Full Tilt for Krita!

Krita development is in a crucial phase, we are adding fun, useful and
amazing stuff at a stunning rate. But there are things that no Krita
developer can do, because we lack the proper hardware. Krita's
renaissance started with a simple Wacom Graphire tablet, and it led to some
great new possibilities. But to implement support for modern tablet features like tilt and stylus rotation we need to buy more advanced tablets and art pens, and to make that possible, we need your help!

The tablet that started it all

It all started with this simple tablet, but now, to make Krita support modern painting features like stylus tilt, rotation and airbrush rate we need a set of more advanced tablets. And those are costly!

Ideally we would have at least two Intuos tablets, the size
does not matter much for development, with two 6D art markers (for rotation)
and two airbrushes (for rate). We need two tablets because that way two
developers can hack and test each others work. That way we will not have the
"but it worked for me" situations right after a release that we all hate so much!

And we do not want to wait too long: to get these features out with
KOffice 2.0, and not delay
the release
, work has to start soon. In fact, Emanuale Tamponi, our Google Summer of Code student working on natural painting has almost finished his preliminary research and is panting to start coding! Thus we ask you, our users, if you value Krita and want us to develop innovative, first-grade painting and drawing capabilities, please help us out!

We have asked the KDE e.V. to aid us with the financial-service part, and you
can donate on the KDE
Donation page
. If you donate through the button below your donations will be automatically tagged for Krita. If you donate through a bank order or US cheque, please mention it is for Krita.

And do not worry, if there is more money than we need for tablets, it will be spent for Krita, for instance by getting the Krita developers to Warsaw for the 2008 Libre Graphics Meeting.

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Comments

by Patcito (not verified)

When I click on th Make a Donation button it leads me to the german paypal. Anyway to make it to the local paypal site?

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Oops... I forgot to change the lc tag in the paypal form from DE to EN for the dot. The paypal button on http://www.koffice.org/krita should give you an English paypal form.

by S. (not verified)

Uh, am I doing something wrong? The site seems to mandate that I create a Paypal account (which I am NOT going to do, due to past issues with them) before they'll validate the transaction?

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

If you don't want to use paypal, you can use one of the other donation options, like direct bank transfer or a check: http://www.kde.org/support/support.php.

by S. (not verified)

Wonderful! Thank you Boudewijn!

by Ronan (not verified)

How can I specifiy that I make a direct bank transfer for "Krita"?

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

If your bank don't allow you to add a comment on the transfer form, you can mail me ([email protected]) and I'll notify the e.V., who'll tot up your donation with the other Krita donations.

by Scott (not verified)

What's wrong with PayPal? I've been using them for years.

by Anon (not verified)

Donated 30 Euros; I hope others will do the same!

by Zbyszek (not verified)

Hey, I live in Warsow, and I dont't know anything about Libre Graphics Meeting. Is there any website I can get info about it?

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Not yet -- http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org is still about this year's meeting. But the proposal has been made and accepted, so the organization should be getting busy.

by Cyrille Berger (not verified)

Actually it's not Warsow which has been proposed but Wrocław.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Even cooler :-)

by Evil Eddie (not verified)

Yes, a Libre Graphics Meeting on German soil. :)

by Thomas (not verified)

please delete parent post by evil eddie. I was in Gdansk last week and not in Danzig as some stick-in-the-muds would prefer. And yes, I'm from Germany.

by Jonathan Verner (not verified)

Sounds more like Czech soil to me :D (not meant to offend anybody; the place certainly had a turbulent history)

by Anon (not verified)

10 Euros from me, I wish you all the best!

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

Go Krita! Keep up the good work :)

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

Heh, that euro symbol didn't make it through :)

Anyway, it was supposed to say 20 euro from me.

by Matt (not verified)

Just out of curiosity, how much does this tablet cost? I didn't even know things like these existed until I saw a Wacom at the Apple Store a couple years ago or so, and I've been interested in them ever since.

