The Krita project has opened beta testing for its next feature release, publishing the first betas of Krita 5.3 and Krita 6.0 digital painting apps. Both versions are built from the same codebase, with Krita 5.3 continuing on Qt 5 and Krita 6.0 moving to Qt 6. Here’s what users can expect from these upcoming releases.
One of the most significant changes is a complete rewrite of the text object and all related tools. Text can now be edited directly on the canvas, wrapped inside vector shapes, or placed along vector paths. The new system supports most writing scripts and is backed by substantial internal work on fonts, OpenType handling, font metrics, and typesetting behavior.
On Linux, Krita 6.0 introduces native Wayland color management when running in Wayland mode. This feature is exclusive to the Qt 6 build and is officially supported only under KDE’s KWin compositor.
Several tools have also been added or improved. A new knife tool allows vector objects to be split or merged, a feature aimed particularly at comic page layout work. Existing tools have also seen updates, including a pixel-art stabilizer for the freehand drawing tool and significantly faster performance in the liquify transform tool.
Moreover, assistants have been refined with a simpler configuration and the addition of a new curve-linear perspective assistant. The filter set has expanded with new propagate colors and color overlay mask filters, while all blending modes have been reviewed for correctness in HDR workflows.
Other major Krita components, the brush engines, have also seen changes, including an extension of the pattern option with a new soft-texturing mode. File format support has expanded with the addition of Radiance RGB, improvements to JPEG-XL handling, and enhanced interoperability with Adobe Photoshop files.
Additionally, text objects in PSD files can now be loaded as editable text, and Krita can save text back to PSD with some limitations.
Krita 5.3 and 6.0 beta builds are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Krita 6.0 is not yet available on Android or ChromeOS, where Qt 6 remains unstable. On Linux, the minimum supported Ubuntu version is now 22.04 LTS, and the primary distribution format remains AppImage.
For more information, see the announcement, which also includes download links.
