3 ms·

It's weird seeing this on the top of the frontpage because of how old the app is. It's great for annotating with symbols and circling stuff, and the "New from

It's weird seeing this on the top of the frontpage because of how old the app is. It's great for annotating with symbols and circling stuff, and the "New from clipboard" function is awesome, but the text editor holds it back entirely. It's painful to do ANYTHING with text and they choose not to triage it. There's a minimum text size, too, so it auto-goes back to that high text size unless you type a number in. It's not ready for mainstream, I've sent this feedback as many others have.

raincole 3y ago
They promised to redo the text tool last year. It's not released yet, but I'm sure they are at least aware of this issue.
sundarurfriend 3y ago
I don't know if the text editor "holds it back entirely" to such an extent as to make it "not ready for mainstream", but definitely is a pain in the ass. I didn't even know adding text to an image could be made so complicated and buggy until I started using Krita.
simulo 3y ago
I see it mainly as an digital painting app and it is advertised by its creators as such ("painting program … art tools"). There, it goes far beyond basic functionality and is very much ready for mainstream. It does a lot of things beyond that, and some people use it as general purpose tool but given that this is not part of the core purpose, it is not surprising that the mileage varies when it comes to text editing or color correction etc. (Still happy if they manage to improve their text tool!)
s1291 3y ago
Read about the re-written text layout engine: https://wolthera.info/2022/10/svg-text-layout-for-krita https://wolthera.info/2022/10/svg-text-layout-for-krita
- footlose_3815 3y ago
  If I read and understand that correctly, they aren't addressing the UX of the editor, but the engine's features instead? Features are nice, but I don't think people want to type their text in a big window before they see it on the canvas. Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET, and even MS paint let you write text directly on the canvas with an insertion point. The Text tool in Krita is a whole level of abstraction away from being able to see what you want.
  - hallarempt 3y ago
    Yes, on-canvas editing of text is a project for this year, and probably most of next year. All in all we're spending tens of thousands of euros on the text shape and text tool, in the hope that now we're doing this for the fourth time, we can finally nail it. The main purpose of Krita's text tool is comic book speech bubbles, though, not annotating screen shots.
    - egypturnash 3y ago
      I make comics and I am pretty sure that a feature set suitable for making word balloons is going to be very much a superset of what you need to annotate screenshots. Annotation: pick a font/size/color and pick a place to start typing, or drag out a larger, rectangular text box and start typing. Comics: also those text boxes might need to be ovals/rectangles/some absolutely crazy shape that fits the needs of the page, it's nice to automatically draw a balloon for them too, manage font/size/color across multiple text boxes on multiple pages, and then there's sound effects that start out as a cool font and get pushed around... I may be biased by working in Illustrator, which has a very mature set of text tools. I hear that Clip/Manga Studio's text tools were barely functional for an embarassing number of years and there sure are a lot of comics people I know who love it despite that.
      - hallarempt 3y ago
        Clip Studio's text tools are really primitive, yes... And we're aware of the challenges. At least three people in the core team do make comics, too :-) And we want to support vertical text, RTL, ruby and all of that. But in this thread there's a link to a blog post that shows what already has been done, and there's been lots of work done since.

raincole 3y ago

They promised to redo the text tool last year. It's not released yet, but I'm sure they are at least aware of this issue.

sundarurfriend 3y ago

I don't know if the text editor "holds it back entirely" to such an extent as to make it "not ready for mainstream", but definitely is a pain in the ass. I didn't even know adding text to an image could be made so complicated and buggy until I started using Krita.

simulo 3y ago

I see it mainly as an digital painting app and it is advertised by its creators as such ("painting program … art tools"). There, it goes far beyond basic functionality and is very much ready for mainstream. It does a lot of things beyond that, and some people use it as general purpose tool but given that this is not part of the core purpose, it is not surprising that the mileage varies when it comes to text editing or color correction etc. (Still happy if they manage to improve their text tool!)

s1291 3y ago

Read about the re-written text layout engine: https://wolthera.info/2022/10/svg-text-layout-for-krita https://wolthera.info/2022/10/svg-text-layout-for-krita

footlose_3815 3y ago
If I read and understand that correctly, they aren't addressing the UX of the editor, but the engine's features instead? Features are nice, but I don't think people want to type their text in a big window before they see it on the canvas. Photoshop, GIMP, Paint.NET, and even MS paint let you write text directly on the canvas with an insertion point. The Text tool in Krita is a whole level of abstraction away from being able to see what you want.
- hallarempt 3y ago
  Yes, on-canvas editing of text is a project for this year, and probably most of next year. All in all we're spending tens of thousands of euros on the text shape and text tool, in the hope that now we're doing this for the fourth time, we can finally nail it. The main purpose of Krita's text tool is comic book speech bubbles, though, not annotating screen shots.
  - egypturnash 3y ago
    I make comics and I am pretty sure that a feature set suitable for making word balloons is going to be very much a superset of what you need to annotate screenshots. Annotation: pick a font/size/color and pick a place to start typing, or drag out a larger, rectangular text box and start typing. Comics: also those text boxes might need to be ovals/rectangles/some absolutely crazy shape that fits the needs of the page, it's nice to automatically draw a balloon for them too, manage font/size/color across multiple text boxes on multiple pages, and then there's sound effects that start out as a cool font and get pushed around... I may be biased by working in Illustrator, which has a very mature set of text tools. I hear that Clip/Manga Studio's text tools were barely functional for an embarassing number of years and there sure are a lot of comics people I know who love it despite that.
    - hallarempt 3y ago
      Clip Studio's text tools are really primitive, yes... And we're aware of the challenges. At least three people in the core team do make comics, too :-) And we want to support vertical text, RTL, ruby and all of that. But in this thread there's a link to a blog post that shows what already has been done, and there's been lots of work done since.