The release of the raster graphics editor Krita 5.0.0, intended for artists and illustrators, has been presented. The editor supports multi-layer image processing, provides tools for working with various color models and has a large set of tools for digital painting, sketching and texture formation. Self-sufficient images in AppImage format for Linux, experimental APK packages for ChromeOS and Android, as well as binary assemblies for macOS and Windows have been prepared for installation.
Main improvements:
- The user interface has been modernized. Updated icons. It is possible to detach the brush editor from the panel into a separate window. Added an option to hide controls in the overview panel. Added function for docking panels. Linux provides the ability to install custom themes and select widget styles.
- The code for handling resources such as brushes, gradients and palettes has been completely rewritten, and the tagging system has been redesigned. The new implementation has been converted to use the SQLite library and is notable for solving many old problems that surfaced when loading resources and working with tags. All resources are now loaded at once, which has led to a reduction in startup time and a significant reduction in memory consumption (when running typical tests, process memory consumption has decreased by 200 MB).
- A new resource package manager has been implemented. Added the ability to configure the location of the resource directory, which was previously written in the code. In addition to working with standard packages with resources, support has been added for libraries with brushes and layer styles prepared for Photoshop.
- A new resource management interface has been added (Resource Manager), which supports group tagging of brushes, makes it possible to delete and restore resources, and also shows all tags associated with a resource. It is possible to attach tags to layer styles, search for styles, and load several styles at once from one ASL file.
- The smoothness of the output of gradients has been improved and the ability to save gradients in the Wide gamut color space has been provided. Implemented gradient smoothing for images with 8-bits per channel using dithering.
- The interface for editing gradients has been redesigned. Made it easier to delete, list, and navigate gradient transition points, and added new color sorting options.
- Accelerated color management thanks to the default use of the LittleCMS plugin, which uses fast floating point calculations and displays colors more accurately.
- The implementation of the smudge brush has been completely redesigned and transferred to a new engine based on the developments of the MyPaint project. MyPaint brush support has been moved from the plugin to the main body and Krita can now load and use brushes prepared for MyPaint 1.2.
- Added new modes for texture brushes: Hard Blend, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Overlay, Height, Linear Height, etc.
- The system for creating animation has been redesigned. Added support for animated transform masks and frame cloning. The design of the timeline in which the animation panel is built in has been changed. The ability to pause the animation at any time is provided, the attachment of layers is simplified, and automatic adjustment is provided when adding keyframes.
- The Animation Curves panel has been redesigned to provide improved navigation and editing capabilities. Individual channels can now be hidden or edited individually. Added scalable scrollbars and new options such as "fit to curve" and "fit to channel".
- Added a copy frame function that allows you to use a key frame several times in an animation, for example, to create a looping animation.
- Added support for animating position, rotation, scaling and shifting of any layer using a transform mask.
- Provides the ability to import videos and animated images in the form of Krita animations.
- A built-in storyboard editor is proposed that allows you to create a series of pictures that pre-visualize the composition of future scenes, showing the placement of characters and important objects, and their sequence in accordance with the storyline.
- Added the ability to record a video of a drawing session in Krita.
- Added a new two-point perspective wizard.
- The crop tool provides the ability to resize the canvas without cropping individual frames and layers.
- You can use Drag&drop mode to move colors from the palette to the canvas (to fill an area) and the layer tree (to create a new fill layer). Implemented support for pasting from the clipboard directly into the active layer. Added a new layer filter widget that allows you to select layers by name.
- Added support for AVIF image format. Added a new plugin to support the WebP format, based on the libwebp library. Improved support for Tiff and Heif formats. The ability to resize images during export is provided. A new KRZ format has been implemented, which is a variant of KRA optimized for archiving (with compression and without preview).
- New plugins have been added: GDQuest Batch Exporter (exporting resources in batch mode) and Photobash (quick import and management of photography resources). Added the ability to install plugins from the Web by entering the plugin URL in the import form.
- Added a dialog that pops up when you press CTRL + Enter to quickly find all the actions and operations supported in Krita.
Source: opennet.ru