Whither Krita?

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Monday 14 September 2009, Dmitry Kazakov wrote:
> Well, may i start?
> 
> I'm a photographer. So i need a tool that can replace a photoshop on linux
> for preparing my photos for print. Why don't i use Gimp? There are several
> reasons:
> 
> 1) [main reason] I hate it's user interface. I hate these loads of windows.
> 
> 2) Absence of an ability to work with several colorspaces (fast Lab<->Rgb
> switch).
> 3) Absence of a color profiling feature.
> 4) Absence of a Color Proofing feature
> 
> Last time i started Gimp i was lacking last three features (it was quite
> long ago). That's why i dropped it.
> 
> 
> What do i need from Krita (or any other editor to be able to set up a usual
> photo workflow):
> 
> 1) Ability to work with Lab, RGB, CMYK. It would be curious to have a HSV
> colorspace as it can be efficiently used in Curves tool.
> 2) "Curves" tool. This is my main working tool. [MAIN]
> 3) Ability to do a Color Profiling
> 4) Ability to do a Color Proofing [MAIN]
> 5) Ability to blend channels like PS's "Apply Image" [MAIN]
> 6) Ability to work with channels separately [MAIN]
> 
> What i like in Krita:
> 1) Variety of colorspaces
> 2) I like Qt more than Gtk
> 
> What i don't like in Krita:
> 1) Absence of MDI interface. It's quite difficult to work with several
> pictures at once

Even multiwindow SDI is a bit broken, I think, because an action on one image 
too often blocks the other view. I don't actually have any strong opinon 
because my preferred way of working would be using a sketchbook/flipbook 
metaphor -- i.e., one full-screen window and a small control to page between 
images in a set. Krita used to be able to save multiple images in one 
KisDocuments, that was quite cool but made the code very complicated.

> 2) FILTERS DIALOG(!) with thumbnails that was introduced in 2.0. I think,
>  if i press Filter->Curves menu, i mean that i want to see Curves
>  configuration window only, NOT these loads of thumbnails and other
>  filter's stuff.

Damn. I had a patch for that -- and I lost it somewhere during the 2.0 freeze.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org