improved brush parameters, selection transformations, a looping noise generator, and many more. We're also very proud of the fact that Krita 4.2.0 is the world's first program to support painting and animation with high-dynamic-range (HDR) colors, thanks to many months of hard work and cooperation with Intel. Provided you have HDR capable hardware, you can start working with HDR images in Krita right away! Cool, huh?

Finally, we've also made many improvements to Krita's documentation, we've created a great new Q&A support site, and we've also recently overhauled our open source development infrastructure--big changes for users and developers alike. Whew!

You can find the full Krita 4.2.0 release notes right here and you can watch GDQuest's great video for a quick rundown of some of the major changes.

And now this is the part where I remind you what makes Krita truly different from the rest; you, the members of the Krita community who drive and support this project. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Krita simply would not be what it is today without the support and contributions of our community of artists, programmers, and everything between. Every code patch, documentation improvement, tutorial image or video, and every cash contribution to the project helps to make all of this possible. Krita belongs to all of us, and as our passionate and growing community of users and developers, you are the lifeblood of the project. Simply put, thank you.

As usual, on behalf of the Krita development team,
Please enjoy Krita 4.2.0 and never stop creating!
- Emmet

P.S. If for any reason you want to or need to use the previous version of Krita (4.1.7), you can still find it on Steam using the "rollback" branch. As usual, if you want to check out even older releases or new nightly builds, you can find those on the Krita website.

Hey all!

I just wanted to post a short, special message on behalf of the Krita development team to all of our generous supporters on Steam.

Development on Krita 4.2 is still underway and our mission to fix as many bugs as humanly possible is going well and making real progress. Without a doubt, the next version of Krita will be a great one and should be more solid and stable than ever before. Please check out our April development update for more info.

Speaking of which, I want to draw this part to your attention:

In the first place, we’ve got a new full-time developer! Tiar, who is well known in Krita’s Reddit community, graduated from university just when the increased income from Steam made it possible to hire someone to help out with this year’s big goal: bug fixing! Tiar started March 1st, and has already fixed more than a dozen or so tough bugs. Krita now finally has a real Nearest Neighbour scaling method, for instance.

Yes! You read that right! Thanks in large part due to the increased support and revenue from all of our supporters on Steam, the Krita team was recently able to hire an extra full-time developer! Remember, Krita isn't developed by some mega corporation with thousands of employees; the core team of frequent contributors is small, and the number of full-time developers is even smaller, so hiring another full-timer for a few months is a really BIG deal for the project.

And we have you to thank! You people made it happen. And so, because of the support of the Krita community once again--from all of the people who contribute effort to the project, the people who make donations through www.krita.org, and all of our users who show their support by buying Krita here on Steam and elsewhere--the next version of Krita will be just that much better than the last.

So, that's basically it. I just wanted to stop by and give all of our Steam supporters an update, and to express our genuine gratitude to all of the people that make up the community of artists and programmers who drive Krita forward each and every year.

Thanks. Keep drawing, painting, animating and creating!
- Emmet

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