This May Be The Best Free Alternative To Photoshop For Digital Painting

Adobe's suite of apps has garnered a name for itself over the years. No matter which kind of creative task needs to be dealt with, Adobe likely has a specialized tool to handle it. Yet, there is healthy competition in this space — which is always great for us end users — especially since Adobe's products don't come cheap. Some of the best alternatives to Photoshop include GIMP and Pixlr, both of which offer a similar interface and powerful photo manipulation tools. For digital artists and painters, however, Krita can be a much better fit.

Easily, Krita's biggest selling point is the fact that it is completely free to download and use. Unlike Adobe's far-from-affordable pricing and subscription-based model, you simply install Krita once and never worry about dealing with licenses or a cap on the number of devices you can use the software on. Krita is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and also comes with an Android version that can be downloaded on tablets.

So, what's the big catch? If Krita is free to use and is often a highly suggested alternative to Photoshop, what features are you compromising on? Let's delve a bit deeper to see what Krita offers, who it is for, and most importantly, if it can be confidently relied upon as a free alternative to Adobe's popular offering.

You can achieve a lot with Photoshop, including creating digital artwork. However, when compared to Krita's expansive selection of brushes, it's clear that painting on Photoshop might comparatively come with more friction. With brushes, pencils, markers, watercolors, and more, Krita has over 100 presets you can use. You even get presets that make pixel art easier. Like Photoshop, you can also download additional brush packs for Krita — but as a baseline with no add-ons, you're getting a richer selection here.

Krita's brush stabilizer sees to it that your drawings are more consistent, which can be very useful with lower-end drawing tablets that might not have the best accuracy. You get to adjust the nitty-gritty, such as the distance and delay before the brush strokes kick in, giving you more control over the strength of the drawing assist features. Although Photoshop has a smoothing utility that works in a similar fashion, you would have to shell out some money to buy a plugin that offers a similar level of control as Krita's built-in utilities do.

Though dedicated animation apps like Pencil2D remain a better option for those looking to get started with 2D animations, Krita's frame-by-frame animation workflow contains essentials, including a timeline, storyboard, and an onion skin toggle that lets you refer to the previous frame while drawing. Also available for the Windows version, Krita lets you open, edit, and save drawings with HDR support.

One of the biggest reasons people are drawn to Adobe's services is the richness of its ecosystem. It's true that recurring payments can be a burden, but if you shuffle between more than a few creative apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Animate, then sticking to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite will get you a level of consistency that two or more apps from different publishers can never attain.

Krita's user interface, for the most part, is easy to adapt to — especially if you're familiar with the "Painting" workspace in Photoshop. Some of the essential key binds carry over, too, so you won't suffer trying to get accustomed to new shortcuts for basic actions. Krita is a densely packed software that is better suited for digital painting and illustration. To those primarily looking for a photo editing or retouching tool like Photoshop, Krita might not be the best answer.

Photoshop's Generative Fill has come a long way in terms of accuracy and reliability, and is a feature that's difficult for its rival offerings to match. There are plugins that let you explore and use tools like Stable Diffusion within Krita. That said, the use of GenAI services is understandably looked down upon in the creative community. Additionally, while Krita can open and edit PSD files, the extent to which non-destructive elements like Smart Objects and adjustment layers carry over may vary significantly.