Krita 5.1 Focuses on Improved Usability, Handy Changes to Tools, and Much More!

Just at the end of last year, we had covered an article on Krita 5.0. This was a big update that brought a lot of new features and changes.

For those unaware, Krita is a popular open-source graphics design software up there with the likes of GIMP and Photoshop.

Krita has just finally received a new minor update after eight long months.

Let’s take a look at what this release brings!

What’s New in Krita 5.1?

If you like videos, the Krita team has created a demonstration video (as usual) to help you get familiar with some of the major changes in the release.

As you may have figured out from the video, this release brings a host of improvements and changes. I’ve described some major highlights of the release down below if you prefer reading.

Improvements to Tools

Users will definitely adore the all-new Enclose and Fill tool. As the name suggests, you simply need to create an enclosed shape with your cursor over an area you wish to be filled. Krita then takes care of which section(s) to fill. For instance, you can use this tool to fill three spots together instead of individually filling them.

Another new method added is the Continous Fill. You can drag your cursor over nearby regions to be filled automatically. This also includes alternate filling, like on a chessboard where you want to fill alternate squares.

New shortcut settings have been added to Brushes including a new GUI option to set the max brush speed.

Better Usability

Touch gestures can now be configured according to the user’s needs.

Users can easily view the entire canvas at its physical size or just view individual pixels at a time through a revamped version of an existing button called “use aspect of pixels”.

Moreover, HSV color options have been added as well which include a slider for the color selector and adjustment filters.

Oh, and there’s a Dual Colour selector option added too!

Refreshed Layers

The Layers dock is now much more detailed and cleaner than usual.

A new and convenient addition is the ability to indent sub-layers within a group. This helps differentiate layers easily.

You can even apply cut, copy, paste, and clear operations on multiple selected layers simultaneously.

Other Changes

While this wraps up the most significant changes in the release, there were numerous other ones as well.

There were some technical changes well like the addition of YCbCr color profiles, compiling support for users with RISC-V hardware and some fixes for Windows users.

Some other changes, improvements and bugfixes include –