Feedback as a non-Krita artist

Develop Artists Feedback & Testing
1

I’ve been drawing and painting for over 6 years now, using various different programs and materials, with Krita being the first painting software I ever picked up. However, I swapped away from Krita and picked up Clip Studio around Krita 3.0 or maybe early 4.0 due to it being incredibly buggy at the time and generally pissing me off.

Since then, CSP has been my drawing app of choice, however I’ve still checked in on Krita over the years to see if it’s gotten to the point where it’d once again be a viable main program for me. Honestly though, it isn’t, and the way it’s being handled signals to me that it never will be unless things change.

Krita’s obviously gotten better since I swapped to CSP, but the way it gets updated is extremely sporadic and FOSS-pilled. I don’t want to point fingers or harass the people who develop and contribute to Krita, and want to make it extremely clear that I like this software and want to use it as my daily driver, but I don’t feel comfortable going back to it and rewriting my entire workflow to work around Krita instead of being enhanced by it, because I just don’t see much of a future for it.

…

Krita feels like it’s developed in an out of touch way, developed by programmers guessing at what artists want in an art app, instead of going out of their way to really research and attempt to understand what artists want/like in other apps. In my opinion, it’s not surface level features and bells and whistles, it’s the basic workflow you can achieve in most apps but can’t in Krita. A lot of this comes down to simple QoL features and the overall feeling of the app, but for some reason, the main direction Krita development usually takes is extremely misguided and time consuming, typically adding a lot of complex and technically mindblowing features (which typically bring a lot of new bugs, and therefore additional work), instead of focusing on optimizing the actual experience of using the app, you know, improving what’s already there.

A big thing, personally, is how much I have to change my workflow around Krita, which isn’t something I typically notice in other art programs. When discussing this kind of stuff with other Krita fans, the response I typically get is either A.) “Oh you can sort of do that! You just need to go into X menu and open Y option then scroll through the list and it should be in section Z, and there’s a tool that lets you do something similar but not quite.” B.) “What?! That’s stupid, why would you even want something like that? Ignore the fact that twenty other art programs have it, of course.”

Which sort of brings me to the inner “Krita Culture”, I guess, which is made up by incredibly loyal individuals who are quick to argue with you and defend the dev team from any and all criticism of the software. For anything to improve, it must receive feedback, so how is Krita meant to ever improve if any and all feedback is preemptively shot down by terminally online white knights?

But back on topic, while Krita is technically an extremely powerful app that can do a lot of things, the experience of using the app as the end-user is typically mind boggling and feels like a scavenger hunt. Again, it feels like the software is made primarily by programmers, and not artists. (Which it is, but they could at least consult us… Oh wait, I just read my last paragraph, sorry.) Do you know what CSP, Sai, and Procreate actually have over Krita right now? The fact that they have actual UI design instead of Linux-esque grey boxes with 12pt Console font.

Of course, it’s insane to expect Krita to realistically compete with software that likely has millions of dollars behind its development. Funding seems to be a major issue for the core Krita team, which is kind of obvious considering it’s FOSS. This is completely anecdotal, of course, but I really feel that if there was more of an obvious goal for Krita’s development instead of pinching random features from other apps (while claiming to be “technically superior” to them) then people would be more willing to stick with it and donate towards its continued development. I’ve donated to it a few times back when I actively used it, and if I were to pick it back up then I’d certainly start funding it again, but I feel like that money was a waste, and will continue to be a waste since I have zero idea what it’s really going toward. Krita hasn’t obviously improved in the 6 years I’ve been drawing, besides adding random over the top features (That are typically murder on your CPU anyway, unless you have an equally over the top dev rig) So why would I believe that it’ll ever become more useable?

…

I felt the need to say all of this because in all reality, I should exemplify the absolute prime demographic for Krita, especially right now with their gun-ho “Let’s take down CSP!” crusade. I’m a game developer and a programmer, so ironically Krita’s “half-baked FOSS experience” feels right at home for me, and I honestly like the simpler, Photoshop-esque opacity brush engine it has going on. (It’s the main reason I want to get away from CSP, since painting in it is so headache inducing) But even I can’t get past its terrible drawing experience and some of it’s more eccentric tools. (Why would anyone want a close gap fill tool when you can just freeze your PC for 10 minutes rendering out a colorize mask?!?!??!!?? It’s technically better!)

