Digital Painting With Krita 2.9 Chapters1 2
Digital Painting With Krita 2.9 Chapters1 2
KRITA
2.9
1. User Interface 7
Interface Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Manipulating the Canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Pop-up Palette. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Dockers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Toolbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Tool Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Toolbar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Working with Multiple Documents ������������������������������������������������������������ 19
Main Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Status Bar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Themes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Configuring Shortcuts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Undo History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Copy and Paste Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Common Configuration Options �������������������������������������������������������������� 26
2. Painting Fundamentals 29
Preset Brushes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The Power of the Eraser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Tagging System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Importing Brushes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Brush Smoothing and Dynamic Brush ������������������������������������������������������ 38
Fills, Gradients, and Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Gradient Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Brush Dab vs. Brush Stroke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
vii
Resizing the Image. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Resizing the Canvas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Crop Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Trim Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3. Layers 51
Layers Docker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Layer Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Mask Layer Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Some Other Nice Layer Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5. Drawing Assistants 89
Horizontal Mirroring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Mirror X & Y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Measure Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Multibrush Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Wrap-Around Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Assistant Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Grid Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Rulers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
ix
10. Vector Tools 191
Understanding Vector Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Creating Vector Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Anchor Point Tool Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Calligraphy Tool. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Text Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Vector Gradients and Patterns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
There are quite a few art education books on the market about digital painting
but few about Krita. While there are resources online and Wiki articles, they are
written by various authors and can be difficult to wade through.
This past year, I have immersed myself in the Krita community: forums, the
Krita chat room, YouTube videos, and social media. The goal was to educate
myself on what Krita has to offer. There is a lot of helpful content on the
Internet, but it is spread out and at times not accurate. This makes it difficult to
find current information.
This book hopes to bring all of the knowledge I have learned under one roof. I
hope to share everything I know about the application. After spending so much
time with Krita, I believe it has the potential to disrupt the entire graphics
industry. Also, a portion of the profits from this book will go toward the Krita
Foundation. Your purchase is making Krita better for everyone.
Each chapter covers a different area in the application. You can read this book
from cover to cover, but it isn’t designed for this type of consumption. The
table of contents is a quick way to skim and find an area you are interested in.
If you have never used Krita before, the first few chapters will be valuable for
navigating your way around. From there, this book will serve as a good reference
when you need to learn more about a specific concept.
Introduction 1
Downloading and Installing
The safest place to download Krita is from the project website krita.org. When
you visit the download page, you will notice that there are different versions of
Krita that you can work with. Each version has a different audience in mind.
You will probably want Krita Desktop since that works with desktop and laptop
computers. This book contains information up through Krita 2.9.7.3.
• Krita Desktop – Optimized for nontouch screen devices. This is the version
that most people use.
• Krita Gemini – Optimized for devices that can switch between touch
screen and nontouch screen. This is only available for purchase on the Steam
platform.
• Krita Studio – Commercial version that has paid support. Priority will
be given for bug fixes and new features. There are no extra features in this
version. The primary operating system for this is CentOS.
Make sure to download the correct version for your operating system. If you are
on a 64-bit operating system, make sure to download the 64-bit version.
Common Issues
There are some common issues that occasionally happen when trying to run
Krita. The most common issue has to do with the canvas. The pen pressure
might not work, or the canvas might appear black. A common solution is to
disable OpenGL. This is done from the main menu Settings > Configure
Krita > Display tab. To disable it, uncheck the OpenGL checkbox. OpenGL
is a graphics technology that Krita uses. OpenGL is used for canvas rotation
and zooming functions. This problem is more common with older computers.
Updating your graphics driver fixes this issue many times.
Introduction 3
Configuring Your Graphics Tablet Drivers
When you download the tablet drivers, it usually comes with software to
configure it. Wacom tablets come with a program called Wacom Tablet
Properties that you can find from searching the Start Menu on Windows. You
can assign shortcuts to the tablet as well as modify the pressure sensitivity.
The image above is a configuration screen for a Wacom tablet. The Mac and
Linux versions should look similar. You can assign and configure the stylus to
your heart’s content. I will explain a few common settings that you might want
to customize.
