The quest for good drawing programs
I use Krita for digital art largely because I've been using it for years and it's what I'm used to, but I have wondered in the past if there are any other programs which would work better for me if I gave them a chance. On this page, I'll go over a bunch of drawing programs I've seen recommended and see if they fit any better to what I want.
Krita
I like Krita because it does everything I need to make things I want to make. It's very customizable in its interface and brushes, too. It does get a bit slow at obscenely high resolutions, but I have yet to see any use cases it wouldn't fit.
Yeah I don't have much to say about this one since its the one I'm comparing everything against.
Gimp
I use Gimp almost exclusively for not drawing - filters, cropping, making maps for rpgs, pretty much anything else where a drawing tablet wouldn't be useful - but I've heard that it can be used as a drawing program. For the longest time I've thought it was impossible, but apparently you can, in fact, use pen pressure with it, so I tried drawing with it...
And it works pretty well! It doesn't quite have the brush variety of Krita, and it takes a bit more time to switch the settings around, but I can still pretty easily make things in Gimp which I would normally make in Krita. It even seems to have a bit of brush smoothing built in, at least enough that you don't get janky, segmented strokes.
So uh. Yeah, Gimp works just about as well as Krita. I don't think I'll be switching since all my drawings are saved as .kra files which Gimp can't read, but I could use either one just fine.
Xournal
Xournal is more of a virtual notepad than a real drawing program, and it shows. The color selection seems to be limited and, importantly, fast strokes seem to have jagged edges all over them.
So Xournal definitely isn't for me - Krita already does sketchy stuff and big fancy stuff well - but it does accomplish well enough what it set out to do. As long as you draw with a slow hand I guess.
Mypaint
Mypaint is interesting. For the most part, it seems on par with Krita in many regards: it has all the features I think of, it's customizable, it may even be slightly better for painting than Krita. But the one major problem I have is the undo feature, which instead of just undoing the last stroke you made, undoes all strokes made in a certain time frame. Which means that if you make two strokes within a second of each other and then press undo, it will undo both strokes.
This makes it unusable to me, since I draw cartoony things with quick lines which I undo rapidly. I feel like this is such a major thing that there has to be some way to change it, but I haven't seen anything in my short time of using it. Evidently, from the number of people who use this, this isn't unbearable for everyone, though, so if your brain isn't hard-wired to slam ctrl+z as fast as possible, I think this would work great.
Grafx2
This is another one that's good for what it's made for, but not made for what I do. Grafx2 is a 256-color image editor, which is not something I would benefit from normally. Maybe if I wanted to start doing 256-color or lower resolution art it would be more useful to me, but as it stands, it isn't.
Kolourpaint
Kolourpaint is an MS Paint clone, and it wants me to install 52 dependencies to use it.
I don't think I'm missing out on much by not using it, since it doesn't have layers or pressure sensitivity.
Photoshop and other proprietary programs
I have not used Photoshop much at all, but however good it may be, you do not need to pay twenty one dollars a month to make digital art. From its web page, it seems like all it offers is a different brush engine and some robot gimmicks. Even if you want that, I don't think it's a good idea to rely on Adobe products, considering their policies and how they affect users.
I don't use any other proprietary drawing programs, either, partly because I'm, and I quote, "like 4 years old" and can not buy them, but even if, theoretically, I had fifty buckaroonies to buy Clip Studio Paint or whatever else, I don't think it'd be all that worth it. Yes, I know that goes against the point of the article. I am okay with that.
Conclusion
What I've learned from this is that I am entirely correct to use Krita for drawing forever, which isn't surprising, but what is surprising is that Gimp is actually usable as a drawing program.
What you can learn from this is that Krita and Gimp are about equally viable as drawing programs, and maybe Mypaint as well, and that you absolutely do not need to pay twenty one dollars a month to make digital art; all of these programs I cover (except Photoshop, which, again, you don't need) are free, open-source software and don't cost a dime.
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