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Quick and Easy Visual Guide to Krita V1.0

This document is a visual guide for using Krita, covering its user interface, navigation methods, keyboard shortcuts, brush tools, and pop-up palette features. It includes step-by-step instructions and tips for customizing the software to enhance the user experience. The guide aims to assist users in effectively utilizing Krita for digital painting and drawing projects.

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sile.laoise
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
36 views30 pages

Quick and Easy Visual Guide to Krita V1.0

This document is a visual guide for using Krita, covering its user interface, navigation methods, keyboard shortcuts, brush tools, and pop-up palette features. It includes step-by-step instructions and tips for customizing the software to enhance the user experience. The guide aims to assist users in effectively utilizing Krita for digital painting and drawing projects.

Uploaded by

sile.laoise
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Strawberry House

Project from Expose Academy's


Krita intermediate-level course
Table of Content
Front cover 1
Artwork: Strawberry House 2
Table of Content 3
Chapter: Introduction 4
About Krita 5
Downloading and supporting Krita 6
What you need to run Krita 7
Getting help and learning resources 8
Artwork: Robot Warrior 9
Chapter: The User Interface 10
Creating a document 11
New Document window 12
UI elements 13
Customizing UI 14
Chapter: Navigation 15
Pan, Rotation, and Zoom 16
Additional navigation techniques 17
Chapter: Keyboard Shortcuts 18
Creating custom shortcuts 19
My custom shortcuts 20
Artwork: Cowboy Cactus 21
Chapter: Working with Brushes 22
The Brush tool 23
Brush presets 24
The active colors 25
Basic brush parameters 26
Chapter: Pop-Up Palette 27
Pop-up Palette features 28
Pop-up Palette settings 29
Closing Words 30
Quick and Easy
Visual Guide to Krita
Version 1.0

© Copyright of Expose Academy


(PT. Expose Edukasi Talenta)
The official website for Krita is "https://krita.org".
For security reasons, you should never download
Krita from sources you don’t know. If you find
Krita helpful and want to support the developers,
you can donate through the "donate" link on the
website. Another way to support Krita is to buy it
from the Windows Store, Steam, or Epic. Now
you might be confused. Buy Krita? But isn’t Krita
free software? Yes, Krita is indeed free. Paying for
Krita through online stores is not actually buying
it. It is just an alternative method to donate to its
development. And if you do buy from one of the
online stores, you will still get an additional
benefit. And that is "automatic updates". Every
time there is an update for Krita, the Krita
application on your computer will be updated
automatically. By comparison, if you download
and install Krita manually, you have to check the
Krita website periodically to see if there is a new
update available.
Robot Warrior

Project from Expose Academy's


Krita intermediate-level course
The User Interface
Creating a new document
When you run Krita for the first time, you will see something like this.

To create a new document you can:


1. Click on this icon or link.
2. Or press Ctrl+N on your keyboard for the shortcut.
3. Or the more conventional way is to open the "File"
menu, then choose "New".
Use this for a custom sized document.

Use this option to


create a document
based on the size of
the image present
in the system
memory.

Krita also provides


file templates.

Here you can


access different
size presets.

Or you can enter the width and


height values manually.

In the Content tab, you can specify. . .

the name of the file,


the number of layers,
the color of the background,
and so on.
UI ELEMENTS
After you have at least one document open, you can see the full UI of Krita.
Let's get to know the names.

Advanced
Menu Toolbar Color Selector Layers

This is the Canvas area

Toolbox Status Bar Brush Presets

In Krita, most of the UI elements are called "Dockers".


From the screenshot above, Toolbox, Advanced color selector,
Layers, and Brushes are Dockers.

You can set which


Dockers are active
and which are not
by opening the
"Settings" menu,
then selecting
"Dockers".
Customizing the UI
Like any other software, you can customize the layout of Krita's user
interface. Basically, you do this by clicking and dragging the dockers to
any location you like. Be it top, right, bottom or left.

I moved the Toolbox


to the top,

moved the Advanced Color Selector


and the Tool Options to the left,
also activated the Palette docker.

I closed the Brush Presets docker


as we can access it via this icon.

Optionally, you can have a square color picker instead of the triangle
by clicking this small icon. Then click this large button.

Just choose
the color
picker style
you like

Feel free to use any UI layout and or color selector type.


From now forward I’ll be using this current layout.
NAVIGATION
There are at least 7 methods we can use to navigate in Krita. We will
discuss only 3 of them, which are the most common. They are: Mouse,
Spacebar and other Keyboard keys.

Click and drag Hold Spacebar


using the and click-drag -
middle mouse with your left
button mouse button

Hold Spacebar Press 4 or 6 to


Hold Shift and
and Shift, rotate the
then click-drag
and then canvas.
using the
click-drag around Press 5 to reset
middle mouse
with your left the canvas
button
mouse button rotation

Turn the Scroll Press + or - to


Hold Spacebar,
Wheel zoom in or out.
and Ctrl,
or Press 1 for 100%
and then
hold Ctrl and zoom level.
click-drag with
then click-drag Press 2 to fit the
your left mouse
using the height.
button up or
middle mouse Press 3 to fit the
down
button width
To simulate the Mouse navigation
method with the drawing tablet,
you can set the front or back pen
buttons as the middle mouse
button.