• Tablet – Related to your drawing area. The options deal with using multiple
monitors or resolving discrepancies between your monitor size and tablet
size.
• Tool – Pen and external button options. Most of the configuration options
will be done here with assigning shortcuts for your eraser, pen tip, touch
strips, or other external buttons your tablet offers.
• Application – Every application works a little different, so you can specify
different shortcut arrangements for each application.
Make sure your tablet is plugged in before you start Krita. There are some
situations where Krita won’t recognize your graphics tablet if your pen is plugged
in later.
External Resources
The Learn section on krita.org has an abundance of educational videos and
training material. The content ranges from DVDs and Wiki pages to videos. If
a concept in the book is difficult to understand, there might be outside training.
The Chat room is the fastest place to ask your questions. These can be related to
installation issues, hardware issues, or building steps that might be hard to find.
To access the chat room, you can go to the Krita website; there should be a link
in the contact area on how to get connected or find the link on the Get Involved
tab. Keep in mind that the chat room isn’t always going to get you an immediate
answer. Many of the developers and volunteers may not be at their computer. If
you do not get a response in a few minutes, you can take the next step.
The Forum can be a little better than the chat room since the conversations
can be continued over days or weeks. You can search through the Krita forum
and see if anyone else is experiencing the same issue. If you cannot find your
solution, you can ask a question yourself in a new forum post. To access the
forum, visit https://forum.kde.org. Click the Graphics & Multimedia area.
Then click on the Krita forum. You can look at news, post your artwork to
share, or visit the General Help topic.
The mailing list is a way to stay on top of Krita improvements via e-mail. There
are two main types of mailing lists that exist: the mailing list on krita.org and
the developer mailing list. The mailing list on krita.org is designed so you will be
notified when new releases come out. If you don’t feel like checking the website
to see if a new version has been released, the mailing list is a good place to sign
up. You can sign up for this mailing list on Krita’s homepage. It usually includes
information on what has changed and instructs you on how to download the
new version.
The second mailing list, kimageshop, is designed for developers who want
to be involved working on the application. At one point Krita was named
“kimageshop”, so the mailing list has retained that name. You can talk with the
developers in the chat room to find out if this is right for you.
Introduction 5
Artwork by Kynlo
http://kynlo.deviantart.com
Chapter
1
User Interface
This chapter might go in more detail than you need to get started. If you
feel like you have had enough, you can skip ahead to Chapter 2, where we
go over painting. You can always come back if you want to learn more.
We will begin with creating a new document and navigating around the
canvas. We will then start looking at how to customize all of the dockers
and user interface (UI) elements. Other UI elements will slowly be
introduced as we progress. By the end of this chapter, you will understand
all of the UI concepts and features that Krita offers. You will also get a good
idea of some common workflows that you can use.
7
Interface Basics
The interface is broken into functional areas. The blank area in the middle is
called the canvas area. When you create or open a document, the canvas area
will be filled with your working document.
For now, go to the Custom Document type. Leave all of the settings alone. We
can change these at any time. Click the Create button on the bottom right. You
will see all of the buttons and menus on the application become enabled. Before
we go deeper with all of the buttons, let’s learn how to move around the canvas.
Panning – Hold down Spacebar. Your cursor will turn into a hand.
Drag your pen around. This moves the canvas left, right, up, or down.
Rotating the canvas – Hold down Spacebar + Shift. Your cursor will
turn into a rotate icon. Drag your pen around and see the canvas rotate.
This is helpful if you are having a hard time drawing certain angles.
As you rotate, notice how you receive feedback at the top left of your
screen. If you want to reset the canvas to 0°, press 5 on the keyboard.
The 4 and 6 keys will rotate the canvas in 15° increments.
Zoom in/out – Hold down Spacebar + Ctrl. Your cursor will turn into
a magnifying glass. Drag your pen up and down. Your canvas will zoom
in and out. To reset your canvas back to 100%, press 1.
Color selector – Hold down Ctrl. Your cursor will turn into an
eye dropper. When you tap the pen on the canvas, the color that is
underneath will be picked up for you to use.
