Blue Scorpio - Krita

This was an experiment in the art program, Krita. It's a free art program. I downloaded it more than 2 years ago and aside from sketching around in it I never finished anything in it. I have been working with Photoshop for many years but was curious about some of the other art programs.

I am still using Adobe CS5 since Adobe switched to Creative Cloud, I hate that pricing model. I just want to buy programs outright and upgrade when I want, not forced into a perpetual rental/lease situation especially when there are months where I don't earn a lot of money. I typically upgraded every other version so if CS7 had existed, I probably would have bought that, and CS9, and so on, but because I don't want to be on the hook paying for minimum 3 programs every month, (need Illustrator and InDesign for work) I am still clinging to my old CS5. Anyway, tangental rant over!

I wanted to finish something in Krita so kinda sketched out this creature. I do like the tapered paintbrush tool to do linework a lot, may rival using a similar tool in Photoshop. I could see doing linework in this program and bringing into Photoshop to finish.

Some things I didn't like are that many tools which are separate in Photoshop are all under the brush tool in Krita- Brush, Blur/Smudge, eraser, Dodge/Burn are all under the brush tool, and when you switch between them it doesn't remember the settings.

It does have airbrush tools but seems harder to accomplish the same effects I am aiming for.

Does have different modes for layers and brushes like Multiply, screen, overlay, etc. This is important to me so glad to see this is in there.

Not sure if there is a way to make/import custom brushes. Wish there were more options on the brushes like spacing, fade and so on.

Keyboard shortcuts- I think you could assign them but many aren't there already, and may conflict so you'd have to really work at it to get a set similar to what you're used to.

Adjustment/ Adjustment Layers: I didn't see an equivalent to this. May be in there somewhere.

Layer masks- didn't see this, it does have channels though.

Would be nice to load a selection from Layers palette but wasn't able to do it.

Some of the stuff I am talking about may be in there but just wasn't apparent but I felt a bit constrained trying to do functions I do all the time but couldn't find the way to do it, if it exists. All in all it is excellent for a free program, reminds me of an older version of Corel Painter I tried many years ago. If you are just wanting to try getting into digital art I think it's worth a try, especially if you want to do line art drawings. Take my criticism with a grain of salt because some features may be there but I just didn't find them.