Hello all. New Krita user here, coming from Photoshop.
Apologies if this question has been asked before. As far as I can tell, the one option I use quite a bit in PS not currently available in Krita is the Blending Options under Layer Style. Currently when you right click a layer and choose “layer style”, the blending options are greyed out and it says “Not Implemented Yet”
My question is, is this feature under active development? Is this a tricky thing to get right? For those of us coming from concept art used to manipulating photos, this ability would be absolutely massive to get people here and leaving Photoshop for good.
Unfortunately, I did not find an existing formal request in the KDE Bugtracking System, which is the only way to officially put it on the “agenda” of the developers, and since the existing request, here in the forum has NO votes so far, it is not so likely that this is identified as an urgent request in the eyes of our devs.
So, what can you do? Because the topic I linked above is about removing this unfinished feature from there, but you want to see it implemented fully working, the first thing you may want to do is to create a feature request for it on the forum, what is done in the Feature Requests category of our forum.
This way you could describe what you exactly want, how you like to see it implemented, perhaps you can add own ideas and suggestions to start a discussion. Here you find a description in Krita’s manual how a feature request should be “designed” to be useful:
The next thing could be to create a so-called wish-bug for it, that is the official name for a feature request reported via the KDE Bugtracking System, and here is the standard description how you can report a bug:
To report a bug, you must register at https://bugs.kde.org/ to gain access to the “KDE bug tracking system”, i.e. “KDE’s bug tracker”. Keep in mind that the e-mail address you use there must firstly be existing / valid and secondly that it can be viewed by any visitor to the site. But the likelihood of your address falling into the hands of spammers there seems to be very low, because the address I used to register with them, I’m using exclusively for access to the KDE bug tracking system and have not had a single spam mail in my mailbox in the years I have been registered there.
You can read what a bug report should look like under Reporting Bugs in the Krita manual (the input mask looks slightly different today), or the User Guide on KDE.ORG, which I like less. Please use the drop-down menus to select the software, i.e. Krita, the version number, the operating system and try to narrow everything down as much as possible using the drop-down menus available there.
And after completing the bug report, i.e. after you have sent it, please publish the link to the bug report here in this topic.
By the way, you should adapt a wish bug a bit, the requirements to a bug report differ a little to reporting a wish bug, but I guess comparing the requirements of a feature request from the manual with the requirements of a bug report should give you a guideline.
I have not checked it so far, because I’m a painter and photo-manipulation is not my thing (I could be horribly wrong here), but I guess that you probably could find some interesting filters in G’MIC, that is a “filter-facility” you find in Krita under “Filters” >> “Start G’MIC-Qt”. Maybe this could be helpful for the things you want to do with Krita?
The last thing I want to bring your attention is a thing you may not like so much, but it is a fact and I don’t want to fool you about it.
The thing is that Krita’s main focus is to be a software for painting, sketching, creating animations from scratch. Editing of photos is possible because Krita and PS are both raster graphics programs and there are a lot of things both have and can, but Krita is not and will never be the thousandth and first copy of PS, this is even written in the first paragraph of Krita’s manual.
So it can be that this feature will take a longer time to come in Krita, but at least, I guess, it will come at one point in the future, otherwise it would have been removed from Layer Styles long time ago.
AND, if there are no users asking for it, and no one creates an official wish bug for it, then there is no “pressure” for the developers to pull this forward in the big list of things to do! It is up to you to make this first step and do something so that others will do something for you in the, probably far, future. But anything begins with a first step, you just have to make it.
Because one thing in the world of Krita is different to all paid programs, Krita only has a very small budget and very few full-time developers, at the moment ~ 5-7 if I’m not mistaken, but not armies who can develop everything in short time if they are told to do so.
Wow, thank you so much for your incredibly informative, helpful, and timely reply!
I will follow up and look into some of the options you give! Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I did see that feature request, but personally I have no issue with with the temporary tab, I think its a great way to keep users informed of what’s to come.
For the record, I totally understand what Krita is trying to do with being a drawing and painting program first! It’s one of the main reasons I’m getting into it I think a lot of the concept art community would come here based on the idea of a painting program first, photo manipulation a distant second (or third!). Already, the artist-focused tools and brushes are a huge improvement over what I’m used to in PS, so looking forward to that aspect of it.
I also totally understand about the limitations of the Krita team and budget - its honestly incredible what they’ve been able to do so far!
Hello