In addition to the above shortcuts, there are also a few different modes and
features that deal with working with the canvas and interface.
Canvas-Only Mode
Hide all of the user interface elements. Pressing the Tab key will toggle Canvas-
Only mode. If you want, you can selectively show certain elements by going
through the main menu Settings > Configure Krita > Canvas-only settings.
Pseudo-Infinite Canvas
Quickly add more canvas to your document. If you move your document off the
screen far enough, a new UI element will appear with an arrow. Clicking that
arrow will add more canvas to the page.
Pop-up Palette
If you right-click on the canvas, the pop-up palette will appear. This palette is
a quick way to select colors and change brushes. This can be helpful if you use
only a handful of brushes. The different color swatches that are displayed on the
ring are the recent colors that you have selected. Selecting a color will change
your current foreground color.
Foreground &
background color
Recent colors
Brush presets
Current color
Tag options
You can also modify how many brushes will appear in the radial menu. By
default, the pop-up palette shows 10 brushes. To change the number of presets
shown, do the following:
Keep in mind that the more brushes you show in the radial menu, the smaller
the slices will be for each brush. The size of the pop-up palette does not change.
Dockers
Dockers can include color selectors, tools settings, brush presets, or other
common tools needed for artwork. There are too many dockers to show on
the screen, so Krita only shows a few at the start. These dockers can be moved,
resized, hidden, or organized in a variety of ways. They will appear differently
depending on how big your monitor is.
You can also make dockers float. Floating dockers will appear in front of the
application. Moving the application window will not move a floating docker.
Dockers can be moved in a number of ways. You can dock something above,
below, to the side, and even inside another docker. If you choose to place it
inside, the interface will create a tabbing system where you can switch between
different dockers. This is a good way to organize and clean up the user interface.
When you grab a docker by its header and drag your pen, the docker will tear
off. If you go over existing dockers, you will get a preview rectangle showing
where it will be placed.
In addition to the floating options on the header, there are a few other options
to help you manage dockers. The icons are listed from left to right.
The Remove Docker icon will hide the docker from the application. If you want
to show it again you can go to the main menu Settings > Dockers. Dockers
remember where they were placed last, so turning a docker back on will place it
in the last known spot.
Note
If you make a mess of the interface, or it gets in a corrupted state,
selecting a workspace from the toolbar will reset everything.
Almost all UI elements are built with dockers in Krita. Mastering how to use
dockers will help you customize Krita to the fullest.
Toolbox
When Krita creates a document, it selects the Freehand Brush Tool by default.
If you aren’t sure what a tool is on the interface, you can hover over it and a
tooltip will appear. The shortcut will also appear in the tooltip if it exists. Don’t
worry about understanding what all of these tools do right now. We will visit
these tools in greater detail throughout the book. You can resize the toolbox if
you want to change how many columns are shown. This lets you change how
many columns are displayed. You can also right-click inside the toolbox to
change the icon size.
Tool Options
Most of the tools in the toolbox have additional options you can change. These
options will all appear in the Tool Options docker. This docker might be hidden
behind a tab when you first start Krita. It is often grouped with the Layers tab,
depending on the workspace that is used.
The Toolbar
The toolbar is the top bar that spans horizontally across the interface. It has
common operations that you may need to perform on a regular basis. You can
also customize the toolbar by right-clicking the toolbar and clicking Configure
Toolbars.
Document Options
Create, open, or save a document. There are common shortcuts to do these as
well, but these icons can be useful if you are using Krita on a tablet.
Eraser Mode
Switch between painting and erasing. If you look at the toolbox, you will notice
that there is no eraser tool. The Eraser mode tool concept is the primary way
to erase things in Krita. When you toggle this feature, the blending mode will
switch between Erase and Normal. Shortcut: E.
Preserve Alpha
Lock what areas can be painted on. When enabled, the transparent part of your
layer cannot be painted on. This is useful as a masking technique. This is a
separate setting than the layer’s alpha lock.
Note
Right-clicking on a docker title will give you a list of dockers to show
or hide. This is quicker than going through the main menu. Locked
dockers cannot be shown or hidden.
