First beta of Krita 4.0 is now ready for public testing

Jan 11, 2018 23:04 GMT  ·  By

The developers of the Krita open-source and cross-platform digital painting software have released today the first beta version of the upcoming Krita 4.0 major release.

Krita 4.0 will be the biggest update since version 3.0, and today's first beta release gives users early access to many of its awesome new features and improvements. Right now, Krita 4.0 is in String Freeze development stage, which means that most of the major new features are already implemented.

"We’ve officially gone into String Freeze mode now! That’s developer speak for "No New Features, Honest." Everything that’s going into Krita 4.0 now is in, and the only thing left to do is fixing bugs and refining stuff," reads today's announcement.

Here's what's coming to Krita 4.0

Among the new features users should expect in Krita 4.0, we can mention a new SVG vector system with better tools and workflow, a new text tool, Python scripting support, SVG import and export functionality, improved palette docker, bigger brush sizes, a fast colorize brush, as well as an enhanced brush editor.

Krita 4.0 will also refactor the saving and export functionality to allow saving of files to run in the background and make exports display warnings when the exported file contains features that can't be saved into a certain file format. Other than that, the default pixel brush will be a lot faster on multi-core systems.

Users should also expect a more polished user interface, as well as a revamped file format for vector layers, which cannot be open in older Krita 3.0 versions. On the other hand, it looks like files saved with Krita 3.0 that contain vector layers might get messed up when they're opened in Krita 4.0.

That's because text in Krita 3.x series is based on the ODT standard, and text in Krita 4.x is implemented using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). More details about this important change are provided in the release announcement for Krita 4.0 Beta 1, which you can download for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows systems.