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Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

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Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#161
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, its hard to say what's wrong with Gimp, because I can't figure out anything fully right about it. Even the fact that I'm comparing with Adobe Photoshop, a program itself known for horribly beginner-hostile and unintuitive (but in a weird way "learnable" and "natural") UI is a sign of how off things are. Ugh, this is so true. I've never done professional graphics work, but I've used Photoshop on and off fo…

I use gimp semi frequently. It's never taken more than 10-20 seconds to start up. 2 minutes sounds like a huge outlier... I'm running on a x230 (over 5 year old laptop with an i5) w/ Fedora.

Just ran it again. This time it took 23 seconds. All these on Win 10 x64 1709 using the highly accurate "1-Mississippi, 2-Mississippi..." technique.

PC: 6700k OC @4.5GHz, 32GB/1TB NvME (4x PCIE mode), 1080Ti, most background processes off: GIMP 1st run: 90 s. GIMP 2nd run: 23 s. Paint.Net 1st run: 3 s. Paint.Net 2nd run: 2 s. Paint3D 1st run: 2 s. Paint3D 2nd run: 2 s. Krita 1st run: 7 s. (v3.3.3 first run ever) Krita 2nd run: 4 s. Gravit Designer: 6 s. (first run ever) Visual Studio 2017 takes 18 seconds with a handful of extensions.

Ugh, VS2017 update out...

Outdated version of Photoshop WHILE updating Visual Studio, 1st launch: 17 s. Krita WHILE crypto-mining on 3/4 logical processors (pinned to 100% usage): 4 s. Paint.NET while opening 30 tabs in Chrome: 4 s. GIMP while opening different 30 tabs in Chrome: 25 s. (reduce the chance of cache loads, not scientific, Chrome finished loading first, by about 10 seconds)

On a Surface Pro 3 (Core i7)... Krita while installing Windows updates, 1st run ever: 17 s. Krita 2nd run, updates still installing: 10 s GIMP, no updates installing, clean GIMP install, 1st run: 243 second. Yes, 243. GIMP 2nd run: 17 s.

Tried GIMP again on my desktop, no unusual background processes. 3rd launch: 18 s. 4th launch with mining pinning 3/4 CPU: 23 s.

So, overall, one of the most often recommended FOSS alternatives, even by ME, is a distant last place in these extremely ad hoc, unscientific, off the cuff tests across 2 machines. It also made me hate Mississippi. I was really hoping GIMP would have some trick up its sleeve to surprise me, but it did not. And this is not far from my past experience on Windows.

Maybe (hopefully) it's better on Linux... one sec...

Mint in VirtualBox: GIMP 1st run: 5 s GIMP 2nd run:2 s.

Hahaha. That just tickles me. It appears GIMP is the iTunes of graphics programs on Windows. Down the rabbit hole...

Within Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu with vcxsrv as X Windows server) GIMP 1st run (with some bash errors related to OpenGL): 43 s. GIMP 2nd run (still some errors): 5 s.

It's like they anti-optimized the thing for Windows.

Take away: I'll never recommend GIMP to a Windows user again. Linux? Sure, if the UI doesn't bother you, enjoy! But, it's a miserable experience on Windows compared to every other option and should only be used if a particular function can only be performed in GIMP.

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#162
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use gimp semi frequently. It's never taken more than 10-20 seconds to start up. 2 minutes sounds like a huge outlier... I'm running on a x230 (over 5 year old laptop with an i5) w/ Fedora.

Just ran it again. This time it took 23 seconds. All these on Win 10 x64 1709 using the highly accurate "1-Mississippi, 2-Mississippi..." technique. PC: 6700k OC @4.5GHz, 32GB/1TB NvME (4x PCIE mode), 1080Ti, most background processes off: GIMP 1st run: 90 s. GIMP 2nd run: 23 s. Paint.Net 1st run: 3 s. Paint.Net 2nd run: 2 s. Paint3D 1st run: 2 s. Paint3D 2nd run: 2 s. Krita 1st run: 7 s. (v3.3.3 first run ever) Krit…

Just wanted to say kudos! That's awesome that you did all this. Should relay this to the gimp people some how.

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like good tools as much as anybody, but I am always impressed with what a little talent and practice can do with existing tools. This story was in the news lately, about a woman that uses nothing but MS Paint: https://mymodernmet.com/grandma-ms-paint-art/

That’s actually an important and counterintuitive point that many newbies don’t understand. Eg, someone wants to learn to play guitar, so they go to the store and buy the cheapest, shittiest guitar available. Then they fight with it for a year and give up. It is true that a genius like Jimi Hendrix could, if he were still alive, take the exact same shitty guitar and make a 50k audience scream, but, crucially, you’re…

As a counterpoint, I see lots of "all the gear no idea" kayakers who think that buying the newest design will improve their paddling, when they would be better spending more time on the river than in the shop.

Though I discussed this with someone else fairly recently- as kayaks become more idiot proof, there are a lot more incompetent people on the rivers now, "surviving" rapids that are really beyond their ability. A "worse" kayak will likely make you a better kayaker. (Though there is probably a lot less difference between the quality of kayaks and the quality of guitars).