Brush Size
Change your brush size. Shortcut: Shift + left-click, then drag left or right.
Flow
There is another slider on the toolbar, but it is hidden. If you look at the two
sliders, you will notice a drop-down arrow. If you click it, a menu will appear
that will allow you to select a third option, the Flow setting.
Flow is often confused with opacity since it will give similar results. The biggest
difference is that flow controls transparency of each dab from the brush.
Opacity controls the transparency with the entire stroke. In the following
example, you can see that reducing the flow creates a softer edge. This effect
is similar to having a marker that is low on ink. The marker still writes but
has less ink coming out. The lines also build and interact with each other
differently.
Workspace Chooser
Workspaces are predefined user interface layouts. Workspaces will save which
dockers are open and where they are located. Selecting a workspace from the
toolbar will apply the workspace. If you create a setup that you like and want
Krita to remember it, you can open the workspace drop-down menu. At the
bottom, there is an option to enter a name and save it.
Tip
You can right-click on any slider to input your own numbers. For
example, if you want your brush size to be exactly 83 px, you can right-
click the Size slider. The input will turn to a textbox where you can
enter your values. When you are done, click the Enter key. All number
sliders work this way in the application.
The other display type is subwindows. This allows you to view multiple
documents at the same time. You can have the same document open with
different zoom settings like the following image.
The shortcut Ctrl + Tab will switch to the next document. You can also press Ctrl
+ Shift + Tab to cycle backward through documents.
Main Menu
The main menu is organized by function. Most features that exist in Krita are
accessible via this main menu. Many of the common actions have keyboard
shortcuts associated with them.
The menu system is almost never the fastest or most convenient way to do
something. It gives you a rough table of contents of what the feature set of
an application offers. You can see what exists and maybe what shortcuts are
assigned.
Spend a few minutes if you want and look over all of the menu items. You will
understand some menu items, while others will seem more obscure. Don’t worry
about understanding everything right now. We will go over all of the menu
actions by the end of the book.
Status Bar
At the bottom of the application, you will see a few options in the status bar.
These will help you see and manage your active document.
1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Selection display mode – When you create a selection, you will see a shape
that shows what you have selected. By default, this selection is shown as an
outline, known as the marching ants. The selection display mode is a toggle
button that will switch the display from marching ants to a color-based
mask display. When the mode is changed from ants to mask, the selection
mask will turn into a color. The colors for the mask option can be changed
in Krita’s configuration. The section on selections (Chapter 4) will go over
this in more detail.
2. Current brush name – This area will originally be empty when you start
Krita. As soon as you select a brush from the brush presets, this area will
display the brush name.
6. Pixel aspect ratio (PAR) – This toggle button changes how the pixels
are displayed on the screen. By default, pixels are square, but this is not
always the case, depending on your document. This was more common
when standard definition televisions were used. With modern technology,
nonsquare pixels are increasingly rare. More than likely, you won’t have to
worry about ever using this.
Themes
Krita comes installed with a few different color themes for the interface. By
default, the interface uses the dark theme. Some artists prefer dark themes, while
others prefer lighter themes.
Changing Themes
There are a number of predefined themes you can select. To change the default
theme, go into the main menu and click Settings > Themes, then select a
theme. As soon as you select the theme, the selected theme will be applied across
the entire application.
Shortcut Options
There are two types of shortcuts you can assign: Shortcut and Alternate. To
modify an existing action’s shortcut, select the cell that you are wanting to
change. Clicking the Action name will autoselect the regular shortcut option.
When you select a shortcut name, you will get a couple of options.
• Default – This is the factory default. Selecting this will revert the shortcut
back to the original shortcut.
• Custom – Assign your own shortcut. The small icon on the right will clear
your custom selection.
When you click the wrench button for the custom shortcut, you can press a key
combination. In addition to numbers and letters, you can use the Shift, Alt,
Ctrl, and the Meta (Windows/Apple) keys.
You also must have a shortcut defined before you try to assign an alternate. If
you try to assign an alternate shortcut without a primary one, the shortcut will
be set as the primary shortcut.
