I'm a beginning artist, and I want to become a professional digital comic artist.
It seems I basically have two options, krita and clip studio paint(CSP) when it comes to digital comic and digital painting. I want to choose a painting software which enables me to learn and produce most productively.

Someone said

I have i5-4670@3.4GHZ, geforce gtx 760 2GB, 8GB RAM, and while having 8-10 chrome windows open + CSP (manga studio) memory usage reaches 80%+ only when using 40+ layers containing color on 6kx6k canvas.
Also, from my personal experience Krita is poorly optimized, GIMP is outrageously poorly optimized, I would suggest getting a proper software first. While CSP runs said 40+ layers smoothly in all operations except 3D dummy, with GIMP my PC struggled with around 20 layers.

I tested krita 3.0 on Windows 10 and Manjaro Linux, and clip studio paint 1.5.4 on Windows 10. With thick brushes of 100-300px on a 6000x6000 canvas, CSP has some evenly distributed lags while krita displayed lags in big batches. Although CSP looked a bit more performant, I didn't notice significant difference in performance between both programs. I didn't have enough time and expertise to test layer performance, filter performance, etc.

There's more to drawing than software performance, and I haven't tested both programs deeply to have informed opinions on other aspects(user interface, brush quality, etc) of the programs.

Did anyone use krita 3.0 and clip studio paint 1.5.4 in professional settings? How do they compare in terms of performance, brush quality, user interface, useful features, etc?

Well if it's posted on a krita forum there might be some bias. >7> Personally haven't used either in a professional capacity so I can't give you any feedback there. Best of luck!

Hey welcome to the forums! I just want to mention David Revoy's comic, I think his works talk better about Krita in this topic than comparing programs, is very difficult to compare when the nature of them both are different, FOSS vs Proprietary, Haven't try the one you mentioned, I use Krita constantly and am very pleased, many at times the performance has to do more with graphic drivers than with the programs themselves.

In either case this is my personal recommendation, try Krita first, fully and in all the ways you need, you have nothing to loose, because even time expended trying software will pay back in forming you experience, don't like it, can't work with it? ho harm done, you go and get your paid software. Now, one thing about FOSS, is that its updates (which are often and meaningful) come at no extra price. no to mention you can run Krita on more than one OS.

If you need help, just come back ask questions.

Generally, Krita can do more deep lying architctural stuff than Clip Studio can, so it has things like transformation masks, filter layers, file layers, animation that isn't limited to 24frames a second, and things like 16bit and 32bit float painting. We also have more brush engines.

Clip Studio paint has more dedicated tools for comic style drawings. These are things like onscreen-3d references, vector strokes and a better fill tool.

You'll find that generally, you can do comics and manga just fine in both of them: both have anti-aliasing, sketching tools, rulers and perspective guides, and I'll freely admit that you'll probably be a little faster in csp, but if you do things outside of comics, Krita will be a little more versatile in the long run(if only because we'llbe improving our own tools as well, of course). For example, if you do animation or create textures and patterns.

A thing to keep in mind is that Krita is free to download, use and modify, and it is not unheard of to use multiple programs in one's workflow. We currently for example suggest people to use inkscape for typing text, as Krita's text tool needs an overhaul(which is gonna happen this year, thanks to the kickstarter )

Similarly, we're a really small team, so we are constantly optimising Krita, but we have to make a lot of decisions there. The person you are quoting might for example not realise that Krita nor Gimp do compressing of the layers into memory(something we suspect other programs are doing), because we aren't certain if that wouldn't increase the lag.

But like I said, Krita's free to use, and we constantly improve, so no matter what you choose I hope you'll keep an eye on our news feed and try out future versions of Krita from time to time.

TheraHedwig wrote:Generally, Krita can do more deep lying architctural stuff than Clip Studio can,

What is architectural stuff? A building architecture?

TheraHedwig wrote:filter layers, file layers, animation that isn't limited to 24frames a second, and things like 16bit and 32bit float painting.

What are filter layers, file layers, and 16bit/32bit float painting?

TheraHedwig wrote:We currently for example suggest people to use inkscape for typing text, as Krita's text tool needs an overhaul(which is gonna happen this year, thanks to the kickstarter )

I think you should fix krita's text tool as soon as possible.
I don't want to go back and forth between inkscape and krita.
Going back and forth reduces productivity.

