Krita, an open source digital painting app, has rolled out version 5.3.0 and 6.0.0 simultaneously. After several years in development, both versions come with significant updates and share nearly identical features. Krita 5.3 continues to run on Qt 5, while Krita 6 moves to Qt 6 and is still considered in the experimental phase. The dual-release strategy ensures stability for current users while making 6.0 the primary version before the end of the year.
A major update focused on text and tools
The headline feature of Krita 5.3 is the completely rebuilt text tool. You can now place text along paths or inside shapes with greater precision. This is quite helpful for comic creators, illustrators, and designers who rely on structured typography in their workflow. A dedicated Text Properties Docker provides deeper control over more than 50 editable properties. Krita hides unused properties by default to avoid overwhelming anyone. The new update adds style presets, letting you quickly reuse your preferred text settings instead of remembering every time. Krita 5.3 can also import and export text objects from Adobe Photoshop PSD files.
Alongside the text tool, Krita 5.3 introduces a Glyph Palette for alternate characters, symbols, and stylistic variations within a font. OpenType-like ligatures can be browsed and directly inserted into the text without searching for special characters or switching tools. The update is quite beneficial for artists working on decorative fonts, multilingual text, or detailed lettering. For precise typography work, the Type Setting Mode lets you adjust individual glyph positions, baseline shifts, line height, and font size directly on the canvas.
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Krita 5.3 polishes the core toolset in this release. The knife tool allows you to split and merge vector objects, making it easier for comic creators to set up panel layouts. The fill tool now gets gap-closing functionality, which means fewer broken fills and less manual cleanup, addressing a common frustration for digital artists.
There’s now an option to dynamically adjust smoothing based on stroke speed. Hand jitters are common with slow strokes, so smoothing can be set higher, whereas it can be kept low for fast strokes. For digital painters, there’s a Soft Texturing mode for brush patterns with the strength setting now controlling how much of the texture shows up. At lower values, the pattern can fade out almost completely, and at higher values, it becomes more visible.
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Coming back to the two new versions of Krita, the Qt 6-based 6.0 version offers Wayland support on Linux for color management. If you want the most stable experience, it might be a good idea to stick to Krita 5.3. Both versions are completely free and open-source.
Krita is available for download on macOS and Windows (64-bit only; 32-bit builds have been discontinued). There’s also an Android version designed primarily for tablets on Google Play Store.
Source: Krita
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