The Krita Foundation releases Krita 3.1.2
Originally posted on 15 December 2016. Scroll down for news of the 3.1.2 update.
The Krita Foundation has released Krita 3.1, the latest update to the open-source digital painting tool – and the first to properly support Mac OS X.
The update also extends the functionality of Krita’s animation toolset, adding a new graph editor and the option to export animations in GIF and MP4 format, and adds a new HDR-capable colour picker.
Mac OS X now “fully supported”
For Mac users, the biggest change in Krita 3.1 will simply be that it works properly: while previous releases had Mac builds, they were described as ‘experimental’ and not recommended for production.
According to The Krita Foundation, OS X is now “fully supported”, with the OpenGL canvas now working “just as well” as on other operating systems.
The developers will also now be actively fixing Mac-specific bugs in future releases.
New graph editor for 2D animation, plus proper animation export
For Linux or Windows users, the biggest changes will be to the 2D animation toolset introduced in Krita 3.0 earlier this year, which now gets a proper graph editor with automated tweening.
At the minute, it only works with layer opacity – including filter layers, fill layers and masks – but The Krita Foundation plans to support movement, scaling and transformation in future releases.
And whereas Krita 3.0 could only export animations as sequences of images which then needed to be combined in an external editor, Krita 3.1 can also now export animations in GIF, MP4, MKV and OGG formats.
The implementation is based on open-source multimedia framework FFmpeg, which must be installed separately and linked up to Krita.
New HDR-capable colour picker and Quick Brush engine for inking work
The update also introduces a new HDR-capable internal colour picker (above). Among other workflow improvements, it makes it possible to select colours by entering HDR values directly.
Krita’s other Color Selectors remain confined to sRGB gamut, but The Foundation hopes to update them in future releases.
There is also a “lightning-fast” Quick Brush engine, which trades functionality – it’s only possible to adjust brush size and spacing, not flow and opacity – for improved performance over the standard brush engines.
Suggested uses include inking work, or for manipulating very large documents.
There are also a number of smaller features, including a new stop-based gradient editor, a new halftone filter, and a New Layer from Visible option – the equivalent of Photoshop’s Copy Merged command.
Updated 11 February 2017: Krita 3.1.2 is out. It’s primarily a bugfix release, but it also adds experimental support for audio to the animation toolset.
Audio files can be imported in WAV, MP3, OGG, and FLAC formats, scrubbed through or played back from the timeline along with the animation, and included in output when rendering.
Availability
Krita 3.1.2 is available now for Windows 7 and above, Mac OS X 10.9 and above, and Linux. The software is available under a GPL licence, so it’s a free download.
Read a full list of new features in Krita 3.1