Krita FAQ¶
This page contains common problems people have with Krita. Note that we assume that you are using the latest version of Krita. Please verify that to make sure.
General¶
General questions
What is Krita?¶
This is our vision for the development of Krita:
Krita is a free and open source cross-platform application that offers an end-to-end solution for creating digital art files from scratch. Krita is optimized for frequent, prolonged and focused use. Explicitly supported fields of painting are illustrations, concept art, matte painting, textures, comics and animations. Developed together with users, Krita is an application that supports their actual needs and workflow. Krita supports open standards and interoperates with other applications.
Is it possible to use Krita in my own language, not English?¶
Krita should automatically use the system language. If that is not the case, please follow these steps:
With menu item will appear a small window.
Click Primary language and select your language.
Click OK to close the window.
Restart krita, and it will be displayed in your selected language!
If this doesn’t work, you might have to add a fall-back language as well. This is a bug, but we haven’t found the solution yet.
I have a problem, how to get support for Krita?¶
Ask your question on Krita Artists.
Remember – most probably the person you’re interacting with is a volunteer, and even if not, it’s not someone actually paid for doing user support. Treat them nicely and respect their time! They will for sure reciprocate that.
Create a new thread or post for your issue and state the issue in the title. Even if you don’t know how to describe it exactly, for example you title the post „Krita’s text tool is acting weird“, it is much better than simple „Help!“.
Describe your issue. You can add screenshots and videos, but even if you do that, write a few words what the video shows and what the issue is.
State all relevant details: most importantly your operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux…), which version of Krita you use (go to to find out) and what kind of tablet you have (if your issue is related to a tablet driver).
Answer all questions your supporter asks, even if you don’t think they’re relevant. They probably have a reason to ask about that.
If you don’t know the answer, or you don’t know how to get the information your supporter asks for, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification.
If you mentioned an issue, please help with testing if you’re asked to do that – that will speed up the process of finding the cause and preparing a fix.
Does Krita have layer clip or clipping mask?¶
Krita has no clipping mask, but it has a clipping feature called inherit alpha. Let’s see this page and learn how to do clipping in Krita!
Where are the configuration files stored?¶
These are stored at the following places for the following operating systems:
- Linux
$HOME/.config/kritarc- Windows
%LOCALAPPDATA%\kritarc- macOS
$HOME/Library/Preferences/kritarc
The kritarc file is the configuration file. Krita does not store settings in the Windows registry.
Resetting Krita configuration¶
You can reset the Krita configuration in one of the following ways:
Neu in Version 4.3: You can reset the configurations from the GUI. Click on , and a pop-up to confirm the action will appear. Even if you choose to reset the configurations, a backup
kritarcfile is created namedkritarc.backup. If you rename this back tokritarc, you will use the configurations before the reset. The backup file can be accessed here:- Linux
$HOME/.config/kritarc.backup- Windows
%LOCALAPPDATA%\kritarc.backup- macOS
$HOME/Library/Preferences/kritarc.backup
Press and hold Shift + Alt + Ctrl while starting Krita. This should show a pop-up asking if you want to reset the configuration. Press yes to reset it.
For Krita 3.0 and later: Delete/rename the
kritarcfile, found here:- Linux
$HOME/.config/kritarc- Windows
%LOCALAPPDATA%\kritarc- macOS
$HOME/Library/Preferences/kritarc
There can be two other files you might want to remove: kritaopenglrc and kritadisplayrc.
If the configuration was causing a crash, don’t delete the mentioned file, but instead rename and send it to us in order for us to figure what caused the crash.
If you have installed Krita through the Windows store, the kritarc file will be in another location
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\49800Krita_RANDOM STRING\LocalCache\Local\kritarc
The random string depends on your installation.
Windows users have a habit of uninstalling and reinstalling applications to solve problems. Unless the problem is that the installation was corrupted by a virus scanner or drive failure, that will NOT work. Uninstalling Krita then reinstalling replaces the bytes on your drive with exactly the same bytes that were there before. It doesn’t reset anything, least of all Krita’s settings.
Why does Krita’s configuration reset on its own?¶
There are two possible reasons:
You don’t save your settings.
