Krita
Digital painting and illustration with color management
Krita is a cross-platform digital painting and illustration application. It excels at brush-based painting, has strong color management (including CMYK), and supports HDR. It is the closer match for Photoshop's painting and illustration workflows, less so for photo retouching.
replacespaid products this tool substitutes for
install pathsplatform-aware · verified
macospackage-managerprobed
brew install --cask krita
linuxpackage-managerprobed
flatpak install flathub org.kde.krita
windowspackage-managerprobed
winget install KDE.Krita
maturity signalsprobed · freshness tracked
- repo-stars
- 8200probed 2026-07-04
- last-release
- 2026-04-10probed 2026-07-04
- contributor-count
- 280probed 2026-07-04
known gapswhat this tool does not do
Limited photo retouching vs Photoshopnuisance
Krita is built for painting, not photo retouching. It lacks Photoshop's content-aware fill, healing brush refinements, and photo-focused adjustment layers. For photo editing, GIMP is the closer match.
cited1 source
Smaller plugin ecosystem than Photoshopminor
Krita supports Python plugins, but the ecosystem is a fraction of Photoshop's. Professional plugins (Nik, Topaz, etc.) have no Krita equivalents.
claimed
sources2 citations