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Krita

A full painting and illustration studio that costs nothing.

Instead of Adobe Photoshop and Procreate for drawing

M · ToolOpen sourceFreeNo accountWorks offline
krita.org
Screenshot of the Krita website

Screenshot from krita.org, taken 2026-10-30, shown to help you recognise the tool. It belongs to its maker. Ask us to remove it.

Bob Ross spent years on television telling people they could paint, and he made it look like something you could do on a Saturday. Krita works on the same assumption for digital painting. It is a full painting and illustration studio that costs nothing, made by a community inside KDE, with the Krita Foundation looking after its funding and trademark.

The program is free to download from its own site, and the paid copies on Steam and the Microsoft Store are the same software, offered to people who want to chip in. What you draw is yours, in open file formats, and nobody can lock the studio behind a subscription. Krita scores a 5 on lock-in, power and longevity and a 4 on footprint, self-direction and delivery, and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

It is built for painters and illustrators, with a deep set of brushes and tools to match, and that depth takes time to learn. It is not a photo-retouching tool, so photographers may still want something else.

There is no sign-in prompt and no upsell, so a session is you, a blank canvas and a great many brushes.

    What stands out

  • A full painting and illustration studio with deep brush tools
  • Made by a KDE community and free forever, with no sign-in or upsell
  • What you draw is yours, in open file formats
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Side by side. Krita vs Adobe Creative Cloud

For comparison, we also reviewed Adobe Creative Cloud (12/30) as a benchmark.

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