This is most probable if you are on Windows and you have either a display with a small resolution (below full HD) or if you have full HD resolution with UI scaling in Windows settings (which is 150% by default). In those cases it might happen that you don’t see the OK button in the Configure Krita dialog. You can use Alt + O instead. (You can go to and make sure that Enable HiDPI checkbox is unchecked to disable scaling for Krita and get a smaller UI).
You close your computer using the power button.
If you are on Windows and you use power button instead of a standard procedure to close or restart your computer, it might happen that Krita’s configuration file gets corrupted. To solve this, just use the correct way of closing your system: either or .
Where are my resources stored?¶
See Resource Management.
Krita tells me it can’t find some files and then closes, what should I do?¶
Causes for this could be the following:
It might be that your download got corrupted and is missing files (common with bad Wi-Fi and bad internet connection in general), in that case, try to find a better internet connection before trying to download again. Krita should be around 80 to 100 MB in size when downloading.
It might be that something went wrong during installation. Check whether your hard drive is full and reinstall Krita with at least 120 MB of empty space. If not, and the problem still occurs, there might be something odd going on with your device, and it’s recommended to find a computer expert to diagnose what is the problem.
Some unzip programs don’t unpack our ZIP files correctly. The native ones on Windows, macOS and most Linux distributions should be just fine, and we recommend using them.
You manually, using a file manager deleted or moved resources around, and thus Krita cannot find them anymore.
What Graphics Cards does Krita support?¶
Krita can use OpenGL to accelerate painting and canvas zooming, rotation and panning. Nvidia and recent Intel GPUs give the best results. Make sure your OpenGL drivers support OpenGL 3.2 as the minimum. AMD/ATI GPU’s are known to be troublesome, especially with the proprietary drivers on Linux. However, it works perfectly with the Radeon free driver on Linux for supported AMD GPU. Try to get a graphics card that can support OpenGL 3.2 or above for the best results, some examples:
- Intel
Intel 3rd Generation HD Graphics, IvyBridge or Bay-Trail microarchitecture, released in 2012. Commonly available products: Celeron J1x00, N2x00, Celeron (G)1xx0, Pentium J2x00, N3500, Pentium (G)2xx0, Core i3/5/7-3xx0.
- AMD/ATI
Radeon HD 2000 family, TeraScale 1 microarchitecture, Released in 2007. Commonly available products: Radeon HD 2400 PRO, Radeon HD 2600 PRO, etc.
- Nvidia
GeForce 8 family, Tesla microarchitecture, released in 2006. Commonly available products: GeForce 8400 GS, GeForce 8800 GTS, 9800 GTX, GTS 250, etc.
For Krita 3.3 or later: Krita on Windows can use Direct3D 11 for graphics acceleration (through ANGLE). This is enabled automatically on systems with an Intel GPU.
I can’t edit text from PSD files created by Photoshop¶
There is no text support for PSD file yet. The text will appear rasterized and converted into a paint layer.
How much memory does my image take?¶
For simple images, it’s easy to calculate: you multiply width * height * channels * size of the channels (so, for a 1000×1000 16-bit integer RGBA image: 1000 × 1000 × 4 × 2). You multiply this by the number of layers plus two (one for the image, one for the display). If you add masks, filter layers or clone layers, it gets more complicated.
Why do I get a checkerboard pattern when I use the eraser?¶
You’re probably used to Gimp or Photoshop. The default background or first layer in these applications doesn’t have an alpha channel by default. Thus, on their background layer, the eraser paints in the background color.
In Krita, all layers have an alpha channel, if you want to paint in the background color, you should simply do it in a layer above the first one (Layer 1), that would prevent you from erasing the white background color, making the checkerboard visible. You get the same effect in, say, Gimp, if you create new image, add an alpha channel and then use the eraser tool. Most Krita users will actually start a sketch in Krita by adding a new blank layer first before doing anything else. (The Ins key is a useful shortcut here). That doesn’t use extra memory, since a blank layer or a layer with a default color just takes one pixel worth of memory.
Can krita work with 8 bit (indexed) images?¶
No. Krita has been designed from the ground up to use real colors, not indexed palettes. There are no plans to support indexed color images, although Krita can export to some indexed color image formats, such as GIF. However, it does not offer detailed control over pixel values.