TheraHedwig wrote:The person you are quoting might for example not realise that Krita nor Gimp do compressing of the layers into memory(something we suspect other programs are doing), because we aren't certain if that wouldn't increase the lag.

Do you think the person I quoted experienced lag because the person's computer ran out of RAM and started using swap? If krita wasn't leaking memory but didn't compress layers, I could just buy more RAM. I can easily afford 32~48GB RAM.

TheraHedwig wrote:if you do things outside of comics, Krita will be a little more versatile in the long run(if only because we'll be improving our own tools as well, of course). For example, if you do animation or create textures and patterns.

The capability to create texture and patterns could be combined with an online user repository which krita users install textures and patterns from and upload their own creations to. If users can't easily share and exchange patterns and textures they created, they can't benefit much from the capability.
Linux distributions are useful partly because of software repositories.

TheraHedwig wrote:But like I said, Krita's free to use, and we constantly improve, so no matter what you choose I hope you'll keep an eye on our news feed and try out future versions of Krita from time to time.

I haven't decided to use CSP exclusively, yet, and the deciding factors are all related to productivity and quality.
I will probably try both krita and CSP for a while before making a decision. The decision could be to use both.
The faster I draw and apply color, the faster I learn and produce.
The better the quality, the better my satisfaction.
The deciding factors will probably be

• Software Speed
  If there is a substantial difference in speed, it alone is a deciding factor, but there doesn't seem to be a significant difference in speed, yet.
  
  • Layer performance, Filter performance, Brush performance
  • Does a good dedicated graphics card(e.g. GTX750) increase krita's performance significantly more than an integrated graphics card(e.g. Intel HD 530) does?
  • Can a good graphics card and a good driver boost krita's performance significantly beyond that of CSP?
  • Which graphics card and which driver would maximize krita's performance?
  • Could CSP substantialy be more performant than krita even if I equip my computer with a decent graphics card and the best driver for the card and krita?
  • Layer compression may help people cram more layers into RAM. It's not a deciding factor, though. Why don't you make layer compression an option in the preferences?
• Manipulation of reference 3D models
  If there is an external open-source program that can do this easily, let me know. However, I suspect that doing it outside CSP could potentially sacrifice productivity, or it could require a lot of money or learning time. This seems to be a potential productivity boost.
  
  • Being able to change head-to-body ratio, body shape, and pose of 3D models easily
  • Being able to convert a set of 3D models into a 2D image with proper cell shading??
• Brush and pencil quality
  CSP pencils look more realistic than krita pencils, but the difference in quality doesn't look significant.
• Vector strokes
  I don't know if this is important, but it definitely seems useful. Will krita acquire vector stroke?
• Transformation Mask
  This seems to enhance productivity for drawing an object with lots of identical or similar 3D shapes in different angles.
• Convert photos to manga style?
  This can probably be done easily by an external program, but it feels handy
• Smart fill tool
  CSP has it, but this alone doesn't seem to boost productivity a lot.

tokigami.kineko wrote:

TheraHedwig wrote:Generally, Krita can do more deep lying architctural stuff than Clip Studio can,

What is architectural stuff? A building architecture?

Architectural stuff is the deep-lying functionality that a program can handle.

If you compare it to buildings, a school building is designed so that you have numerous big rooms that people can fit in with bathrooms and fire-exits. You could covert the school building to a hospital, a laboratory, a library, an office. All places that have the need to allow numerous people in. But you can't convert it to a parking garage, because the doors aren't wide enough to allow cars through. Nor could your make a shopping mall out of it, because there's not enough windows so that people can advertise their products. You'd have to make some really big changes to allow for this, to the point you might as well have started a new building.

So Krita has the architecture to handle animations and high bit color depths. This allows it to be used for many different things.

TheraHedwig wrote:filter layers, file layers, animation that isn't limited to 24frames a second, and things like 16bit and 32bit float painting.

What are filter layers, file layers, and 16bit/32bit float painting?

Filterlayers are filters applied as a layer in the layer stack, meaning that you can do a blur filter on part of the image.

File layers are an image file imported into the document as a layer, that dynamically updates as the image it's importing updates.

