Krita — The Complete Guide: Free Digital Painting, Sketches and Hand-Drawn Renderings
Krita is open-source digital painting software developed in the KDE community with the support of the Krita Foundation. It was built for drawing by hand with a pen and tablet rather than photo editing, so it feels close to working on paper. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Krita
Krita Foundation (KDE)
Open-source digital painting and illustration: sketches, hand-drawn renderings and illustrations, with many brushes and tablet support.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Hundreds of brushes — pencil, ink, watercolour and markers, with pen-pressure sensitivity.
- Layers and masks — separating linework, colour, shading and annotations.
- Perspective assistants — guides that steer the brush towards vanishing points.
- Basic image editing — cropping, colour adjustment and filters.
- Simple animation — frame-by-frame drawing.
A note on licence and price
The download from the official site krita.org is completely free, including for commercial use. The paid versions in app stores are the same program, and paying there is simply a convenient way to support the project. Note that Krita does not replace CAD software — it is a tool for drawing and presentation, not for precise drafting.
Related tools
For complex photo and image editing — GIMP. For vector graphics and marking up drawings — Inkscape. For quick, simple editing on Windows — Paint.NET.
GIMP
GIMP team
Advanced image editing — site photos, perspective correction, marking defects and preparing images for reports.
Get it from the vendor
Inkscape
Inkscape project
Vector graphics editor — schematics, technical illustrations, report figures and SVG, PDF and DXF editing.
Get it from the vendor
Paint.NET
dotPDN
A fast, simple image editor for Windows with layers — for cropping, marking up and preparing photos and figures for reports.
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Rnote
Rnote project
Sketches and handwritten notes on an infinite canvas — mark up PDFs and images with a pressure-sensitive pen.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Krita is an excellent choice for architects and designers who want to sketch by hand on the computer. Open source and completely free, including for commercial use.