Krita Monthly Update – Edition 10

Develop Development news
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Welcome back! This monthly ‘zine is curated for you by the @Krita-promo team.

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Development report

Release
After the 5.2 release there were a flurry of bug reports which the team managed to bring under control and then released 5.2.1. Now the team is fixing more bugs and is getting ready to release 5.2.2. The notable masked brush bug, among others, may get a fix in the forthcoming release.

Please note: A problem with the Google Play Store has caused a delay in accepting updates. The published version is still 5.1.5.

Highlights of the month
@Wolthera continued to fix bugs and improve the text tool. You can read the thread made by her here. Here are some key points from @Wolthera’s thread if you don’t want to read the entire topic:

  • Input Method support 2 got merged. We couldn’t figure out how to prevent it from displaying the suggestions window over the text when in vertical, which is a bit of a pity, and there’s still a whole bunch of platform-specific stuff that I’m unsure how we’re going to tackle that.
  • I managed to get cross-layer text shape selection 1 to work and it got merged! This means you can click any text on any editable layer to begin editing them.
  • I also managed to get the SVG paint order property 2 to work and this too got merged. While you could achieve something similar with the layer styles already, this has the benefit of being compatible with eventually being able to set the stroke colour on given spans of text (as well as inkscape compatibility).
  • Lastly the cursor change and inline size changes have been merged so it is time to test.

Please test the nightly builds for text input. Read the text tool thread for more details.

  • Ubuntu snap build got some fixes and it now has 5.2.1 thanks to Scarlet Moore for maintaining it.
  • @YRH was able to fix an annoying bug in animation playback. There were threads here on the forum reporting the slower animation playback. So the fix was merged in Krita and it can be tested in the nightly build.
  • @YRH and @freyalupen also added a brush tip rotation slider to the toolbar plus the shortcut entries for brush tip angle rotation. These were the changes requested here on the forum.
  • A super annoying bug that was making Krita crash on Android was fixed.

The current effort is to stabilise Krita after a major release so all hands are on fixing bugs and improving the released features.

Community report

Monthly Art Challenge
The theme for November’s Monthly Challenge was Solarpunk. We saw some awesome (and extremely creative) submissions and @Mythmaker was voted the winner with this piece: The High Life.

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@Mythmaker has chosen an interesting theme for the December challenge: Paint the Krita-Artists’ logo. The full brief is here along with helpful background material. Are you tempted to join in?

Pattern Tricks Video
Have you seen the latest Krita video by @RamonM? Pattern Tricks demonstrates advanced texturing effects. It’s nice and short (11 minutes) but is packed with information and tips.

Featured artwork

During the month of November, 30 artworks were added to the featured gallery wall. Here are 3, randomly selected, showing the wide variety of art made by Krita artists.

Winter derelict church by @Sad_Tea

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Cozy by @Deevad
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Portrait painting purple by @blowingking
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Noteworthy plugin

Top 3 Plugins by views and activity on Krita-Artists:
  1. Pigment.O plugin by @EyeOdin
  2. KanvasBuddy – A Minimalist Toolbar by @Kapyia
  3. Blender Layer – Live 3D view in Krita by @Yuntoko

Tutorial of the month

Krita 5.2 Tips You NEED to Know from Winged Canvas

Some areas covered:

  • Halftone filter
  • Brush editor
  • Pixelize filter
  • Wraparound tool

Ways to help Krita

Krita is a Free and Open Source application, mostly developed by an international team of enthusiastic volunteers. Donations from Krita users to support maintenance and development is appreciated.

Join the Development Fund with a monthly donation. Or make a one-time donation here.

Notable changes in code

This section has been compiled by @freyalupen.

(Nov 7 - Nov 28, 2023)

Stable branch (5.2.1+):
Bugfixes:

Stable branch (5.2.1+) backports from Unstable:
Bugfixes:

Features:

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):
Features:

  • [Text Tool] Improvements to text creation. If the created rectangle is larger than the font size, an inline-size text will be created, which wraps text inside a resizable textbox. Buttons to create text that is vertical or right-to-left have been added to the Tool Options. Creating text and inline-size handle movement now use snapping. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
  • [Text Tool] Support text Input Methods in the Text Tool, used for things like CJK text input and the on-screen keyboard of Android. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
  • [Text Tool] Allow the Text Tool to select a shape on any layer for editing. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
  • [Text] Implement the SVG paint-order property, which can be used to make text more legible by painting the stroke before the fill. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
  • [Text] Improvements to the text caret cursor, which now uses the text color and stops blinking if the canvas in not in focus. (merge request, Wolthera van Hövell)
  • [Grids and Guides Docker] Change default grid spacing to 16x16, and remember last used setting. (commit 1, commit 2, commit 3, Emmet O’Neill)
  • [Toolbars] Add fifth toolbar brush option slider, since there are now five options. (merge request, Freya Lupen)
  • [Scripting] Add (Double)SliderSpinBox and Int/DoubleParseSpinBox to Python API. (merge request, Freya Lupen)

The latest changes are made available for testing daily in the following development builds:

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