14 DAY TRIAL // Work on the next Krita 3.x point release has started, and a first Release Candidate (RC) milestone of the upcoming Krita 3.3 version is now ready for public testing, giving us a glimpse of what's coming in the new release.
In the release announcement, Krita devs reveal the fact that they were forced to bump the version number from 3.2.x to 3.3.x because the upcoming Krita 3.3 release will be introducing some important changes for Windows platforms, such as support for the Windows 8 event API, thus supporting the n-trig pen in Surface laptops.
"Alvin Wong has implemented support for the Windows 8 event API, which means that Krita now supports the n-trig pen in the Surface line of laptops (and similar laptops from Dell, HP and Acer) natively. This is still very new, so you have to enable this in the tablet settings," said the devs.
Better support for Intel GPUs and HiDPI displays
Additionally, Krita 3.3 promises better hardware-accelerated display functionality to fix many of the issues users encountered with Intel GPUs by optionally using Direct3D instead of OpenGL. On top of that, there's better support for HiDPI displays on both GNU/Linux and Windows platforms.
GMIC and PNG improvements are present as well in the upcoming Krita 3.3 release, along with several new command-line options for starting Krita in full-screen or canvas-only mode or without the splash screen. Krita 3.3 will also correctly load your favorite brush presets and blending modes during startup.
Among other improvements coming to the Krita 3.3 release, we can mention that file layers will now correctly reload after they're modified, there are a couple of macOS and Mac OS X specific changes, as well as the ability to extend selections outside the canvas boundary.
A full list of changes implemented in Krita 3.3, so far, can be found attached below. In the meantime, you can download the first Krita 3.3 Release Candidate for GNU/Linux, macOS, or Microsoft Windows operating systems if you want to take it for a test drive and report bugs.