[danShumway]

Since the article spends a lot of time talking about Krita, I want to throw some praise its way as well.

I moved over to Krita from Clip Studio when I decided to go pure-Linux on all of my computers, not because I thought the software was particularly competitive or good, but because I thought it was the most likely candidate to become competitive and good.

Krita still has a lot of rough edges, but I see it on a similar trajectory as Blender. It's very rapidly improving, not just in the sense of adding new features, but in becoming a more stable, reliable product.

I was using Blender a lot earlier in its development, and I remembered the comparisons people would make to Maya, and it's just... honestly, it's a little surreal to see it now well on its way to becoming something of an industry standard. Blender used to be really annoying to use, and only niche hobbyists were using it. All things considered, its rise in popularity/quality happened fast.

So similarly, I'm very bullish on Krita, and it's very encouraging to see members of that community looking at Blender and taking lessons from its development. Krita is one of the more promising and encouraging OS software projects that I follow.

[pram]

They've done an admirable job on Krita, but I don't feel the same optimism about adoption. There is a social element to these things Krita is severely lacking.

Most of the migrations I've seen have been from PS/SAI to CSP. There are a ton of artists creating custom brushes for CSP now, and you can't import them into Krita. If you're in a particular artist community/discord and want help, no one is going to know what you're talking about. That's classic lock-in.

CSP and Procreate are the hot tools on the Twitter/Instagram scene right now and I don't see the growth slowing. Krita ATM is unfortunately perceived as an outlier tool, like Medibang or FireAlpaca.

It probably isn't an issue to you personally, but those are the factors I see stymying adoption (and to be honest, I have literally never met another artist using Krita)

[danShumway]

Well, to be very blunt, CSP is still a better painting program than Krita is. So of course more people are using it.

That being said (and keep in mind I am only one fallible data-point) the community situation is roughly equivalent to what I remember Blender being like when I first started using it (maybe in 2007-2008).

- Very few professionals were using Blender, if any.

- Most tools were being written for Maya. Every time someone would link a cool tech product with crowd simulations or plant growth, it would always be a Maya plugin.

- Any college/high-school modeling/animation courses you took would be using Maya.

- That meant that if someone wanted to learn professional animation/modeling, they'd learn Maya's paradigms, and then Blender would seem extra weird. This was back when you just had to get used to the weird 3d cursor.

- Compatibility between the two programs was awful. I remember wrestling with the options to get 3D models to export in a format that wouldn't be completely messed up when imported in Unity. I don't remember if I ever got it working.

There were people who used Blender because it was free and swore that it was just as powerful once you got used to it, but they were largely techy people. And even if they were right, none of the digital artists or studios who's work I really respected cared at all. If you wanted to get an actual job with animation, you used Maya, period. Only hobbyists could afford to spend the time learning a separate program.

So it doesn't bother me too much to see Krita in the same position. I care more about the trajectory/velocity of development, and who I see using the software. I see a lot of programmers using software like Gimp, but I see a larger focus from Krita on actual artists, and a more pragmatic prioritization of features artists use.

If the core community stays really friendly for artists, and they keep on releasing at their current pace, then I suspect adoption will eventually come. Or at least, I think it's a decent enough bet that I'm willing to use the software in its current state and regularly throw money at its development.

[pram]

One factor you're not accounting for is Maya's cost put(s) it firmly out of range for hobbyists.

Considering the tools required for digital art (a Wacom, iPad Pro, or even a cheaper Huion etc) the art program is probably the cheapest purchase you're going to make, and they're all perpetual licenses (sans Adobe CC)

[mkr-hn]

I wish there were an open source design app with as much thought behind UX as Krita.

I got Affinity Designer just as soon as I found out about it after many failed attempts to understand Inkscape. There's just no comparison. Inkscape needs to have that moment of focus that got Blender over its UX wall.

[Finnucane]

Boy I wish Affinity would make Linux ports of its products, but it will probably never happen.

[mkr-hn]

Got $500k laying around? https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/626-affini...

I'm sure they're in better financial shape four years later, but that's a lot of money to invest without assurance at least 10,000 people ($500,000/$50 sale price) will buy it.

[RenRav]

>I moved over to Krita from Clip Studio

You just convinced me to try out Krita again. I've had a lot of problems getting away from Clip Studio, each time it felt the options weren't ripe enough yet. I remember trying Krita a very long time ago and it was barebones, but sounds like it's had a lot of good development time.