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like good tools as much as anybody, but I am always impressed with what a little talent and practice can do with existing tools. This story was in the news lately, about a woman that uses nothing but MS Paint: https://mymodernmet.com/grandma-ms-paint-art/

That's exactly as saying that someone made a full c++ program using nothing but notepad and therefore it's impressive. All I see its someone that made their lives more difficult by purpose.

Creativity = Originality / Tools used

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#165
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually an important and counterintuitive point that many newbies don’t understand. Eg, someone wants to learn to play guitar, so they go to the store and buy the cheapest, shittiest guitar available. Then they fight with it for a year and give up. It is true that a genius like Jimi Hendrix could, if he were still alive, take the exact same shitty guitar and make a 50k audience scream, but, crucially, you’re…

As a counterpoint, I see lots of "all the gear no idea" kayakers who think that buying the newest design will improve their paddling, when they would be better spending more time on the river than in the shop. Though I discussed this with someone else fairly recently- as kayaks become more idiot proof, there are a lot more incompetent people on the rivers now, "surviving" rapids that are really beyond their ability.…

The point is less about features, but more about quality. You don't want to fight the tool every step of the way as you first learn to use it, just because it was the cheapest thing that could still be theoretically fit for purpose.

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#166
Just installed Krita 4.0 on my Surface 4 Pro. Like many other software ported to Windows, it can't handle hidpi screens well, all the UI becomes so tiny that the program is not really useful.

Anyone has tips for running Krita on hidpi screens on Windows?

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#167

Just installed Krita 4.0 on my Surface 4 Pro. Like many other software ported to Windows, it can't handle hidpi screens well, all the UI becomes so tiny that the program is not really useful. Anyone has tips for running Krita on hidpi screens on Windows?

Changing the program compatibility setting 'Override high DPI scaling behaviour' may help with this (I haven't tried with Krita yet, but I had a similar problem with Matlab & Simulink which was fixed by this)

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#168
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. a good vector graphics app Check out Scribus. I'd describe it as more of a serious publishing app, where Inkscape may be more for artists. Scribus uses less resources and supports multipage documents. I've also had issues with the cage transform in Gimp, but it's fixed now, so if you're on Ubuntu, just add a PPA with the latest version of Gimp. > 1. a good raster photo editor with non-destructive editing capabil…

"I think it's a bit sad to be whinging at those good pieces of free software for lacking features, and just recommend proprietary software instead. Surely, it is also the developers of the proprietary software that are causing this lack of features by not sharing their code for those." That is probably the most ludicrous statement I've heard today. Being "free software" does not shield you from criticism. And it is n…

> And most people do not care one iota about whether a piece of software is "free" or not.

Can "most people" afford paying $600 yearly fee to edit images? Are "most people" concerned if they fail to make a yearly payment and loose access to all their projects because of vendor lock-in with Adobe's products? Most people I speak to about this are very concerned about this, although they may not know that these problems are caused by Adobe apps being non-free. (But not knowing the cause of a problem doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist)

> Being "free software" does not shield you from criticism.

I agree totally. I just don't think that suggesting proprietary alternatives in this context is particularly helpful as they also lack features of freedom, e.g. sharing, privacy and absence of vendor lock-in.

> And it is not Adobe's fault that the developers of that software do not have a feature. That's entirely on the developers of those programs.

If Adobe freed the source code of Photoshop, how long do you think it would take for missing features to make it into Gimp?

> They care if it makes their life easier, and allows them to get a task done.

... except if the task involves working with other people who may not have access to that software, or may not want to run proprietary software, or may not want to give up their privacy or freedom.

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#169
post #71
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. a good vector graphics app Check out Scribus. I'd describe it as more of a serious publishing app, where Inkscape may be more for artists. Scribus uses less resources and supports multipage documents. I've also had issues with the cage transform in Gimp, but it's fixed now, so if you're on Ubuntu, just add a PPA with the latest version of Gimp. > 1. a good raster photo editor with non-destructive editing capabil…

TL;DR: A program needs either (a) features + good UX/I or (b) rock-solid stability + amazing performance characteristics to compensate for anything else lacking. Gimp has neither, it's some kind of "middle ground" thingy that annoys everyone. > give up your freedom for a few extra features Not really, I use like 10% max of Photoshop's features I guess. But those features simply feel perfectly implemented, they just f…

As xbkingx is writing, it would seem like Windows version of Gimp has some serious performance issues. I'm mainly running Gimp in Debian on a laptop with 512 MB RAM, and the performance is pretty OK (as long as I don't go above 150dpi on A3 prints).

Inkscape has also been crashing on me a lot in the past and was way too heavy, but since they released the 0.91 with the new Cairo-based renderer, it's been pretty fast and stable.

I've personally had a harder time with Blender. I've found it particularly confusing that about half of the functionality seems to just not work when using the game engine. And when importing a video for editing, the length of the video and the audio may not match up.

Re: Krita 4.0 – A painting app for cartoonists, illustrators, and concept artists

#170
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just need to do a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign like Krita did, and hire a full time developers to those money. I bet they would be able to success.

Oh well, despite of everything we said and wrote about kickstarters, people still post this :) We are simply not in a position to do centralized crowdfunding.

Couldn't a competent developer just ask for direct funding from a Kickstarter campaign? No need for any central authority really.
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