Where can I find older versions of Krita?¶
All the older versions of Krita that are still available can be found here:
On Windows, the Krita User Interface is too big on my screen¶
If you’re using Windows, you can set the display scaling to 150% or 200%. Krita comes with HiDPI enabled by default, so if you do that, the Krita UI might be too big for your screen. You can turn it off using the following steps:
On the menu, select
On General page, switch to Window tab.
Uncheck Enable Hi-DPI support (or check if you wish to enable it)
Neu in Version 5.0: If you are using a fractional (not multiples of 100%) display scaling, you can instead try keeping Enable Hi-DPI support enabled and also enable (Hi-DPI) Enable fractional scale factor.
Press OK, if the settings screen is too big, Alt + O will trigger the OK button too.
Restart Krita
You can also change the toolbox icon size by right-clicking on the toolbox and selecting a size.
Windows: In full-screen mode, why is there a thin gap at the bottom of the window?¶
When Canvas Graphics Acceleration is set to OpenGL, you may see a thin gap at the bottom of the window which you can see through. This is done deliberately to work around a bug causing menus and dropdowns to be unusable. If you find it distracting, you can consider changing the Renderer to Direct3D 11 which doesn’t require this workaround.
Windows: OBS can’t record the Krita OpenGL canvas¶
The possible workarounds for this is to do either of the following:
Turn off OpenGL in .
Or don’t use the hardware accelerated mode (game recording mode) in OBS, thus capturing the whole desktop instead of attempting to capture only Krita.
You might also be able to work around the problem by using the ANGLE renderer instead of native OpenGL.
Windows: Can I use Krita with Sandboxie?¶
No, this is not recommended. Sandboxie causes stuttering and freezes due to the way it intercepts calls for resources on disk.
Windows: Krita cannot save¶
If the message is „File not found. Check the file name and try again.“, you probably have Controlled Folder Access enabled.
Select .
Choose .
Select Open Windows Defender Security Center.
Select Virus & threat protection, and then choose Virus & threat protection settings.
Under Controlled folder access, turn it on or off.
You can also whitelist Krita, following these instructions.
Windows: Krita cannot open my file anymore¶
Your file got corrupted. There are several things that might cause this:
Windows was shutdown improperly, like by holding the power button. This prevents your hard drive from finishing up the things it is doing and file away your files incorrectly. Please always try to shut down your computer via the proper shutdown procedure, and if you are in a situation where this is not possible (like frequent blackouts), make daily backups! This may lead to the file being filled with zeroes, so it cannot be recovered from.
Geändert in Version 4.2.8: Krita version 4.2.8 introduced special safety measure for Windows that should help to avoid this situation. But in any case, unless something makes it impossible, always make sure to shut down your system using the standard approach. On Windows that means going to Start menu and selecting „Shutdown“.
Badly programmed security software may attempt to rewrite KRA files, or prevent Krita from writing to the folder you wish to save to. These cases can be checked by trying to save in that location, and then, without shutting down Krita, checking in the folder to see if the file saved. Files lost due this cannot be recovered.
Cloud services like Dropbox and OneDrive have been known to prevent Krita from saving. We’ve implemented fixes for this, but much like the above point it is worth checking that this isn’t the cause of the issue. Files lost due this cannot be recovered.
Occasionally the ZIP files that KRA files consist of will have the last few bytes missing. We’re doing everything in our power to prevent this kind of corruption, but it might be a file system issue. This particular bug can be fixed by renaming the extension (in windows you will need to enable the file extensions, which this FAQ will not cover) to ZIP, and then using a ZIP repairing utility to fix the ZIP file. Then rename it back to KRA.
If Krita doesn’t give an error message, but rather crashes, your file is too big, and Krita is not so much crashing as that the operating system is shutting it down. Try shutting down some other programs like web browsers or streaming services to free up working memory. You should be able to open the file in question. At this point the recommended course of action is to try and reduce the file size in some manner, such as merging layers, splitting up an animation or scaling the image down.
How to recover my files?¶
Check whether you have any backup file or autosave left: Saving, AutoSave and Backup Files.
- Check whether you can open the file as ZIP archive.
Rename the extension of the file from
.krato.zip.Try to open (your system should automatically select an archive opener tool).
There is file called mergedimage.png inside that represents all layers merged that you can use for reference in case you can’t restore anything else.