Alternatively, you can use


the Spacebar method,
either by pressing is directly
on the keyboard, or by
assigning it to one of your
tablet's Express Keys, if your
tablet has one.

ADDITIONAL NAVIGATION TECHNIQUES

You can Mirror the You can also use Alt + M


canvas using the letter to mirror around the
M on the keyboard cursor position.

Press Tab to toggle


You can also press
Canvas Only mode.
Ctrl + Shift + F to
This will hide all UI
run Krita in fullscreen
elements except the
mode.
canvas.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Creating custom shortcuts
To create custom keyboard shortcuts in Krita, you can open the "Set-
tings" menu and select "Configure Krita". You will find a side tab called
"Keyboard Shortcuts".

You can type the name of the command in the "Search" field. This will
make Krita filter the list of commands so that we can find what we are
looking for more easily.

You can click in this area to If it already has a default shortcut, you
specify a custom shortcut for can create an alternate shortcut in this
the associated command. area below the "Alternate" column.
Click this button, and
then press a key or
combination of keys
that you want to use
as a shortcut.

You can click here to


reset the command's
shortcut to the default.

You can then click


"OK" to confirm, or
"Cancel" to cancel.

MY custom shortcuts
You are free to use your own custom shortcuts. If you're interested,
you can follow the custom shortcut settings that I personally use
and recommend when using Krita.

Custom shortcuts Commands

Shift + G Show Global Selection mask

Shift + C Bezier Curve tool

C Bezier Curve Selection tool

W Contiguous Selection tool

A Select Shapes tool

S Edit Shapes tool

Z Freehand Selection tool

Q Clear Selection (Deselect)


Cowboy Cactus

Project from Expose Academy's


Krita advanced-level course
Working with brushes
THE BRUSH TOOL & BRUSH PRESETS
The main tool for drawing and painting in Krita is
the Freehand Brush tool. To access it, you can
click on this icon or press B on the keyboard.

The behavior of the Freehand Brush tool is determined by


the active brush preset. You can select a brush preset by
clicking on this icon or by pressing F6 on your keyboard.

In the "Brushes" panel, you can select the brush


preset you want to use by clicking on it. After that,
to close the panel, simply click on the area outside
the panel, or you can press Esc or F6. again.
In the "Brushes" panel, brush presets are You can create your
organized by tags. You can select a tag own tag by clicking
from this drop-down list. this tag button.

You can filter the brush presets list


by typing the name of the presets
in this field.

To assign a tag to a brush


preset. First, right-click on the
brush preset, and then choose
"Assign to tag".
Brushes in Krita have tons of parameters. For now we will
only discuss the 3 most important ones which are Color,
Opacity, and Size.

THE ACTIVE COLORS


Left-click the color selector to
change the Foreground Color.
This small icon will
swap the colors.
You can also press
X on your keyboard.

Right-click the color


selector to change the
Background Color.

This small icon activates the


default colors. Black for the
Foreground and White for
the Background. You can also
press D on your keyboard.

The terms Foreground and Background for active colors


are inherited from Photoshop. They have nothing to do
with compositional depth. They are just 2 containers for
storing the active colors. Most of the time, you only need to
change the Foreground Color to use the Brush tool.
BRUSH Opacity Brush SIze
You can also use the letters To control the brush Size, you can
"I"and "O"on the keyboard to also use the "[" and "]" keys or the
control the brush Opacity. brackets on the keyboard.
Or you can hold down the Shift key
and click and drag left or right.

ERASING
In Krita, you can erase by
activating the "Eraser" mode
icon, or by pressing the letter
E on the keyboard. In "Eraser"
mode, any brush preset
becomes an eraser.

You can also erase with the


eraser brush presets. These
special brush presets always
have an erasing effect,
regardless of whether the
"Eraser" mode is active or
not.
POP-UP PALETTE
When the Freehand Brush tool is active and you
right-click, you will see the "Pop-up Palette".

This allows you to


rotate the canvas.
You can select a
Here you can brush preset more
select and swap quickly.
the active colors.

The "Pop-up
Palette" will
display a list of
brush presets
based on the
tag you specify
here.

You can clear the You can select a


color history color from the
with this icon. color history list
There is a small
color selector
in the center.
You can click here to open This panel gives you access
the brush parameters panel. to the brush size, opacity,
and brush tip rotation.

Click here to open the


navigation features.
Here you can mirror the canvas, toggle the
canvas only mode, access the zoom slider,
and reset the zoom level to 100%.

If you want to change the size


of the Pop-up Palette or other
related parameters, you can
open the "Settings" menu, then
"Configure Krita". And then
open the "Pop-up Palette" tab.
Quick and Easy
Visual Guide to Krita
Version 1.0

I hope that this Visual Guide has been


a valuable part of your journey in
learning Krita. Please note that Krita is
constantly evolving and new updates
and features are released all the time.
Therefore, in sha Allah, I'll try to keep
this Visual Guide up to date as well.
Along the way, I'll be adding more and
more helpful content.

If you don't already subscribe to my


email newsletter, I encourage you to
do so. Not only will you be notified
when a new version of this Visual
Guide is released, but you will also
stay up to date on CG industry news
and trends. You can subscribe by
going to the Expose Academy website
(www.exposeacademy.com).

© Copyright of Expose Academy


(PT. Expose Edukasi Talenta)

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