Replacing GIMP [LWN.net]

Replacing GIMP

Posted Oct 2, 2013 12:51 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104)
Parent article: Rempt: Ten years of working on Krita

When I first heard of Krita, I hoped it would replace Gimp as the free graphic editor of choice. Gimp development has been slow and frustrating. There is still no 16-bit channel depth support in any version of Gimp, stable or unstable. The single window interface was added after a long struggle, but it's so inconvenient that it only there to speak on behalf of Gimp developers - "you don't want it, I told you so".

Is Krita getting close to being a Gimp replacement for casual users? How about professionals?

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Replacing GIMP

Posted Oct 2, 2013 13:00 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Though there is overlap, for sure, Krita has a different focus from GIMP, so it'll never be a drop-in replacement. Krita is a painting application, GIMP an image manipulation application. Krita's brushes are better, GIMP has more filters and better selection tools :-)

And these days, Krita is pretty suitable for professional use, it is actually used by professional illustrators, texture painters, game graphics designers, vfx studios and matte painters every day. Check the brochure I made for the 2.6 release: http://krita.org/aboutkrita26.pdf.

And I fully intend to go further down this route, which is why we've got the Krita Foundation, which sponsors development, and my company, KO GmbH, which provides professional Krita support for VFX studios.