by Jure Repinc (not verified)

Is there any additional way we can help with the development. I'm asking this because my sister has a Wacom tablet (Graphire4 or something like that). So is there any other way she can help?

by Eckhart Wörner (not verified)

Sure, test new versions of Krita for errors in tablet features. The fact that not that many people own a tablet also means there are not that many people who are able to test new code.

by Cyrille Berger (not verified)

Yes and while non working tablets are rarely the fault of Krita, but a problem of configuration in Xorg or in a distributions, they also need help to test that part. And helping them is helping Krita indirectly ;)

by cookiem (not verified)

I like Krita :)

by duckmat (not verified)

I like krita too.

by Max (not verified)

Hi,

have you asked Wacom for tablets?
I know that the Gimp developers got one or two from Wacom some time ago. Perhaps you can ask Sven or Simon for the contact.

by a.c. (not verified)

Actually, it may be useful to ask for a 2 for 1 kind of deal. That is, if we come up with the money for 2, they give 4. While it is useful to have 1 freeby, it is even better to have 4 at low costs.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

I've tried to contact Wacom several times but I didn't get a reply.

by Simon (not verified)

... but I might one day and I use Krita so supporting it is well deserved.

20 euro on its way

by Ben (not verified)

Somethings broken in the world of open source. Couldn't you get the pad as a gift from the hardware manufacturer?

by Fri13 (not verified)

Why only supported tablet for linux seems to be only Wacom? There are alot good tablets and even cheaper.

Like http://trust.com/products/default.aspx?cat=_Current&grp=TABLETS&type=12X...

I buyed one for my sister who used windows. On that time it didnt work on linux. After OpenSUSE 10.2 i tryed it again and it got reconized and worked as normal mouse. But pressing dont work as should (512 levels).

And it is good tablet, draws straight line with ruler and works great (on windows side ;-)).

And it is very cheap for A4+ size, only 75 euros so many art students could afford it.

by Lee (not verified)

Being the underdogs, those guys, at least, should be willing to provide development hardware.

by Amy Rose (not verified)

I wish I had money, but I don't. When I have money, I'd like to donate ^^;

by soriac (not verified)

"Natural painting" is still one of the things I'd like to see on the OpenSource segment. I hope someday it will be a good alternative to CorelPainter. And if it's this promising as krita or the whole koffice package, I don't have a doubt about this ;-). This is definitely worth a donation.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Yesterday Emanuele Tamponi committed the first bits of code for the paint mixer palette :-)

by Scott (not verified)

Every time I'm at http://kde-look.org, the artists there say they created their work with The GIMP (or Inkscape in the case of SVG - leaving Karbon14 in the cold as well).

I've yet to come across anybody anywhere (outside of this thread I suppose) who actually says they use Krita.

I've got no artistic talent so I barely use any of this stuff. :)

Personally I think you should hit up the Trolltech folks for donations. :)

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

I regularly have contact with a couple of artists who use Krita. Most of them do so because the tablet handling in the 1.x releases fits their way of working best. And, well, a user base is something that has to grow. Especially for graphics applications users aren't eager to switch at the drop of a pin.

by Darth Omnious (not verified)

I don't have the funds now to donate but really want too. Before I discovered Krita I had to rely on painter for my painting.IMO-GIMP = Photoshop (style) and Krita = Corel Painter (style) and I prefer Painter's style over Photoshop's anyday. Oh and for the person wondering who uses Krita, I do. As well as Inkscape, Karbon, Blender,and a plethora of other gfx apps. To the developers PLEASE ADD A CUSTOMIZABLE WAY (HOTKEY) TO RESIZE YOUR BRUSH SIZE INTERACTIVELY (i.e.like painter (so I can finally ditch windows ;-) )

Oh and the color mixer would be cool too :D

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

I saw the first version of the color mixer work yesterday :-). And yes, we'll try to add the hotkey to resize the brush size for 2.0.