- Check whether ZIP repairer tool helps.
Copy the file, so you have a backup just in case.
Rename the extension of the file from
.krato.zip.Use ZIP repairer tool on the
.zipfile.# On Linux: mv file.kra file_copy.zip zip -F file_copy.zip --out file_new1.zip unzip file_new1.zip # if it still doesn't work: zip -FF file_copy.zip --out file_new2.zip unzip file_new2.zip # if it still doesn't work, try to run it again on *file_new2.zip* file, or try on *file_new1.zip* file # On Windows: Copy the file, rename the extension. Use any graphical ZIP repairer on the new file. (Follow the instructions for that specific program).
Try to open in Krita.
If it cannot be opened in Krita, try the trick from 2.: open the archive and find mergedimage.png file.
Open your file in Notepad or any other text editor. If the content of the file is only a repeated NULL symbol, it means the file is most probably unrecoverable using the standard method. If it’s of a very high importance for you, you can try to recover the previous save using methods that checks the hard drive directly.
Krita crashes on Windows 7 on start-up¶
Starting with Krita 4.2.0, Krita uses version 5.12 of the Qt toolkit. This needs to have access to Direct3D 11 or OpenGL ES 2.0 or higher. You might need to install drivers appropriate to your GPU (Nvidia, AMD/ATI, Intel). This also makes it hard to run Krita in a virtual environment: in Virtual Box you need to install the guest addition in safe mode, and enable the experimental Direct3D support.
Krita freezes randomly on my Windows system¶
Are you using a dictionary app (e.g. Youdao Dictionary for Chinese users)? Some dictionary apps can read words from other app’s windows and show popup translations in real time. However, it has been reported that such apps tend to cause Krita to freeze randomly. If you are using one of those, make sure to QUIT them (no notification icon) when using Krita. Some of those apps keep running in the background even after being closed. In such case, you will have to uninstall them.
Windows: How can I produce a backtrace?¶
Siehe auch
If you experience a crash on Windows, and can reproduce the crash, the bug report will be much more valuable if you can create a backtrace. A backtrace is somewhat akin to an airplane’s black box, in that they tell what set of instructions your computer was running when it was crashing (where the crash happened), making it very useful to figure out why the crash happened.
The Dr. Mingw debugger is bundled with Krita. Please visit the page Dr. Mingw debugger for instructions on getting a backtrace with it.
Windows: Krita’s window is semi-transparent¶
Chances are you are using an NVIDIA GPU. Due to a bug in NVIDIA’s driver that we haven’t been able to work around yet, sometimes Krita’s window will be transparent or semi-transparent. The solution is to enable the Angle renderer in Krita’s Settings dialog. Open the menu (Press Alt-N if the menubar is not visible and your system is in English), then open the Configure Krita dialog. In the dialog window select the Display page and select the Angle renderer in the Preferred Renderer drop down. Restart Krita.
Why are there ampersand (&) characters in some docker titles?¶
This is a bug in one of the third party libraries Krita uses (and consequently has no direct influence over), where letters that should actually be underlined (they point out keyboard shortcuts that can be used when the menu is open) are instead prepended with an ampersand (&).
This bug only occurs with specific system configurations (it’s related to the „Fusion“ style) and/or in Krita packages obtained from third parties (e.g. in some Linux distributions).
If you are on Linux the best way to resolve this is to use an official package from krita.org, such as the AppImage, Snap/Flatpak or PPA releases that are officially provided on the download page.
Tablets¶
What tablets does Krita support?¶
Krita isn’t much fun without a pressure sensitive tablet. If the tablet has been properly configured, Krita should work out of the box.
On Windows, you need to either install the WinTab drivers for your tablet, or enable the Windows 8+ Pointer Input option in Krita’s settings.
You can find a community curated list of tablets supported by krita here.
If you’re looking for information about tablets like the iPad or Android tablets, look here.
What if your tablet is not recognized by Krita?¶
First, check if you have installed drivers and the like. The Drawing Tablets page has some explanations and descriptions of common issues. If none of those work, we would like to have a bug report at bugs.kde.org, with a tablet log. Here’s how you make a tablet log:
You need to have something to output the log to. On 4.2 you can use the Log Viewer docker for this. Just open the log viewer, and enable logging.
