Krita vs GIMP

Over the years digital paintings and 2D animation gained a lot of popularity due to their use in clickable web ads, creating banners, online marketing and advertising etc. There are a number of online as well as offline tools available for making these illustrations and images. The two most popular software are Krita and GIMP. These are used by a large number of companies due to their open-source nature and these are available for free. Both of these softwares have great features for 2D drawings, digital paintings, vector artwork, concept designing etc. along with these features they can be used on different operating systems.

What is GIMP?

GIMP is an open-source graphic editor which is used to edit and manipulate images and free form drawings. It was developed by the GIMP development team. Initially, it was released in 1998 and its stable version came in 2021. It supports various operating systems like Windows, Solaris, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD etc. It is developed using C programming languages. Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis is their original author.

Advantages of GIMP:

• It is free and open-source software so no money is required to use it.
• It comes with a simple interface which is easy to use so novice users can also learn it easily.
• Images of different formats can be easily imported and edited in this.
• It does not require any graphic card and runs on minimum specifications.

Limitations of GIMP:

• Photoshop and Illustrator files need conversion before opening in GIMP.
• It does not allow to open RAW files.
• Cropping feature of GIMP hangs many times.

What is Krita?

Krita is computer software which is used to edit and create raster graphics. It is open-source software and is used in animation and digital painting applications. It was developed by Krita Foundation. Initially, it was released in 2005 and its stable version came in 2022. It is developed using C++ and Qt programming languages. It provides a simple user interface. It supports various operating systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, Android etc.

Advantages of Krita:

• It is open-source software so it has large community support.
• It comes with a large number of brushes which help in creating complex digital artwork.
• It allows 2D animation and image editing in an easy manner.
• It comes with drag and drop functionality to ease in the animation process.
• It comes with free customizable templates.

Limitations of Krita:

• Layer managing features of Krita is confusing.
• It provides basic image editing features.
• Digital asset management is difficult in this software.

Following is a table of differences between GIMP and Krita:

	GIMP	Krita
1.	It is an open-source software used for editing free form and raster images.	It can be defined as an image editing and manipulation software for raster graphics
2.	It was developed by the GIMP development team.	It was developed by Krita Foundations.
3.	It supports Windows, Linux, macOS etc but does not support the android operating system.	It supports the Android operating system along with Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.
4.	It is available in more than 17 languages.	It is available in fewer languages like English, Japanese, French and Russian.
5.	It needs plugins to support RAW files.	Krita provides better file support including RAW files.
6.	It is also good for digital paintings.	It provides more brushes for making digital illustrations.
7.	It is built using only the C programming language.	It is built using C++ and Qt programming languages.
8.	Krita has a GPLv3+ licence.	Krita has a GPLv3 licence.