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Comment by jphoward | Hacker News Reader

The wonderful thing about Krita isn't it's features (although they are excellent); it's the fact it's the only graphics program with modern capabilities that someone could transition into from Microsoft Paint without needing to load up a series of YouTube tutorials.

I commend the Krita team for not merely copying Photoshop/GIMP, but actually writing a program an idiot like me can pick up and actually be productive with.

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Paint.NET/Pinta and XPaint are made as enhanced Paint, so someone that wants a not-trivial graphics editor will find those perfect.

>I commend the Krita team for not merely copying Photoshop/GIMP

Krita (as well as MyPaint) is mainly a painting software whereas Photoshop/GIMP are mainly photo editors. You can do similar things in both, but they target different niches.

Photoshop STARTED OUT as a photo editor but it has grown to become a sprawling beast that has long since incorporated painting tools. Photoshop does not target any one niche any more; it can do photo editing, it can paint, it can animate, it’s got some vector capabilities... there’s a ton of professional artists who use Photoshop for a painterly workflow.

Do not be fooled by its name. That merely tells you where it began; it does not tell you what it is useful for after nearly thirty years of adding on one feature after another.

These days, Adobe is even nicking features we did first in Krita for their application! Apparently, painting is a focus again...

Indeed, the "they target different niches" was meant for GIMP, since are those (as lead FOSS programs) that are usually compared.

IMHO Paint.NET is pretty approachable too, but it never hurts to have options.

Paint.net is windows-only, though.

Yes, but so is Paint, which GP was talking about transitioning from.

My understanding was that they were transitioning from paint (to krita or paint.net or something else). So krita has cross-platform going for it as a paint.net alternative.

Pinta is a Mono-based clone of Paint.net for Linux. I am a heavy Paint.net user at work and I find Pinta at home to be just as useful. I haven't used Gimp in years.

I do have Krita both at work on Windows and at home on Linux, but I rarely have to pull it out unless I need a tool specific to that application.

Thanks :-)

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