Geändert in Version 4.2: The log viewer got added to Krita in 4.2, so for older versions of Krita, you will need to either run Krita in the terminal if you have Linux or macOS, or for Windows install DebugView from the official Microsoft site, start DebugView and then start Krita.
When using a terminal, make sure to enable
unlimited scrollback.Press the Ctrl + Shift + T shortcut, you will see a message box telling the logging has started.
Try to reproduce your problem, you will be able to see the log being created in the log viewer as you draw.
Save the output from the log viewer into a TXT file, and attach it to the bug report.
On Linux, it is also useful to have the following information:
lsmodxinputxinput list-props(ID can be fetched from the item 2)
However, in 100% of the cases where Windows users have reported that their tablet didn’t work over the past five years, the problem has been either a buggy driver or a broken driver installation, but not a bug in Krita.
How to fix a tablet offset on multiple screen setup on Windows¶
If you see that your tablet pointer has an offset when working with Krita canvas, it might be highly likely that Krita got an incorrect screen resolution from the system. That problem happens mostly when an external monitor is present and when either a monitor or a tablet was connected after the system booted.
You can configure this by going to the Tablet Settings.
Microsoft Surface Pro and N-Trig¶
Krita 3.3.0 and later supports the Windows Pointer API (Windows Ink) natively. Your Surface Pro or other N-Trig enabled pen tablet should work out of the box with Krita after you enable Windows Ink in .
Tablet Pro and the Surface Pro¶
Unlike Wacom’s Companion, the Surface line of tablets doesn’t have working hardware buttons. Tablet Pro is a (non-free) utility that puts virtual buttons on screen. Krita 3.1 and above will have predefined shortcut profiles to work with Tablet Pro.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKXZgYqC3tI for instructions.
Weird stuff happens on Windows, like ripples, rings, squiggles or poltergeists¶
Windows comes with a lot of settings to make it work with a pen. All these settings can be annoying. This tool can help you set the settings correctly when you’re using a tablet:
Touch doesn’t seem to work on Windows¶
You might have to disable and enable the touch driver: go to the device manager. (Click the Start button and type device manager). Choose HID (User interface devices or something like that). Choose Intel® Precise Touch Device. Right-click, Disable it. Right-click, Enable it.
Toolbox¶
Toolbox missing¶
You can reset the Workspace by pressing the right most button on the toolbar, the Workspace switcher, and click on a desired Workspace from the list.
Or you can right-click on any docker title bar or open space in any toolbar, and select Toolbox. It’s the first option.
Also, you can check the Settings menu, it has got a lot of interesting stuff, then go to the Dockers menu and select Toolbox.
Tool icons size is too big¶
Right-click the toolbox to set the size.
Krita can’t get maximized¶
This happens when your dockers are placed in such a way that the window cannot be made less high. Rearrange your Workspace.
Resources¶
Is there a way to restore a default brush that I have mistakenly overwritten with new settings to default?¶
How do I set favorite presets?¶
Right-click a brush in the brush docker and assign it a tag. Then right-click on canvas to call popup palette, click the second right-most icon on the bottom-right of the palette, now you can pick the tag which contains the brush you assigned to it.
Can Krita load Photoshop Brushes?¶
Yes, but there are limitations. You can load ABR files by using the Import button in the Predefined brush tab in the brush editor. Since Adobe hasn’t disclosed the file format specification, we depend on reverse-engineering to figure out what to load, and currently that’s limited to basic features.
Krita is slow¶
There is a myriad of reasons why this might be. Below is a short checklist.
Something else is hogging the CPU or the memory: Spotify and other Electron apps have been known to do this.
You are running Windows, and have 3rdparty security software like Sandboxie or Total Defender installed
You are working on images that are too big for your hardware (dimensions, channel depth or number of layers)
You do not have canvas acceleration enabled
You have (NVIDIA) Vertical Sync enabled
On macOS, with some macs, you might need to disable canvas acceleration in Krita’s settings.
Please also check this page.
Slow start-up¶
You probably have too many resources installed. Deactivate some bundles under the menu item.
If you’re using Windows with the portable ZIP file, Windows will scan all files every time you start Krita. That takes ages. Either use the installer or tell Microsoft Security Essentials to make an exception for Krita.
Slow Brushes¶
Check if you accidentally turned on the stabilizer in the tool options docker.