Another interesting option with shortcuts is the ability to print out your
shortcuts. The button says Print, but it is more of an export to a PDF.
Undo History
The Undo History keeps track of all of your changes and puts it in the Undo
History docker. This docker is sometimes by the Layers docker in another tab.
If you do a lot of painting, Krita might start to merge the brush strokes together.
This is called Cumulative Undo/Redo. You can right-click in the docker to
enable this setting. This feature is off by default. When it is on, there are a few
options that will appear when you right-click in the Undo History docker.
• Start merging time – The same action will be merged if done for a given
amount of seconds.
• Group time – Smaller times create more merges.
• Split Strokes – Controls the amount of actions needed before the docker
will merge the actions into one.
Copy Merged
Take your selection and copy all of the layer contents. By default, Krita will only
copy one layer. With Copy merged, the clipboard will copy everything that is
visible in the selection. This is convenient when working with a lot of layers.
Access from the main menu Edit > Copy merged.
Autosave
If you have made digital artwork in the past, you probably have lost your work
from the application locking up or crashing. Autosave will occasionally save
copies to prevent this. For large images, this operation can take a little while,
so you might want to tweak it. By default, your document will be autosaved
every 5 minutes. You can turn this off by unchecking the option. This setting is
located under the General tab under the Miscellaneous grouping.
Canvas-Only Settings
If you like working in Canvas-Only mode, you can decide which user interface
elements you want to hide. By default, all elements are hidden. Many people
don’t like to see elements like the status bar, so you may want to hide that. There
is no option to hide the tabs area. If seeing the tabs really bothers you, switch
to subwindows mode on the General tab to make them disappear. The other
settings are all located under the Canvas-only settings tab.
Painting Fundamentals
This chapter goes over the painting system that Krita offers. We will first
take a look at where all of the brushes are stored. There are multiple ways
you can find and select brushes, depending on your workflow. There is
even a tagging system to help organize your brushes.
The brushes that come installed are good but somewhat limited. We
will look at how to find external brushes online to get more out of your
painting experience. We will also learn how to load these files by using
Krita’s resource manager.
29
Preset Brushes
Krita comes preinstalled with a number of brushes. Other artists have created
these default brushes throughout the years so you can start painting right away.
These brushes are referred to as presets in some parts of the applications. They
are occasionally called resources as well as paintoppresets.
Before you can start painting, make sure you have the Freehand Brush Tool
selected.
Freehand Brush Tool (default tool) – Paint with the numerous brushes
that are available from the Brush Presets docker. Shortcut: B.
Draw a few strokes on the canvas with your pen to see the results. The stroke
should become more opaque the more pressure that is applied. If the stroke is a
solid opaque color, that means your tablet isn’t set up correctly. Make sure you
have your tablet drivers installed and configured.
By default, Krita uses the Basic_tip_default brush. While it looks okay, it doesn’t
really have a lot of painterly qualities to it. We are going to pick another brush
from the Brush Presets docker. Go to the brush presets icon in the top toolbar
and take a look at what is available.
To the right of the tagging filter you will see a view options icon that controls
how the presets are displayed.
While in Thumbnails mode, you can hover the pen over a preset thumbnail and
it will reveal the brush name as a tooltip. The brush name is a nice hint, but you
will need to test it out.
For now, select the basic_wet brush. Draw a few brush strokes with it and
compare it to the previous brush we had. You will notice it feels softer and
behaves a little differently. One of the biggest differences is the wet brush uses
a different brush engine than the basic default brush. The basic brush uses the
Pixel engine, while the wet brush is using the Color Smudge engine.
The advantage of this toggle is that the eraser will inherit many of the brush
properties. The eraser will be the same size as your current brush and will keep
the same tip shape. This can make erasing feel more natural since it is a variation
of your brush. If you change the size of the brush, the eraser will also change
sizes. While you can change this behavior, it is nice for a default.
Toggling to erase mode will keep your brush tip the same.
When you erase an area, you are using a blending mode to do so. This blending
mode, called Erase, is also available in the Layers docker. The default blending
mode is Normal for a layer. You can change this via the drop-down at the top.
