As someone returning to Krita after having used PS for a short time and CSP for a longer time, I think that what prevent Krita from being known and adopted by a larger community of users are mainly the following points :
- Krita doesn’t advertise much on it’s releases and roadmap, so it’s difficult to get an idea of where the development goes, and which are the new features and future development.
- It doesn’t have a very active, organized and dedicated place with clear video and text tutorials, organized by level and type of arts. The ones existing (this community and the Krita Youtube channels) are not very easy to grasp for beginners, because you need to sort of know what you’re looking for to be able to find your way to the ressource, (or have a lot of time and patience to go through it all). Total beginners will not know that because they never used a drawing software before. Having used other softs made my returning to Krita a great experience, but my first try when I was discovering digital painting for the first time didn’t convince me as the program seemed too complicated and overwhelming for a beginner.
- The manual is very detailed, but kind of complex as basics and advanced features are mixed, and not every part is translated.
- The interface is wonderfully customizable, but a few features are not clearly indicated or proposed by default and require to dig in the manual or search for plugins (for example switching from painting brush to eraser, or prevent dockers from docking, or how to rotate canvas using stylus just to name a few…). Someone using a digital painting program for the first time will not necessary think of checking the “if you come from…” other programs section of the manual.
- Importing ressources might be off-putting for people with little experience in computer skills and feel quite nerd-oriented. And resources are not centralized, since on the Krita Artist, you’ll be redirected to downloads hosted on multiples different places. What’s more, not all plugins have a clear description and user manual, while others are just in development phase.
- People that are put off by their first attempt to use Krita will move to other softs, and then tend to stick to this unless they run into limitation that hinders their artistic development.
- you hardly can import other softs brushes format “as is” and need to tweak them in the complex yet wonderful brush editor.
-The ratio of beginner artwork versus pro artwork is misleading, it gives the feeling that Krita is a simplistic soft with basic capabilities. And pro level art is really painterly, which might put off artists looking to obtain a more realistic style.
ok, I’ll stop here, these are the main issues that come to my mind when trying to answer the big question “why is Krita so under-rated and under-used by pros”. Hope this will help someone somewhere in making Krita more widespread…
(English is not my mother language, so please be kind regarding spelling and phrasing, sorry if some things are not very clear)