Regular programs can only paint 8bit color depth. Krita can paint 16bit and 32bit color depth, this allows it to make smoother gradients and higher quality images at the cost of the image taking up more ram.

TheraHedwig wrote:We currently for example suggest people to use inkscape for typing text, as Krita's text tool needs an overhaul(which is gonna happen this year, thanks to the kickstarter )

I think you should fix krita's text tool as soon as possible.
I don't want to go back and forth between inkscape and krita.
Going back and forth reduces productivity.

I already told you it is going to change this year?

TheraHedwig wrote:The person you are quoting might for example not realise that Krita nor Gimp do compressing of the layers into memory(something we suspect other programs are doing), because we aren't certain if that wouldn't increase the lag.

Do you think the person I quoted experienced lag because the person's computer ran out of RAM and started using swap? If krita wasn't leaking memory but didn't compress layers, I could just buy more RAM. I can easily afford 32~48GB RAM.

That could be possible, but we know one person who tried to compare krita and CSP and selected in Krita 32bit color depth instead of 8bit, which meant his image was 4 times as big as the same image in 8bit.

TheraHedwig wrote:if you do things outside of comics, Krita will be a little more versatile in the long run(if only because we'll be improving our own tools as well, of course). For example, if you do animation or create textures and patterns.

The capability to create texture and patterns could be combined with an online user repository which krita users install textures and patterns from and upload their own creations to. If users can't easily share and exchange patterns and textures they created, they can't benefit much from the capability.
Linux distributions are useful partly because of software repositories.

I am not quite sure how the resource bundle system doesn't already allow for sharing resources? Our users share resources all the time.

I mean, we are investigating a sharing platform, but I am not sure how not having a sharing platform stops people from sharing? Or maybe our users have far more agency than is normal?

• Software Speed
  If there is a substantial difference in speed, it alone is a deciding factor, but there doesn't seem to be a significant difference in speed, yet.
  
  • Layer performance, Filter performance, Brush performance
  • Does a good dedicated graphics card(e.g. GTX750) increase krita's performance significantly more than an integrated graphics card(e.g. Intel HD 530) does?
  • Can a good graphics card and a good driver boost krita's performance significantly beyond that of CSP?
  • Which graphics card and which driver would maximize krita's performance?
  • Could CSP substantialy be more performant than krita even if I equip my computer with a decent graphics card and the best driver for the card and krita?
  • Layer compression may help people cram more layers into RAM. It's not a deciding factor, though. Why don't you make layer compression an option in the preferences?

Yes and no. Krita works best on a graphics card that can handle openGL 3.0. Higher end graphics cards, such as the nvidea one you mention tend to have a better openGL 3.0 implementation, but if your intergrated intel card can do it, you should have all the krita features available.

Manipulation of reference 3D models
If there is an external open-source program that can do this easily, let me know. However, I suspect that doing it outside CSP could potentially sacrifice productivity, or it could require a lot of money or learning time. This seems to be a potential productivity boost.

• Being able to change head-to-body ratio, body shape, and pose of 3D models easily
• Being able to convert a set of 3D models into a 2D image with proper cell shading??

You should be using Blender or Make Human for this.

[*] Vector strokes
I don't know if this is important, but it definitely seems useful. Will krita acquire vector stroke?

We put it up as a potential feature we could develop this year, but users voted for python scripting instead.

[*] Convert photos to manga style?
This can probably be done easily by an external program, but it feels handy

Some of the gmic filters might be able to do this. I do not recommend this practice as it can create a huge drawing style clash, leading to spending more work integrating the two different styles(your own art work and the filtered photograph backgrounds).

TheraHedwig wrote:Regular programs can only paint 8bit color depth. Krita can paint 16bit and 32bit color depth, this allows it to make smoother gradients and higher quality images at the cost of the image taking up more ram.

Ah, it's floating point number. Isn't it a bit inaccurate?

TheraHedwig wrote:I am not quite sure how the resource bundle system doesn't already allow for sharing resources? Our users share resources all the time.
I mean, we are investigating a sharing platform, but I am not sure how not having a sharing platform stops people from sharing? Or maybe our users have far more agency than is normal?

Although lack of an official sharing platform doesn't stop people from sharing, an official sharing platform is more polished and more fine-grained than resource bundles, and it also facilitates sharing.

