Krita vs Pinta
Both are free/open-source alternatives to Adobe Photoshop. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Krita
A professional open-source studio for digital painting that doubles as a capable image editor.
Krita is a KDE project stewarded by the Krita Foundation, built first for digital painting and illustration: its brush engines, pen-tablet support, and animation tools are best-in-class among free software. It is also a genuinely capable general raster editor with layers, masks, filters, and PSD import/export, which makes it the strongest pick for people who use Photoshop mainly to draw and paint rather than to retouch photos. The direct download is completely free; identical GPL-licensed builds are sold on Steam and the Microsoft, Epic, and Mac App Stores purely to fund development.
Pinta
A lightweight, open-source editor for quick everyday image edits.
Pinta is a simple, MIT-licensed image editor modeled on Paint.NET, for the large group of people who pay for Photoshop but mostly crop, resize, annotate, and make quick adjustments. It offers layers, a solid set of adjustments and effects, and an interface you can learn in minutes, on Linux, Windows, and macOS. It is deliberately not a professional tool: there is no PSD support and nothing like Photoshop-depth retouching — but if your needs are genuinely simple, it may be all the editor you need.
Side by side
| Krita | Pinta | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 96 | 92 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | GPL-3.0-only | MIT |
| Pricing | Free download; optional paid store builds fund development | Free and open-source |
Krita edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Krita
Strengths
- +Free and open-source (GPL-3.0-only), developed by the Krita Foundation with a steady, funded release cadence
- +Best-in-class brush engines, tablet support, and painting workflow
- +Solid layer, mask, and filter tools for general raster work; opens and exports PSD
- +Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux, and an Android/ChromeOS build
Trade-offs
- −Painting-first by design — photo retouching and selection tools are shallower than Photoshop's or GIMP's
- −PSD round-trips can lose advanced Photoshop-specific features
- −No built-in generative AI features
- −Large canvases with many layers want plenty of RAM
Pinta
Strengths
- +Simple and fast for everyday edits — crop, resize, annotate, adjust
- +MIT-licensed and cross-platform (Linux, Windows, macOS)
- +Layers and useful adjustments/effects without a learning curve
- +Small footprint; runs well on older hardware
Trade-offs
- −Nowhere near Photoshop's depth — no advanced retouching, masking, or prepress tools
- −No PSD support (native format plus OpenRaster and standard image formats)
- −Small maintainer team and a modest development pace
- −Far smaller ecosystem and fewer tutorials than GIMP or Krita
More Adobe Photoshop head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-06. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.