Krita 5.3.3 Drops Today, Alongside the First Stable Qt 6 Port
Krita 5.3.3 is here, and it's bringing a mountain of bug fixes to the widely used open-source painting tool. More interestingly, this maintenance release lands alongside the very first stable build of Krita 6, which uses the exact same codebase but compiles against Qt 6 for better Linux Wayland and HDR support.
It's a rather generous release strategy. You get a polished maintenance update on the Qt 5 build, and early access to the next generation at the same time. Not bad for a free app.
The project traces back to 1998, when KDE founder Matthias Ettrich showed off a hack for GIMP at Linux Kongress. After a few name changes and a stint inside KOffice, it became its own thing. The Krita Foundation took over stewardship in 2013, and the app has been gaining ground against Clip Studio Paint, Photoshop, and Procreate ever since. The only catch? You have to pay for the store versions if you want to fund the development, even though the core software remains identical.
The Text Tool Overhaul
Krita 5.3, released back in March, was described by the team as "several years in the making." The headline feature was a complete rewrite of the text tool from the ground up. It now supports on-canvas editing, wrapped text that conforms to inline areas or vector shapes, and text on paths with configurable start positions.
If you're working with typography, the 50-plus editable properties in the new Text Properties Docker are going to feel familiar. It supports OpenType variable fonts across all axes, and there's a new font selector that indexes your system fonts with localized names. You can even browse alternate glyphs for CJK scripts using the new Glyph Palette.
The tool doesn't stop at typography. A new Comic Panel Editing tool lets you split and merge vector objects for rapid layout work. The Free Transform bounding box now rotates with Ctrl+Alt to align with angled selections. And the Fill tool gained a Close Gaps functionality, so you can actually fill areas even when your line art has tiny openings.
Next, the Python plugin API got a serious bump. You can now create procedural brushstrokes, and the new Paint Brushstroke API wraps around AngleSelector and SliderSpinboxes Qt widgets. There's also a Brush Mutator plugin for randomization if you need to keep your strokes from looking too uniform.
Bug Fixes and Platform Updates
Krita 5.3.3 focuses on the nitty-gritty. The changelog lists 28 specific fixes, ranging from crash corrections to UI polish. The most impactful workflow improvement might be the fix for layers getting deselected when you start a transform. That's been a minor irritation for a while.
The perspective transform deadlock is also gone, and FFmpeg 7.0+ now plays nice with HDR animation rendering. If you've been trying to export high dynamic range video on modern Linux systems, this is the update you've been waiting for.
Platform notes are worth checking before you download. Windows users will notice the 32-bit builds are gone. It's 64-bit only now. macOS minimum has been raised from Mojave to Catalina. Android tablets can finally make in-app donations through the Play Store, which unlocks access to paid resource bundles like the Digital Atelier pack. No features are locked behind a paywall, but the splash screen will show supporter packs if you want to chip in.
The Krita 6 Shift
Here's where things get interesting. Krita 6.0.3 shares the identical source code with 5.3.3. The difference is purely in the build system: Qt 5 versus Qt 6. The team isn't calling it stable yet. They're calling it early access. But it brings full Wayland Color Management Protocol support, which means HDR displays on Linux actually work as expected.
Previously, X11 could identify which monitor and color profile was in use. Wayland's architecture made that difficult. Krita 6 also adds fractional scaling and 10-bit display support. It's not available on Android yet, but the development focus has clearly shifted to stabilizing this port.
The dual-version strategy is smart. It gives Linux distributions that have already dropped Qt 5 a way to keep using the app, while letting Windows and macOS users take their time transitioning. If you need more storage or just prefer the older build, 5.3.3 is suitable for productive work. If you want to see where the project is heading, Krita 6 is worth a look.
Head here to grab the latest release. Source code is identical to Krita 6.0.3 if you want to build it yourself. Keep in mind that the Qt 6 port might have a few rough edges, but it's the most ambitious open-source attempt at professional HDR color management on Linux so far.