I took art seriously to become a webcomic artist, a lot of my first drawings in Krita were comic pages and things like that, hence why I eventually swapped to CSP. I can tell you, straight up, Krita doesn’t need speech bubble implementation, on-canvas text, comic panel objects, etc. to be useful for comics. They’re surface level tools, while nice to have, don’t fix the overall experience and flow of working in Krita. If it just felt good to use, then I’d easily adapt to it for comics. I and many others have already done it before.

That’s basically the gist of my issues with Krita. This shit is really rambly, but TL;DR: Take time to actually consider artists and their needs, instead of piling on surface level features.

2

So… your message is that Krita should be better?

It would be more helpful if you could point out specific things that you think could be improved. How should the workflow change?

3

This entire rant looks eerily similar to one I had a while ago that caused quite a stir, glad I’m not the only one.

Unfortunately I think this sort of feedback falls on deaf ears. The truth is there’s only so much money going into Krita’s development, which means they can only hire so many people, and the only people that really make sense to hire are programmers since they progress the application the fastest per dollar spent on development.

Unfortunately that means no PR, no R&D, no UI/UX polish, etc. These things are a necessary part of a company that wants to stay afloat and make people happy, but since Krita isn’t a company technically, they can spend less or nothing on these ‘departments’.

To make things worse, if they wanted to improve the image of Krita and the UI/UX for the artists, they’d need funding for that. But they only get funding from these artists when artists use and trust the direction of the application. So it’s a catch 22. No funding → unable to figure out what artists want and implement it in a timely manner → no artists caring about the program → no funding.

Krita hasn’t had its Blender moment and funding boom yet, that point in time where the Blender devs said ‘you know what, maybe the users are right and right click to select and a better UI are a good thing’. Hopefully it will one day, which will kickstart the funding and snowball artist adoption.

I still stand by my idea that Krita needs to put some polls out to the general populace about whether they’ve tried Krita or not, and what stopped them/they didn’t like, to get an honest, non-echo-chamber response. And then take it very seriously.

For now though, development is slow because funds are slow, not because they don’t care. But if they really wanted more funding, they need to find out what stops artists from using it or makes it unpalatable.

4

This hurt me when the devs keep getting called only as programmer that is out of touch that have not touch a pen in their life to draw… when a number of them are artist who learned to code to make a software. :frowning: But thats the thing being an artist learning coding and understanding UX is completely different thing. UX is a complex thing that even if you are an artist who learned to code and have background in art , the design principle in software is a different beast.

Wolth, tiar, eoineil comes to mind are artist who pick up the coding side.

Also there are a number of threads here ASKING how user want the specific thing to work but time is limited, they are dealing with a lot. The framework is QT theres a limit to how much design they can put into it - while regularly need to monitor when to port over or not. For a team of about 10 people .

Its not that its falling on deaf ear, there is just so much the team can hear and implement at the amount of time while also bugfixing and giving support to user asking some question regarding usage , and doing docs. It’s frustrating… but that’s the current reality. [need money to get more devs…]

The codebase is complex - currently being evaluated to be ported on QT next version / that hopefully open up some good feature they can use that helps with UI and input handling. The brush editor is getting ported because at this point it hit its limit and for it to be better and more user friendly it needs to be redone.

this is what i get when attending weekly meeting that is when im not going @A@ over the time.

5

I can’t believe I read both wall of text, and I sincerely regret it. So many words, so much text and I saw no concrete complain whatsoever.

6

This entire post kinda flew over my head, as Bleke said earlier, this post would be more helpful if specific features could be pointed out that could be improved. With how the wording is, I am so confused on what the feedback is suppossed to be.

There are weekly updates that are compiled by Sooz in the #develop:development-news catagory showing who is working on what if you ever are interested in seeing that stuff

7

Watching this video and trying to understand this topic was the same thing for me. :rofl:

8

Its all the same everytime. People complain but then go away without helping. We started the weekly update thing but we now have only 3-4 people documenting the meeting. Frankly if people who complain and rant get their hands dirty and help us then it would be slightly better. But no people like to come and put wall of text and go. Free advice is plenty but work is scarce. Instead of talking and ranting show me something useful. Even if it is a feedback, it should be useful.

This is how Free software works, if you want us to behave like a corporate then either you give money, hire developer yourself, or help us yourself. Nobody is going to work for free.

And also a nice way to name call people who do not agree with OP as white knights and what not.

now to get back at what little feedback we got in this post.

Krita should not use monospace font. if it is then you should report it. Please post a screenshot of the same here.

