Hi,

I would like to know, as Krita developer, how you users use Krita?

Maybe you know what is Use-case, in that case, describe your case. And maybe you just want to drop some lines describing your typical workflow with Krita? Do that for me..

If you don't use Krita, why is it so? Performance? What is slow for you? Stability? Did you reported the bugs?

Thank you

I have only occasionally used Krita for two reasons:
1. I need vector graphics wherever possible for my work
2. Before I encountered Krita, I had found xfig.
(N.B. I know Karbon is the KDE vector graphics application so I am not strictly comparing like with like but I use the GIMP even less).

My today's standards, the xfig interface looks really old-fashioned but its use of context sensitive menus for most things means that you have a lot more screen to work with and you can spread yourself about.

For example, the colour palette icon only becomes visible when you select an object which can have a colour attribute and you then only open the palette if you need it.

I have only briefly looked at KOffice2 and I like the principle of making tools available across the suite; so I shall probably use Krita from time to time in that context. But I think the xfig principle of only displaying most icons when the last selection makes it possible the user might want to use them is worth studying.

Perhaps I should add that, when I last used Krita a few months ago, it did what I needed (something xfig could not do) very satisfactorily.

john_hudson wrote:I have only occasionally used Krita for two reasons:
1. I need vector graphics wherever possible for my work

This is my main reason too. I mainly use Inkscape when in need for graphics for my work, and on occasion I do some postprocessing - usually in GIMP. Why in GIMP? It has a lot of ready filters which allow to do quick effects(like shadows, or pretty logo texts) Again, nothing very fancy, I need to do it fast and I need a way to quickly check out the results. I usually play some time with various filter parameters to see which can improve the overall effect. All right, so the various filters are the stuff I would need from Krita but the real issue with Krita was its performance. I seem to have been spoiled by GIMP's speed and I get quickly annoyed when I have to wait for the results. While GIMP is ridiculously unfriendly, especially regarding the File Open/Save dialog, one can get used to most of its UI flaws, because in the end it is not the pretty UI but the work performance that counts.
I hope Krita - and in some time, Karbon - can become my work tools. Keep up the good work devs and I will happily check out your work on some later time.

Previously I've mainly used Krita when I needed to use CMYK. Other than that I've been a pretty heavy GIMP user. A ton of things bug me about GIMP though (especially preferring KDE apps), so I would love to be able to use Krita in my workflow instead (and recommend it to friends needing a good image app on Windows, too). The main thing I'm finding is getting in the way so far is just stability (I understand it's beta at the moment) and that the interface can be difficult to work out in quite a few places. I must admit that when I first moved from Photoshop to Gimp, I found the same thing, but I got used to it. Right now I'm still not sure though, what problems are just me, what needs interface improvements and what's just a bug / missing feature.

One specific thing I really do look for is fast navigation, especially when navigating and making selections (which both happen a *lot*). I'd love to be able to pan the image with the middle mouse button and zoom with the scroll wheel, so you could navigate the image fast with just the mouse. No co-ordinating two hands and keyboard keys. Just the mouse.

Another good example is that it would be great if all the most common actions had shortcuts (showed in the tooltip). I looked for shortcuts to switch between add / subtract selection modes and couldn't find them. This made learning / using Krita slower even after I found the Tool Options dropdown. On a side note, it's a very nice touch to be able to select add/replace/subtract in a dropdown and then not *have to* touch the keyboard. Right now Gimp's shortcuts make it faster if you need to switch between add/subtract a lot. Krita seems faster if you want to keep using the same mode in the Tool Options dropdown. If there were shortcuts to switch modes (visible in the configure shortcuts window), Krita would have the best of both worlds here.

Anyway, thanks for all your work on Krita. There is so much potential here, it hurts! I'm really looking forward to learning it more and eventually contributing something nice to the gallery / documentation.

Cheers and please forgive me for spamming the new Krita forums again!

I still need to find the time to test the 2.1 betas (maybe I'll start with beta 3), but last year krita 1.6 saved my life when preparing a text book: I had to explain the use of some laboratory apparatus but only had a short time to use them AND take photographs. When at home I looked at the photos I'd had a moment of "and now what can I do?": the apparatus where ok, everything was clear and well positioned... but the lab was quite old and not very "clean" (you know, rests of cables, randomly distributed tools, fragments of other experiments, some diodes here and there, strands of tape holding other cables...)
On almost my first use of krita I was able to "clean the laboratory" very quickly. Looking at the result you could think the photos where taken at FermiLab...