This can serve a variety of purposes, including using it to mask out areas.
The erasing concept goes further. It can be used with many of the other tools.
You can use the Gradient Tool to erase with gradients. You can erase using
the shape tools like rectangles or circles. You can even erase using a pattern.
There is so much flexibility with erasing, it can be painful to go back to other
applications.
One way to manage and view your tags is in the brush presets editor. This is
located in the toolbar on top and looks like a grid. You can also access all of the
same icons using the Brush Presets docker.
The Brush Presets docker can be nice if you want to keep all of the brushes on
the screen. When you open the Brush Presets docker, the drop-down will say
“All”. This drop-down is asking you what brushes to display. By default, all
presets are shown.
Click the drop-down and change it to Favorite Presets. You will notice the list
of brushes shrinks. The drop-down is a tag list. If a brush is tagged with being
a favorite, the brush will show up when you select favorites. How did those
brushes get in the favorites? And how do you remove brushes from a tag?
The first item in the menu is the brush name. Even though it looks like it is
clickable, it doesn’t do anything. The second option, Assign to tag, has a fly-out
menu that shows all of the tags that exist and an option to create a new tag. The
last option will remove the brush from the tag. Select Remove from this tag and
watch the brush disappear from the Favorite Presets list.
If we go back to the All option in the drop-down, we can then select a new
brush that we want to add. If we liked the block_bristles brush, we could right-
click the preset, hover over Assign to tag, and click the Favorite Presets option.
If we would go back to see our favorite presets, the block_bristles brush would
now appear.
Tip
All of the brushes are listed by name alphabetically. If you are having a
hard time finding a brush, don’t forget about the search filter that exists
at the bottom.
Once you have selected a brush from the pop-up palette, the < and > keys
will cycle through the presets. The one downside to these shortcuts is that the
After the tag is added, all you have to do is right-click any brush preset, select
Assign to tag, and your new tag will appear on the list.
When you create a new tag, the presets will automatically change to your new
tag. This is somewhat inconvenient since this list will always be empty. You will
have to change the tag list back to All presets to be able to start adding.
This menu also contains options to rename the currently selected tag or remove
it. Krita keeps a record of the last tag that you deleted. This means there will be
an Undelete option available on the menu once a tag is deleted.
Select the David Revoy brush set. This will take you to the GitHub site where
David updates his brushes. GitHub is normally a site for programmers to share
code. David decided to keep his brushes here since he updates them frequently.
Let’s download them! You can see on the right there is a Download ZIP option
at the bottom.
Tip
Sometimes brushes and textures are in formats such as a “tar” file. This
is another format that is designed to make file packages smaller. If you
are having issues opening any of the resources, take a look at the free
program 7-zip at http://www.7-zip.org/.
Open the zip file and select the two folders brushes and paintoppresets. We
need to determine where to put these files so Krita will know how to load them.
The easiest way to get to this location is from inside of Krita. From the main
menu, go to Settings > Manage Resources.
This will open the resource manager. From here, click the option Open
Resource Folder on the right. A new window will appear showing you where
Krita is storing all of its brushes, patterns, and workspace information.
That is it! The next time you start Krita, you will see the new presets in your
presets areas. There are quite a few websites where you can find additional brush
packs.
You can import individual images as well to use for patterns and brush tip
shapes. You can see the full list of supported file types by clicking Import
Bundle/Resource and looking through the supported file types in the drop-
down.
• No Smoothing (default) – The input from your pen will translate directly
to the canvas without any processing. Drawing fast might result in slightly
jagged lines.
• Basic Smoothing – This will smoothen out the jagged lines if you have a
fast drawing style. I usually leave my brush on this.
• Weighted Smoothing – Similar to Basic Smoothing, but this option has
extra parameters for working at different zoom levels.
• Stabilizer – Attempts to smooth your brush stroke by creating a buffer
around your cursor (looks like a circle). Your brush stroke will only be
applied when your stroke gets to the outside of the buffer.
There is also a dynamic brush engine that exists in the brush editor. They share
similar properties. The Dynamic Brush Tool has a few options for you to tweak.
