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If you consider switching from CSP subscription to Krita
3 years ago
General
Hey guys.
CSP announced to switch their payment plans to paid updates and subscription and it spawned a wave of negative responses on twitter.
I already saw a lot of "I simply switch to Krita then" comments but when you think you can just simply replace CSP with Krita you probably get disappointed.
I use Krita since almost ten years now, and I love this program for digital painting. If your really consider switching you should know some things. Here is a short list of features CSP users are often missing (as in: it's missing from Krita) when they switch over to Krita.
- text tool is currently wonky, it always had problems. No support for vertical text or rendering text along a path. No word art. If you have to work with text a lot you probably don't want to do this in Krita.
- vector tools are there but very limited. I mostly use it for speech bubbles and comic frames.
- animation is possible, with onion skins and stuff. No automatic tweening and audio still is buggy. Krita relies on ffmpeg for rendering animations.
- there is no support for mouse drawing like there is in CSP, without a graphics tablet you are basically locked out of the cool brush features.
- some people seem to think that there isn't an eraser in Krita but in fact every brush can be toggled into eraser mode and there are some erase-only brush presets you can put on the eraser end of your pen. There is however, no vector eraser.
- the brush engine is a lot different (actually Krita has multiple different engines), you can't (from what I know) import brushes from CSP or PS (only brush tips for PS).
- people complain there are no clipping mask in Krita but it has alpha inheritance which is basically the same but a bit different to set up.
- PS files are not really supported because of licensing issues and the differences in the programs. As far as I know CSP files cant be opened with Krita because the files are encrypted and the specifications not open
- Krita doesn't use the graphics card for much other than rendering the UI and Canvas, hence all operations like filterers, masks and stuff are done by the CPU.
- there is no iOS version of Krita (since the software license is not compatible with the store) and consider the Android version a Beta (the UI isn't optimized for small screens). Supported are Linux ( I recommend the AppImage because it has a patched Qt and G'mic filters included), Windows and MacOS.
- the fill tool has no gap detection, yet. most people use a feature called colorize mask, that has it.
- no asset store
- no 3D models you can pose and draw over but assistants for perspective exist.
- Krita has just 10 paid developers
There's probably more but that's what I remember CSP users often asking for when coming to the Krita forums.
Krita's main goal was to be a software for digital painting, so it naturally does some things different. It recently got more features for comic artists and for animation. I think it's an incredible software for it's 0 money price tag but I just wanted to list some points that could annoy you or be an deal breaker for you and are good to know when you want to try it and come from CSP.
By the way, there is a paid version on Steam and some stores like Microsoft, the version is exactly the same as the free one on the website. Only thing it does is basically sending a donation to the team.
CSP announced to switch their payment plans to paid updates and subscription and it spawned a wave of negative responses on twitter.
I already saw a lot of "I simply switch to Krita then" comments but when you think you can just simply replace CSP with Krita you probably get disappointed.
I use Krita since almost ten years now, and I love this program for digital painting. If your really consider switching you should know some things. Here is a short list of features CSP users are often missing (as in: it's missing from Krita) when they switch over to Krita.
- text tool is currently wonky, it always had problems. No support for vertical text or rendering text along a path. No word art. If you have to work with text a lot you probably don't want to do this in Krita.
- vector tools are there but very limited. I mostly use it for speech bubbles and comic frames.
- animation is possible, with onion skins and stuff. No automatic tweening and audio still is buggy. Krita relies on ffmpeg for rendering animations.
- there is no support for mouse drawing like there is in CSP, without a graphics tablet you are basically locked out of the cool brush features.
- some people seem to think that there isn't an eraser in Krita but in fact every brush can be toggled into eraser mode and there are some erase-only brush presets you can put on the eraser end of your pen. There is however, no vector eraser.
- the brush engine is a lot different (actually Krita has multiple different engines), you can't (from what I know) import brushes from CSP or PS (only brush tips for PS).
- people complain there are no clipping mask in Krita but it has alpha inheritance which is basically the same but a bit different to set up.
- PS files are not really supported because of licensing issues and the differences in the programs. As far as I know CSP files cant be opened with Krita because the files are encrypted and the specifications not open
- Krita doesn't use the graphics card for much other than rendering the UI and Canvas, hence all operations like filterers, masks and stuff are done by the CPU.
- there is no iOS version of Krita (since the software license is not compatible with the store) and consider the Android version a Beta (the UI isn't optimized for small screens). Supported are Linux ( I recommend the AppImage because it has a patched Qt and G'mic filters included), Windows and MacOS.
- the fill tool has no gap detection, yet. most people use a feature called colorize mask, that has it.
- no asset store
- no 3D models you can pose and draw over but assistants for perspective exist.
- Krita has just 10 paid developers
There's probably more but that's what I remember CSP users often asking for when coming to the Krita forums.
Krita's main goal was to be a software for digital painting, so it naturally does some things different. It recently got more features for comic artists and for animation. I think it's an incredible software for it's 0 money price tag but I just wanted to list some points that could annoy you or be an deal breaker for you and are good to know when you want to try it and come from CSP.
By the way, there is a paid version on Steam and some stores like Microsoft, the version is exactly the same as the free one on the website. Only thing it does is basically sending a donation to the team.
