I went with a free open source program over Photoshop for my digital painting

Honestly, I see everyone on here swearing by Photoshop for digital art, but I made the choice to try Krita instead about 8 months ago. I had been using a cracked version of Photoshop for a couple years and kept running into crashes and lag with larger canvases. So I downloaded Krita, which is totally free, and figured I'd give it a month before buying a legit Photoshop subscription. The brush engine in Krita really surprised me - it handles texture and blending way smoother than I expected. My lineart came out cleaner after about 2 weeks of getting used to the interface. I did miss some of Photoshop's selection tools at first, but Krita has a tool called the Wrap Around Mode that helps with seamless textures. I'm curious if anyone else here ditched the big paid software for something free and stuck with it long term?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese_patel18d ago

Yeah but "smoother than expected" still means you're settling for less than what the industry standard gives you. Once you need to collaborate with other artists or hand off files to clients, you'll be begging for those Photoshop tools you miss.

rowanc2917d ago

begging for those Photoshop tools" - nah man, I get where you're coming from but honestly I've been on Krita for almost 2 years now and I've done client work without issues. The file formats are totally compatible so handing off PSDs is fine. The only thing I really missed was the magic wand tool for quick selections, but Krita has a similar tool called the color selector mask that does the same thing once you figure it out.