@Deif_Lou is interested in working on this. may be collaborate with them and help them in implementing close gap feature.

Tell that straight to the face of artists who have requested those things repeatedly. particularly text improvements. You know you say listen to artists but then when we do you say we do not. Or is it we do not listen to your specific request.

TLDR: its all seems nice and fun for you to come and put controversial hot takes and name call people and programers etc. But at the end of the day it is your opinion and without any specific feedback we can’t take anything productive from this feedback. You can very well tell in one line “krita doesn’t have things I want” and that would be perfectly fine and would not waste time. Now you can call me white knight who defends krita since I do not agree with you.

9

Well I kind of little bit understand your statement abt some tools being eccentric or made by purely programmer…
But hey, you said yourself a programmer and an end user, why dont u invest your time to fork krita? If I’m programmer like u, I would like to do something like cutting down/hide feature u dont need, make complicated feature simpler or make new ui?

10

What is the process for commissioning a feature you’d like?
Let’s say for example I wanted this rough concept implemented. I made an essay-long forum post with examples and mockups trying to stir discussion about it and refine the specific idea, find alternative ways of accomplishing the goals (which were laid out explicitly), etc. I did everything that the people in this post are complaining that OP didn’t do. But then it gains no traction and very little response from anyone.

Let’s say I like the idea and I want to implement it, what methods can I use?
I could make a feature request here, but that didn’t work for this specific idea.
Obviously I could do it myself, but I’m an artist first and not a programmer. It’s pretty much out of the question without spending more than likely a year or more myself learning how.

So that leaves paying someone. Can I pay someone outside of the foundation? Would they even accept the MR or would I have to maintain my own fork? Does the foundation take contracts for this kind of thing? Can I start a Kickstarter and use my followerbase to fund it? Does that Kickstarter have to be approved first?

I’ve been quoted by a dev a couple years ago that on average, contract work is 2-3k Euro per month for Krita commissions. That seems doable and I wouldn’t mind saving for a feature and getting a quote. I understand this is a bit rare, but I think a small part of the documentation talking about commission-based work for Krita could be useful for those of us that just really need certain things.

I messaged OP about this post and they expressed that they wish there was a bounty system involved for certain features, I think that got brought up last time this came up. Is that a thread I should start to get feedback on? I feel like people who can fork the bill of a feature all by themselves is a bit sparse.

Otherwise currently I just stick to triaging and reporting bugs and helping on the forums because that’s about all I can do. I just really wish well fleshed out concepts and ideas for how to improve Krita got a bit more interaction here. It’s extremely disheartening spending several days on a concept to get 2 replies.

11

I do think having some of the ‘better’ artists weigh in on what features would be most desirable would help. Better way of voting. But thats up to us to find effective ways to voice ourselves more. At the moment im satisfied with the dev choices and pipeline. Even though i do think there are a lot of things that can be worked on.

12

Last time this discussion came up, the consensus was that artist’s experience with the program or art in general shouldn’t make their suggestions mean anything more than anyone else. Suggestions are taken by the merit of the concept itself, regardless of if the artist has ever even used Krita.

I personally disagree with that on the basis that if you want funding- targeting artists good enough to make money off their art is probably your best bet. They are also more likely to know the true pain points of the program rather than someone who picked up Krita today and is complaining that there’s no ‘eraser tool’.

13

It is not instant - programmers have timeline and feature they are finishing, or aligned to what is set for specific month. This is the same for bigger software companies. Its not that you request today that it gets coded right away even if they would want to. Take for example deif_lou would want to do the much requested fill with gap close, but he probably want to finish the other ones he started. Tiar is currently busy with the whole assistant tool overhaul which address alot of artist request.[ many of which keep getting requested - but she would not be able to apply all those until they finish some previous part]
Wolthera would want to start doing a much better text tool but that needs to wait for some dependencies and internal stuff to come.

I for example want to dab into exposing brush editor signal to python api - kinda like an extension but i hold it off to wait for the brush editor restructuring.

They would accept the MR - if the MR passed / and all the check boxes needed to consider like conflicts in some part of krita, or things that can cause consistency. As long as it get reviewed. Obviously even if its merge today it wont appear on the very next release but might appear on the nightly - most likely the NEXT nightly type. But you also need to make sure someone is maintaining that code.

the devs are not only programming or cleaning or designing, there is also maintenance involve [that includes libraries gets updated, dependencies don’t break] If a feature is added but not maintained, it may come to a point it needs to get removed.