RGB: that's that the sort of story that makes me glow with pleasure Thanks for sharing!

Krita will be useful when you developers add a "clone tool" like Gimp has got for years. I prefer kde apps and this is the major obstacle which I encounter when considering switching to Krita from Gimp.

What you mean like this one?


Shift to select the source. Click to the right of the brush dropdown to increase the size. General support would be a better forum to ask for features you can't find.

I use krita because it has 16 bit support and allows me to work with layers. I used to use cinepaint but it is broken on Fedora 11. I don't use GIMP because it lacks 16 bit support.

A typical workflow is as follows: I start by "developing" the images from RAW files using ufraw. I do all the color correction, exposure adjustment, and curves in ufraw. If further processing is needed, I use krita and/or imagemagick.

Often I will develop the same image several times, with different curves or exposure. For example, in a portrait with scenery, I might develop with over-exposure to lighten skin tones, but with normal exposure to make the scenery look best. I then use layers in krita to blend the two exposures using a layer mask. I also use krita for cleaning up defects using the clone tool.

The next step will be noise reduction (if needed) and sharpening. I use a commercial program (NoiseNinja) if noise reduction is needed. Otherwise, I just use imagemagick to sharpen images in a batch mode.

My primary complaint about krita is that it isn't always obvious how to use it. For example, I can't figure out the perspective correction feature (I posted this elsewhere). I'm editing 16-bit 12MP tif files, so it isn't super fast but it is acceptable.

That's really useful feedback. Thanks Stinky!

Fortunately we're about to unleash Lukas full-time on improving Krita with a special focus on speed as you can see here. What would be helpful here, would be if you could let us know a couple of specific things that you're still trying to figure out, or that you had trouble figuring out, but eventually did.

That gives us a good place to start looking at usability issues, and the best way of fixing it. Adding where you expected to find them may be helpful, too.

Thanks!

Hi! Thank you for your feedback. While Krita's focus currently isn't on you usecase -- 2.2 will focus on making two specific usecases work great, see http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=Krita/Roadmap22, it is still interesting to get real-world examples of other usage scenarios and of pitfalls people encounter.

By the way: which version are you using?

It supports 16 bit per channel images - and since my workflow goes Raw->16bit per channel tiff files... I find that Krita is the only thing native on linux I can use do more advanced editing without dropping back to 8bit per channel... It is currently painlfully slow to work with.

Also at work we have to deal with 16Bit greyscale heightmap images. Somehow ever Photoshop manages to screw up the export on these things. Krita so far has been the only viable option.

I am very pleased to hear of the speed/stability work that will be going into Krita in the near future. These two things are biggest two things that stop me using Krita a lot more often than I do.

I installed Koffice on FreeBSD 8.0 computer with KDE 4.3. I am long time GIMP user. The first reason that I installed Koffice was Krita. But on your question how is Krita useful I cannot answer or just say: it is not useful. I don't know why but on FreeBSD is Krita very slow and it is not possible to work. It was the same on KDE 3 and Koffice 1.0??.
With GIMP I never had and I don't have any problems with the speed.
For example just for open it need it more than 30 seconds, for opening a photo another 30 or more. If you want to do something with picture you need a lot of time and finally it crashed. It is mine experience.
But anywhere thank you for your work and Happy and peaceful New Year.

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http://starikarp.redbubble.com

Hey lumiwa,

Thanks for giving Krita a trial. That's good honest feedback, which is appreciated, especially when you give us the specifics (speed) and the technical data (FreeBSD 8+KDE 4.3 although architecture would be useful).

Fortunately, we are just about to head into a major speed refactoring, supported by funds raised by this camaign. It may be useful to give some details about the specific images giving you problems. What is the resolution? File format? Bit depth?

All these things let us optimize Krita for your usecase and bring you the blazing fast, powerhouse photo editor you would like. Cheers

Kubuntiac

Another try to Krita.
FreeBSD 8.0, KDE 4.4.4, KOffice 2.2. I like KOffice but Krita is on FreeBSD unusable still. Same time or longer as I wrote in the previous post.

What is Linux users experience, please?