Krita

Infobox_Software
name = Krita



caption = Krita 1.6
developer = The Krita Team
latest_release_version = 1.6.3
latest_release_date = release date|2007|6|07
latest_preview_version = 2.0-alpha-9
latest_preview_date = release date|2008|7|16
operating_system = Cross-platform (Microsoft Windows Alpha released.)
genre = Raster graphics editor
license = GNU General Public License
website = http://www.koffice.org/krita

Krita is the bitmap graphics editor software included with the KDE based KOffice suite. Designed to be both a painting application and a photo editor, Krita is free software and distributed under GNU General Public License. It was released for the first time as a part of KOffice version 1.4.0, on June 21, 2005. Before any public release, it was called KImageShop and then later Krayon, but legal matters motivated a change from these names.

Krita's design emphasizes creating new images as opposed to manipulating existing photographs. It has been influenced to an extent by Corel Painter. As of 2006, many plugins written over the years for these other applications were not yet available for Krita.

Notable features found in the 1.5 release include CMYK, L*a*b and many more colorspaces, with bit depths from 8 to 32 bits per channel. Work is ongoing on support for natural painting tools that imitate painting or drawing with pencils, or paint brushes with ink or oil paints, even simulating the drying of the paint. The development version of Krita is the first publicly available paint program with realistic color mixingcite web | title = commit-digest.org - 12th August 2007 | url = http://commit-digest.org/issues/2007-08-12/#1 | date=2007-08-12 ] .

Krita 1.5 also features complete integration with KOffice allowing (among other things) embedding of KWord text components into images. The 1.6 release added support for handling perspective in drawings, including perspective transformation, perspective grid and perspective clone, layer masks, some enhanced tools like a new magnetic selection tool and a bezier curves tool, many new filters and a PDF import tool.

Now the work is being focused on KDE 4, for which natural painting tools are planned, but also better KOffice integration, better performance and being more feature-complete.

Name

The "README" file that comes with Krita's source code states:

Krita is a paint application for raster images. It's also, according to the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: The first of four Hindu periods contained in the great Yuga, when the genius of Truth and Right, in the form of bull, stood firm on his four feet, and man gained nothing by iniquity. In the Mahabharata, the name 'krita' is used in a context where this can be translated with 'perfect' - the perfect age. Krita is Swedish for chalk and rita means "to draw".

Notes and references

See also

* Comparison of raster graphics editors
* Linux color management
* Comparison of office suites

External links

* [http://www.koffice.org/krita/ Krita project webpage]
* [http://koffice.kde.org/tours/1.6/ KOffice 1.6 Tour, including Krita]
* [http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2007/09/18#kritawin%22%3Ebuilds%20and%20runs Krita Alpha Build for Windows]