TheraHedwig wrote:Yes and no. Krita works best on a graphics card that can handle openGL 3.0. Higher end graphics cards, such as the nvidea one you mention tend to have a better openGL 3.0 implementation, but if your intergrated intel card can do it, you should have all the krita features available.

Do you mean one of the most powerful graphics cards will not accelerate krita better than an integrated graphics card as long as both have proper OpenGL 3.0 implementations? If I was correct, why would there be no noticeable difference in performance between the two?

TheraHedwig wrote:We put it up as a potential feature we could develop this year, but users voted for python scripting instead.

It seems the only real disadvantage of krita, compared to CSP is the lack of vector stroke, at least for me.

tokigami.kineko wrote:Ah, it's floating point number. Isn't it a bit inaccurate?

Actually, you have a choice of fixed point 8bit, fixed point 16bit, floating point 16bit, floating point 32bit.

tokigami.kineko wrote:Although lack of an official sharing platform doesn't stop people from sharing, an official sharing platform is more polished and more fine-grained than resource bundles, and it also facilitates sharing.

You can make resource bundles have as much or as little as you want, so I'm not sure why you'd say "more fine-grained"? On top of that, such a platform is probably quite a big time investment, and the server component has to be maintained. And with any service you put up on the internet, security is going to be a real issue, too.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but the krita development team is really, really small.

tokigami.kineko wrote:Do you mean one of the most powerful graphics cards will not accelerate krita better than an integrated graphics card as long as both have proper OpenGL 3.0 implementations? If I was correct, why would there be no noticeable difference in performance between the two?

at the moment, krita is mostly using OpenGL 3 for efficient rendering of assistants, and for quick uploading of texture data onto the GPU so that it can extremely quickly be scaled up, rotated, mirrored, or scaled down (thumbnails, instant-preview mode, ...).

In the future (no clue how long that'll be) krita could implement regular composition of layers as well as filter layers and layer FX as shaders. That would move more work off of the CPU and onto the GPU. At that point, having a GPU with more shader units and texture units will be helpful for performance. Until then, you'll benefit mostly from faster access to video RAM, I think.

tokigami.kineko wrote:It seems the only real disadvantage of krita, compared to CSP is the lack of vector stroke, at least for me.

It's still possible that it'll be developed before the next kickstarter happens. However, as far as popularity with the kickstarter backers goes, it came in 13th place, as can be seen in this news post: https://krita.org/en/item/post-kickstarter-news/

Of course, if a motivated volunteer appears and implements it, it'll be available. No guarantees.

I hope that helps

If you are just starting out, and are looking at CSP - there is also http://medibang.com/ which is also free and geared towards comic creation.

In my very unscientific investigations, I have had more mileage out of CSP than Krita, but I suspect that is down as much to the relative ages of the softwares (talking under correction of course) I believe Krita (at least in current form) is much younger than CSP so the developers have not had a much time to fine tune and optimise (when the feature set is not cast in stone there will always be a balance between new features and improving existing) - in my case I am often working on A1 or A0 landscape plans and CSP seems to handle the larger file sizes a bit better at the moment.

I do see myself at some point leaving CSP behind - as much for price as the ability to easily suggest features and the like with Krita. The fact that she is cross platform too

As always the best advice would be - trial them all, perhaps using a common file format as a template (I think it is unfair to compare CSP and their file format against Krita and kra etc) and of course doing the same "type" of art in all packages. There are also things to consider that are beyond performance and price. Some applications just feel right with one user but suck for another. Even things like the style of the user interface may or not put you off a certain programme.

From above
Manipulation of reference 3D models
If there is an external open-source program that can do this easily, let me know. However, I suspect that doing it outside CSP could potentially sacrifice productivity, or it could require a lot of money or learning time. This seems to be a potential productivity boost.

Being able to change head-to-body ratio, body shape, and pose of 3D models easily
Being able to convert a set of 3D models into a 2D image with proper cell shading??


You should be using Blender or Make Human for this. - could some Python boffin not implement something like http://www.manuelbastioni.com/manuellab.php to have a similar functionality in Krita? As an optional add-on of course as I am sure this will appeal to a percentage of users and not be needed all the time.