Krita

What's new in this version:

New Features:
Mesh Gradients:
- Sharaf Zaman’s Google Summer of Code project has landed in this release! Compatible with Inkscape, Krita now provides the second independent implementation of SVG Mesh Gradients. Mesh gradients are used on vector objects and can deliver really natural looking results.

Mesh Transform:
- But the gradients are not the only mesh related feature! This release also sees the first iteration of the mesh-transform. Like the gradient mesh, the mesh transform consists of bezier patches that can be individually shaped to create precise transforms, especially useful for rounded objects. Not shown in the above screenshot: you can optionally show the handles of each bezier curve making up the mesh for even more precision and control!
- Deif Lou added a new gradient fill layer type, this one will make it easy to quickly create a variety of gradients non-destructively. With it, he also made an important usability fix: Gradients in Krita could be either segment type, or stop type, with different features each, and different editors each. That could get quite annoying if you were working on a gradient, but you realized you had the wrong type! This is now fixed, as both gradient types can now be edited by the same editor, which also converts between the two.

Improved Halftone Filter:
- Deif Lou also created a new halftone filter. The old filter was slow and could not be used as a filter mask, and could only show dots.
- The new filter can handle being applied as filter layer, per-channel filtering, and the pattern itself can be generated with any of the fill layer options, giving endless combinations.

Updated macOS integration plugins:
- Amyspark improved the quicklook plugin by adding thumbnailing support (needs macOS 10.15 or higher) and added metadata support for Spotlight

A Paste Shape Style Action:
- A small feature that allows you to only paste the style of the copied vector shape onto other selected vector shapes. This feature can be found under the edit menu, or assigned a shortcut in the shortcut settings.

A Toolbar Button for Wraparound Mode:
- Originally, we had a shortcut, W, that enabled Krita’s Wraparound mode, one of the features Adobe copied this year for the next release of Photoshop.
- But too many people pressed the shortcut by accident and were then confused and thought Krita had gone crazy… So we removed the shortcut, but now nobody could find it anymore. That’s why in this release, we have added a button to the toolbar that activates wraparound.

New brushes:
- There are also six new brushes by Ramon Miranda, meant to show off the new RGBA brush tip feature

Agata Cacko improved HiDPI rendering (BUG:411118) of:
- Pixelart previews
- Reference images
- Comic manager pages
- Image thumbnails in the last documents docker
- Recent documents thumbnails
- The Popup palette
- Clipboard content in the new image dialog
- The Color selectors
- Gamut masks
- Brush preset icon in the Brush preset editor
- Layer thumbnails and icons
- Resource choosers
- Bundle icons

Bug Fixes:
File Handling:
- Files with names starting with a number are now autosaved correctly
- Make it possible to load EXR files with non-ascii characters in the path
- Disable making the background black for a semi-transparent EXR file

Painting:
- The PressureIn sensor now works correctly in combination with the Hue color expression
- The speed smoothing algorithm no longer creates blobby lines
- The colorsmudge brush now blends when there is a selection active
- The brush outline no longer snaps when switching between two images with a different zoom level

Animation:
- Most animation work is going in the master branch, which will become Krita 5.0.
- Onion skins are hidden when playing an animation
- Warn the user when they are trying to run the ffmpeg download archive, instead of unpacking it
- Fix converting an animated transparency mask to a paint layer

Usability:
- The default shortcuts for changing the mode in the selection tools have been removed: they are replaced by ctrl/shift/alt modifiers. The actions still exist, so you can configure single-key shortcuts in Krita’s shorcut settings dialog.
- The magnetic selection tool now has buttons to confirm or discard a selection
- An issue where moving a selection would jump was fixed
- A Fit to Height zoom shortcut was added, patch by Jonathan Colman
- The screentone generator’s defaults were improved
- File layers that are dragged and dropped now have a proper name
- The popup palette now has a clear color history button
- The report bug dialog now provides the system information and usage logs in an easy to copy/paste manner
- Blacklisted resources that contain a in the filename were ignored
- Displays are shown by name in the color management settings page
- Fix showing custom icons for user-defined templates
- The fill layer dialog and seexpr widgets were polished
- The x/y position spin boxes in the move tool options were fixed
- Add default letter spacing for the text shape
- Add support for user-installed color schemes
- All dialogs and message boxes are now correctly parented to the main window
- Make it possible to export groups as merged layers
- Fix kerning handling in the text editor
- Add support for color opacity in the text editor
- Fix cropping the transform mask when moving the masked layer
- Improve switching between SVG source and rich text editor
- Fix issues with the brush outline getting stuck when the brush size is smaller than 0
- Improve the Python plugin importer so action files get imported correctly
- Fix tearing of patterns when scrolling in the resource chooser
- The rectangle and ellipse tool now have default shortcuts: Shift+R and Shift+J, respectively
- Allow the Select Similar Color selection tool to pick from a set of layers, make work correctly with image bounds and handle transparent layers correctly
- Fix the isometric grid so it is drawn correctly
- The outline selection tool was renamed to freehand selection tool

Filters:
- The bundled g’mic plugin is updated to 2.9.2 which contains a correct Boost-Fade filter
- The gradient map filter was improved and made faster

Stability and Performance:
- Fix a lot of memory leaks
- Improve performance by removing a bottleneck when transforming internal colors to and from QColor
- Fix a race condition in the Comics Manager plugin
- Fix the fill layers updating too many times
- Fix random crashes when changing screentone fill layer parameters
- Fix a crash in the Square Gradient strategy (patch by Deif Lou)
- Fix a crash when converting SVG source to rich text or back (patch by Lucid Sunlight)
- Fix an assert when trying to liquify transform an empty layer
- Fix an assert when creating a new layer from the visible layers while the active layer is hidden
- Make the Select Similar selection tool multithreaded