• Mass – Makes your brush strokes feel heavier. This will make your brush
strokes move less across the canvas but will produce smoother results.
• Drag – Friction that will apply force in the opposite direction. High values
will have little friction, while low values will seem like you are drawing with
a rubber band.
• Fixed Angle – This is disabled at all times, so you can ignore it.
Fill Tool – Take the selected area and fill it with the foreground color.
See the two circles on the left, followed by the same circles being filled with the
Fill Tool. I changed the color with the color selector for the different levels of
gray. I did three separate fills for the image on the right. There are a few tool
options for the Fill Tool.
When filling line work, the Grow selection option will be useful. Don’t forget
about the Use pattern checkbox. It is easy to forget that patterns also use the Fill
Tool.
One issue with the pattern editor is that you cannot scale or rotate the results.
We cannot make the pattern smaller through any options. The only way is to
save it as a smaller image size and import it back in again.
If we want to scale a pattern, there is a trick that uses layer styles. By applying
a Pattern Overlay layer style, we have the option to scale. We will learn more
about layer styles in the Adjustments, Filters, & Effects chapter.
Gradient Tool
The Gradient Tool fills your canvas with a combination of two or more colors.
When you use this tool, you will be able to specify the starting and ending color
ranges. The line you draw determines the distance between the beginning and
ending values. Smaller lines will make tight transitions, while larger lines will be
smoother.
Gradient Tool – Fills the area with the selected gradient. The Gradient
Tool does not interact with what you have drawn on a layer. Limiting the
effect will need a selection before applying the gradient. Shortcut: G.
The left image shows a gradient fill with no selection. Note that when using
the tool, I drew a line going from left to right that spanned the entire canvas.
On the right, I created a circular selection that included the one circle. Use the
gradient editor on the toolbar to change colors.
Gradient Options
There are a few types of gradients to choose from. The Bilinear and Linear
appear almost identical. The Radial gradient will produce a vignette-type effect.
The most common types of gradients are usually the Linear and the Radial.
Creating Gradients
If you aren’t happy with the included gradients, create your own. The gradient
editor is located on the toolbar. Once opened, click the Add icon. This will
bring up a Custom Gradient editor.
From the gradient editor, you can edit the existing gradient colors as well as how
the colors transition to each other. You can right-click the slider on the gradient
to get additional options for removing, splitting, mirroring, or duplicating the
segments.
If you want to apply gradients and patterns more nondestructively, take a look
at the Layer Styles section in the Adjustments, Filters, & Effects chapter. You
can add a gradient or pattern layer style to your image. This will allow you to go
back and edit them later.
Brush stroke
Brush dab
In the dialog, the top area deals with the image in pixels. The bottom area deals
with options for how the image will look when printed. Changing the pixel
dimensions will automatically update the print dimensions. You will need to
check the Adjust print size separately option to have different values. If you do
not constrain the proportions when resizing the image, your image may look
distorted.
Changing the anchor point will help you decide what direction the canvas will
grow or shrink. If you make the canvas larger and set the anchor point to the
right arrow, the canvas will grow out in the left direction. If you set the anchor
to the bottom, the canvas will grow in the up direction.
A second way to change the canvas size is through the pseudo-infinite canvas
option that we learned about in the User Interface chapter.
Crop Tool
Resize your canvas dynamically on the screen. This can make your document
smaller or larger. If you turn on the Grow checkbox in the Tool Options, the
Crop Tool can resize the canvas to a larger size. The checkboxes by the width,
height, and aspect ratio will lock the values. You can also change the appearance
of the display by changing the Decoration. It can be set to common displays
such as the rule of thirds (named Thirds).
When you are done setting the crop size press the Crop button or the Enter key
to commit the changes.
Trim Images
Trim images are special cropping methods that resize your canvas. These
are located in the main menu under Image. Each option is used for slightly
different purposes.
Trim to Selection
Resize the canvas based off of your selection. The menu option becomes
available when a selection exists. If you accidently create a selection instead of
cropping, this feature can be a quick fix.