Hey everyone!

I'm trying to learn how to draw and I was initially using Paint Tool Sai and then I heard about Krita and decided to give it a go! :3

I'm an extreme noob to Krita and art in general... and considering how robust and customizable Krita seems to be, I have quite a few questions...

Incoming extremely nooby questions!!!

1) Suppose I want to blend 2 colors together to mesh them (for example, for the purpose of blending between Light and Shadow tones) and I want to achieve a kind of soft gradient effect so they look properly blended... what is the best way to do this in Krita? I'm asking because I was trying to follow a tutorial explanation on blending different colors to describe a surface, and I felt that none of the default brushes that I've tried achieved the same effect.

2) How do I invoke Rotate Mode and Discrete Rotate Mode? I've tried binding them to keys and nothing happens even if the canvas is focused during input. Do either of these modes allow me to freely rotate the viewport of any degrees by dragging my tablet pen in a direction/arc?

3) Is there any way for me to unbind the middle button from panning the Canvas? I've tried in the Configure Krita -> Canvas Tablet Settings -> Pan Mode bindings but even if I do this, as I hold down the Middle button and accidentally sway my middle button to the left or right, the Canvas still pans. Although this is a really small problem, I've been wondering why I can't simply unbind it...

4) Sometimes Krita gets really laggy (for example, if I have a 3500 by 2400 Canvas and I have a lot of layers) and I end up using 1 GB of memory. In comparison, I've had 3 times as many layers in Paint Tool Sai and I never had any issues with lag. Whenever I'm using a large brush, or even a small brush with a lot of brush engine options, my client lags quite a lot. Am I doing something wrong, or is there any way I can get better speed out of Krita during these scenarios?

I'm really sorry if some or all of these questions have been answered. I've tried experimenting with the brush engine and to be completely honest I'm kinda lost on how to use it... and I've tried to use the preset brushes AND I've tried looking up more information on Blending with Krita, but there doesn't seem to be many topics/discussions about it easily searchable (or maybe I'm just an idiot X3)

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you have an answer for any of my questions I'd really appreciate a response :3

1. Check out either my brushes in the resources section or those of David Revoy and see if those work better for you...

2. Check if https://userbase.kde.org/Krita/Manual/Interface helps. I think remapping is bugged in some really specific cases.

3. Uhm, rebinding is bugged then.

4. What are a 'lot' of layers? Still 1gb of memory usage is pretty darn huge, could you check you haven't accidentally set your image space to 16bit or 32bit instead of 8bit? Because that could slow things down a lot...

Wow thanks for the swift reply :3

I'll try out both brush packs. I'll just have to remember how to import a brush pack but it shouldn't be too difficult.

And yeah, I have Rotate mode and Discrete Rotate mode about to 4 and 5 respectively. I figured it would be easier for me if I had 1 and 2 for CCW and CW rotation, 3 for reset and 4 for Free Rotation. Maybe they won't bind properly without a modifier key specified? I'm not sure but I guess I'll try to test some bindings with it later.

As for a lot of layers, yeah I may be in the wrong image space. I thought 8bit wouldn't be good to work with, but since I'm not really getting too involved with colors and whatnot there's really no need for me to work in a higher image space just yet. I only really wanted to experiment with blending and seeing surfaces from color transformations.

If I notice the lag again, I'll let you know how many layers I am working with... but to put it in perspective, I've had 60 or so layers in SAI and I noticed absolutely no lag even with big brushes. I know it's not a fair comparison since SAI doesn't have a brush engine and Krita most likely has to do more calculations behind the scenes to ensure that the brush settings are respected during strokes. It would be awesome to know which brush engine options are the most taxing so I can be aware of a potential performance hit when an option is toggled on.

But really, thank you for the swift reply, I wasn't expecting a message so soon! :3

If you're having issues with large brushes you may want to fiddle with brush spacing! As for blending most people would either choose to use a blending brush or use a brush that has opacity curve on. I tend to use the second. It involves a lot of light strokes and color picking! Mix brushes on the other hand might function a lot like the marker tool on sai, although it is a lot more customizable than that. Fiddle with the settings to see what happens! Good luck and have fun with krita!

Xinronyr wrote:Wow thanks for the swift reply :3

I'll try out both brush packs. I'll just have to remember how to import a brush pack but it shouldn't be too difficult.

And yeah, I have Rotate mode and Discrete Rotate mode about to 4 and 5 respectively. I figured it would be easier for me if I had 1 and 2 for CCW and CW rotation, 3 for reset and 4 for Free Rotation. Maybe they won't bind properly without a modifier key specified? I'm not sure but I guess I'll try to test some bindings with it later.

As for a lot of layers, yeah I may be in the wrong image space. I thought 8bit wouldn't be good to work with, but since I'm not really getting too involved with colors and whatnot there's really no need for me to work in a higher image space just yet. I only really wanted to experiment with blending and seeing surfaces from color transformations.

If I notice the lag again, I'll let you know how many layers I am working with... but to put it in perspective, I've had 60 or so layers in SAI and I noticed absolutely no lag even with big brushes. I know it's not a fair comparison since SAI doesn't have a brush engine and Krita most likely has to do more calculations behind the scenes to ensure that the brush settings are respected during strokes. It would be awesome to know which brush engine options are the most taxing so I can be aware of a potential performance hit when an option is toggled on.

But really, thank you for the swift reply, I wasn't expecting a message so soon! :3