Try another scaling mode like trilinear. .
Try a lower channel depth than 16-bit.
For NVIDIA, try a 16-bit floating point color space.
For older AMD CPU’s (Krita 2.9.10 and above), turn off the vector optimizations that are broken on AMD CPUs. . This isn’t needed if you’ve got an AMD Threadripper™ CPU.
It’s a fairly memory-hungry program, so 2 GB of RAM is the minimum, and 4 GB is the preferable minimum.
Check that nothing else is hogging your CPU.
Check that Instant Preview is enabled if you’re using bigger brushes (but for very small brushes, make sure is disabled).
Set brush precision to 3 or auto.
Use a larger value for brush spacing.
If all of these fail, record a video and post a link and description on the Krita Artists Forum in appropriate category.
Check whether OpenGL is enabled, and if it isn’t, enable it. If it is enabled, and you are on Windows, try the Angle renderer. Or disable it.
Slowdown after I’ve been working for a while¶
Once you have the slowdown, click on the image-dimensions in the status bar. It will tell you how much RAM Krita is using, if it has hit the limit, or whether it has started swapping. Swapping can slow down a program a lot, so either work on smaller images or turn up the maximum amount of RAM in .
Animation¶
Why is my animation black in my video player¶
You did not render the animation using the „baseline“ option, and you are using the default Windows Media Player. Re-render using the baseline option or use a better video player application, like VLC. Check this useful diagram.
Tools¶
Shortcuts¶
Some shortcuts become useless after drawing for a while¶
Have you loaded any Keyboard or Canvas Shortcut Schemes (e.g. Photoshop/SAI compatible schemes) other than the Default one? If that’s the case, make sure you have loaded the same scheme for both Keyboard and Canvas Shortcuts (e.g. Photoshop Compatible for both Keyboard and Canvas shortcuts). If the schemes on both sides are not matching, you might run into shortcut conflicts, like: middle-click zooming/panning/rotation of canvas become unresponsive, even the brush becomes unable to paint sometimes.
License, rights and the Krita Foundation¶
Who owns Krita?¶
The Stichting Krita Foundation owns the Krita trademark. The copyright on the source code is owned by everyone who has worked on the source code.
Who and what is Kiki?¶
Kiki is a cyber squirrel. She’s our mascot and has been designed by Tyson Tan. We choose a squirrel when we discovered that ‘krita’ is the Albanian word for Squirrel.
Why is Krita Free?¶
Krita is developed as free software within the KDE community. We believe that good tools should be available for all artists. You can also buy Krita on the Windows Store if you want to support Krita’s development or want to have automatic updates to newer versions.
Why isn’t Krita on Steam and in the Windows Store Free?¶
Krita on Steam and in the Windows Store is still Free and Open Source software; the binaries are exactly the ones you can also download from krita.org. We’ve put a price tag on downloading Krita from either store to support Krita’s development. Nobody is getting rich out of it, but the income from Steam and the Windows Store currently pays for the full-time involvement with Krita of four developers. See Krita Available from the Windows Store for more information.
Can I use Krita commercially?¶
Yes. What you create with Krita is your sole property. You own your work and can license your art however you want. Krita’s GPL license applies to Krita’s source code. Krita can be used commercially by artists for any purpose, by studios to make concept art, textures, or VFX, by game artists to work on commercial games, by scientists for research, and by students in educational institutions.
You can also make videos or stream your desktop with Krita’s interface visible (which can be used to make art tutorials or time lapses).
If you modify Krita itself, and distribute the result, you have to share your modifications with us. Krita’s GNU GPL license guarantees you this freedom. Nobody is ever permitted to take it away.
Can I get Krita for iPad or for Android?¶
Not for iOS or iPadOS at this point in time: there are problems in any case with putting an application licensed under the GNU Public License V3 in the iOS App Store. Krita for Android is currently in beta in the Google Play Store F-Droid is coming.
Who translates Krita¶
Krita is a KDE application — and proud of it! That means that Krita’s translations are done by KDE localization teams. If you want to help out, join the team for your language! There is another way you can help out making Krita look good in any language, and that is join the development team and fix issues within the code that make Krita harder to translate.
Please refer to https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/translation for more general instructions on getting involved in KDE localization.