14

Either way as far as I can say you could pay a dev outside of foundation. But they need to agree that the code is Open Source. though we need Halla to maybe weight in on that.

I know there are Many feature gets MRd that are not from core dev. I’m pretty sure some regular here that are not part of foundation contributed their own MR.

There was an MR for using my paint like mixing contributed by one of the people here who are not part of the foundation - though it failed the MR because its still slow and inefficient as far as I remember reading the MR.

15

Interface:
I can agree that Krita’s interface is not as aesthetically pleasing as other programs. Although there is a plugin that can improve the interface, I would like this part of Krita to become better.
It would also be nice if the windows were minimized like in PS and pliable like in CSP…
But to be honest,
for me, the interface doesn’t affect the workflow that much.

Functions:
Describing functions, you accidentally (or not) returned to the interface again. I think Krita is full of great creative features (Brush engines, GIMIC and other cool features.) But they are really hard to find sometimes! You can also download plugins and enjoy life, in most cases they work great!
To be fair, I also think that a lot of features could be improved and made better.
Personally, I think that the layer styles and the text tool are underdeveloped (at least the text tool looks awkward and also works)
As for unnecessary functions, as for me this is a controversial topic, I often see suggestions to add certain functions from the users themselves, which means … someone needs them

Krita is clearly not a perfect program, but I don’t think it’s getting worse (like you’re basically trying to narrow the topic). I also tried to use Krita before, but then and now they are not comparable at all.
And I am sure that she has everything ahead.

16

Then, you have twenty software you can use.
Why you need a 21th? :man_shrugging:

If all softwares are just cloning each other, then there’s no need to have so much softwares…

I won’t enter in a debate, for my own I’m tired if that.
Saw too much people complaining about Krita’s functionnalities and developpers point of view about what they want for Krita and what they don’t want

Just concerning about how Krita should work in comparison of other software, artists that are complaining the most here are “photoshop/CSP/procreate/xxx does like it, I want Krita does exactly like it”, without taking in account the fact that artists that already use Krita for years now maybe impacted…
So yes, when a new feature is requested, I take (took because bow I left the features requests category) care if MY workflow will be impacted or not by a feature…

And when you see what happen with visibility layer undo/redo, all Krita users are not agreed about how it should work.
In all case, they’ll always be user complaining…

Grum999

17

One of the key complaints, I could assume, is the tools docker for tool settings, which can require scrolling if you have too many other dockers going on. In that case, moving options over to the toolbar might help.
And second, might be that the tools are too specific, in which case it would make sense to merge them and make them context sensitive. This basically aims at reducing mouse/ tablet/ keyboard input where-ever possible with regards to fiddling with tool settings. Like this request of mine: Merge Select Shape tool with the Move and/ or transform tool
Perhaps some tools (and layer styles) should be more responsive (e.g. liquify) so they may need some performance improvements.

But without such specifics, it is hard to gauge what you are referring to @isomizu. Also do keep in mind that there is a lot of work to be done for software development (e.g. bugfixing, dependencies) that may generally go under the radar for the user (unless you’ve encountered the bugs yourself). So in that regard, it would help if you keep up with the weekly development notes and the occasional blog posts on development ideas. For you, it may seem the developers are going their separate ways and doing their own thing, but they actually do have a sensible plan moving forward. It’s just that this may not be as obvious when it’s still in progress. Not to mention, with a small team, the pace of development may not be as large as you might expect from the multi-million dollar software you’ve been using before. So perhaps, you may have been spoiled by their pace of updates. :wink:

This is a complex topic, which therefore doesn’t really lend itself well to generalisations and black and white statements.

18

@isomizu I had to open calmlywriter, turn on focus mode, put your whole rant in there just to be able to read it.

I don’t know how much time you spent writing this essay of a rant nor do I care, because instead of providing actually feedback like everyone in this comment suggested. You choose to be negative and chastised both devs and anyone who disagree with you.

Overview | Krita

Here is a link to help with krita development since you care so much that you desire to write this rant perhaps you could have used time better by being a bug tester. Since you are after all a

isomizu: a game developer and a programmer

19

@CryingTart Careful, such remarks can easily upset people and start a flamewar. Please avoid personal accusations in threads like these :slight_smile:
It’s much better to welcome new people and see how willing they are to contribute to the community instead. It also helps avoiding the stigma of the krita-artists community being a bit of a closed community. :wink:

20

That’s fair, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be harsh. :worried: