Please do not ask questions on this thread. Post a new thread so this one stays full of useful tips rather than long discussions. Thanks!

Krita is powerful, but it does many things just a bit differently to other applications. It also has a bunch of neat tricks hidden away in shortcuts and other non obvious places. This is an attempt to make them better known.


1. Many options are mainly available through "Dockers" (the options style sub-windows in the right hand column of Krita). You can show other Dockers by going to Windows -> Dockers -> {The docker you want}


2. There are two main types of layers in Krita. Paint and Shape/Vector layers. The top tools in the tool bar can only be used on a shape layer. The tools underneath them can only be used when you have a paint layer selected (in the Layers docker).


3. Try clicking the right mouse button. You'll see a round palette show up. It shows the most recent colors you've used, and whatever brushes (and their settings) you've added by clicking the button up the top (on the right side).


4. In the layers docker you can see a green + sign with a dropdown. Click on this and you can choose from a number of layer types. Choose paint layer for the standard bitmap layer or shape layer to draw vectors Inkscape / Karbon style. Experiment with the other very cool layer types, such as filter and local selection layers.


5. Try holding shift and dragging the mouse/stylus. Its a superfast way to change the size of your brush.


6. You can drag the whole canvas with the middle mouse button or equivalent on your stylus.

7. The tool below is the Paint with Brushes tool. It is the one you will use almost exclusively. If you want to paint, this is the tool you want to do it with. Avoid accidentally using any of the tools above it unless you're wanting to draw a basic vector image (like an Inkscape image / SVG). If you don't know what a vector image is - JUST USE THE PAINT WITH BRUSHES TOOL. Trust me on this one.




8. ZOMG! Missing tools!!!! There is no eraser tool, text tool, clone tool, blur or sharpen tools. Before you start panicking, this is because they've all been implemented in more powerful ways:

• Eraser: You can use *any* brush or preset you want as an eraser by clicking the eraser button in the bar at the top of the screen.
  
• Clone / duplicate: You can make *any* brush into a "clone tool" by choosing "duplicate" in the preset editor (square button in the top bar with a tooltip that says "edit brush settings").
  
• Text: You can add text, plain or fancy...and a bunch of other vector shapes in version of Krita earlier than 2.4, by showing the Add shape docker (Settings menu > Dockers > Add shape) and dragging a text shape onto the canvas from the shape docker in the right column (by default). From v2.4 onwards, you can just use a text tool from the toolbar like every other graphics app.
  
• Blur / Sharpen: What if you could paint with *any* filter (including blur, sharpen and many more) and use *any* brush shape to do it? You can. It's called the filter brush and you find it where you choose your other tools (like the soft brush, the sketch brush, particle brush etc) - In the button at the top of the screen (usually showing a brush).

So what have you found that wasn't immediately obvious to the new user? Post your tips here!

Good list! Also see: http://userbase.kde.org/Krita/Manual/Differences. This thread should be a great way to assemble more stuff for the manual.

Post stickied.

Okay - changes and more tips:

It's now right-click to get the palette

ctrl-click: select the image color under the cursor, ctrl-alt-click: seelect the color on the current layer.

This is a great resource. Hopefully more tips will get submitted as I have yet to come across a decent manual for Krita 2.2. I'm wondering where the heck I can configure my wacom tablet to work better with Krita? I can get the palette popup with a click on my stylus but it won't select a color with any subsequent clicks and hangs the app. I'm thinking I just need to configure the buttons properly but haven't located a option anywhere in KDE or Krita to configure my tablet. Anyway, good tips. Please keep them coming to help newbies like me!

Your tablet should work out of the box because we use Qt's tablet support. There really isn't anything configurable, and if there are problems, it's very nearly always because there are some bugs in Qt. Which version are you using?

I have a Wacom Intuos 3. The tablet work well except for the buttons. None of the buttons on the tablet work (except to throw my cursor into the upper left-hand corner when pressed) and only the right-click function on the stylus works but selecting a color from the palette popup is flaky. It looks like it is a KDE specific problem as I'm getting the same behavior in Gimp (except the right click action on the stylus acts as the pan tool). In Gnome the buttons are configurable within the Gimp and seem to work just fine.

can you test gnome+krita?

do you have ubuntu 10.4?

Yes Ubuntu 10.04. And now I'm having the same trouble across the board in Gnome so it looks like an Ubuntu issue and not KDE. I'll dig for answers on the Ubuntu forums and post my results here if I find an answer (unless someone here already has found a fix). I wonder how long this has been broken....maybe since my upgrade to 10.04.

As Boud pointed out the problem is most likely related to the wacom driver and Qt. So it's not difference between using Gnome or KDE since it Qt that handles the tablets.

I'm getting the same behavior in Gnome now too under Gimp so I don't think it is QT (unless QT is used for tablets in Gnome for some reason). My QT version is 4.7.0 beta 2. Anyway....I don't want to hijack this forum post for my hardware woes. I'll follow-up with a solution if I find one and post elsewhere regarding this issue. Hopefully I'll be posting tips of my own here soon.

-Update-
Looks like a bug in Ubuntu and a fix has been commited....just need to wait until it floats dowstream.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/560180

Thanks for finding that bug on launchpad -- I guess we'll be asked this question a lot over the next couple of months, so this is very valuable information.

Hmmm... I've got Kubuntu 10.04 + the KDE 4.5.0 ppa installed on my machine (along with Arch + Chakra). I didn't have any pressure sensitivity with KDE 4.4.5 but 4.5.0 seems to have fixed it (most likely with the upgrade from QT 4.6.3 to 4.7.0b2).

I wonder if there's anything wacky in xorg.conf? Mine is vanilla...

I tried the 10.10 alpha 3 release of Kubuntu last night just to see if the issue was fixed and can confirm that everything works on the Wacom tablet (buttons, pressure sensitivity, scrolling). So I guess it will just be a waiting game to get working buttons on the tablet again. Pressure sensitivity will have to do for now I guess. My xorg.conf was vanilla on Lucid 10.04 so I'm thinking it is purely an issue with the kernel drivers. Looking forward to attempting my first piece of artwork on Krita this weekend. I'm sure it will be a learning experience.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with in the Gallery. (Remember, the forums here will only display images up to 700px wide)

Have fun!