When comparing Lightroom vs Krita, the Slant community recommends Krita for most people. In the question“What is the best photo editing software?” Krita is ranked 1st while Lightroom is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Krita is:
All the most used and useful tools are easy to find in Krita's UI and are often just one click away. They are not hidden behind menus or dropdowns.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent asset management capabilities
Lightroom allows, for example, organizing images based on folders, color labels, flags, rating, keywords, GPS location, it can automatically create smart albums (albums that automatically update based on set rules) and it can be set to automatically backup, rename based on set rules, apply default processing, add keywords to images on import. It offers that functionality in an intuitive way and allows extensively customizing layout, behavior and workflow of managing assets to better suit your needs.
Pro HDR support
Can merge multiple shots into one in order to expand dynamic range.
Pro Facial recognition helps find and tag people
Lightroom has built-in facial recognition support that can be used to find the same person in any collection of photographs.
Pro A good number of cameras have built-in lens profiles for lens distortion correction
Lightroom has over 900 lens profiles from all kinds of manufacturers, including major lens brands like Canon, Nikon, Leica, Pentax, Ricoh, etc. You can see the full list of supported lenses here. Lens profiles will in most cases speed up the process of correcting lens distortion down to 1-2 clicks.
Pro Intuitive interface that's streamlined for a photographer's workflow
At a high level the interface is organized into broad groups of tools called workflow modules. Modules like "Library" for asset management and "Develop" for manipulating the photos. Each module displays only those tools that are needed for that task. This allows you to separate concerns between tasks and reduces interface clutter. When you're, for example, developing the image, you're not bothered by interface tools relating to exporting it.
Within each module tools are grouped in a logical manner. Develop module, for example, will group tools relating to basic image adjustment, lens correction, and effects.
And there are a plethora of keyboard shortcuts that improve the workflow speed even further. At all times you can easily navigate between images you're working via arrow keys, quickly compare images before and after making edits with \
, or see side by side comparisons with y
.
Pro Supports tethered capture
You can connect your camera directly to Lightroom and have Lightroom display images as soon as they are captured.
Pro Easy to use layout
All the most used and useful tools are easy to find in Krita's UI and are often just one click away. They are not hidden behind menus or dropdowns.
Pro Constantly updated
Krita is getting constant releases with updates and bug fixes. New features are added at a pace that far surpasses the other alternatives.
Pro Free and open source
Krita is completely free and open source. They have raised a couple of successful Kickstarters in the past to get the initial financing and now they are accepting donations.
Pro Developed in part by KDE, which has a great community and therefore great support.
KDE has a long history of making solid applications.
Pro Amazing support for displaying brushes
Krita's preset brushes are one of the default dockers. Each brush has a preview on mouseover that shows a detailed view of the type of brush involved. All the brushes also have useful and descriptive names such as "HP Pencil" or "Textured Fuzzy".
Pro Very customizable
Although the UI is rather busy, Krita is very customizable. The editing window can be themed and the sidebar can be customized extensively throw many dockers or panes.
Pro Easy editing in a tiled view
Tiled view that shows your image tiled in the editor, and permits you to edit it as you are seeing it tiled. If the brush passes out of your texture, it will just automatically wrap back the painting to the other side of the original texture, while permitting you to paint and see the results on any of the tiled "clones" (the shortcut key to activate this is w by default).
Cons
Con No layer-based image editing capabilities
There are no layers removing any ability to blend images, create composits, overlay text, etc.
Con Hot folder option could be better
It can take a couple of seconds for Lightroom to check the folder for incoming images and that can noticeably slow down the workflow. Additionally, only the last image is imported as active.
Con There's a learning curve
Con Telemetry
Adobe is interested in what you do with "their" software. Just install wireshark and see the story unfold. Don't have that or too difficult? Just take a bank note, scan it. See if you can get it on your screen...
Con Expensive and subscription
As with other software offerings, Adobes portfolio keeps giving. For the customer/ user however, this means that you never own your software, but you rent it. Until the point your landlord throws you out.
Con Proprietary
As all Adobe software it is proprietary, closed source.
Con New features are not tested thoroughly
Since releases are so often and with little time between them, usually new features are not tested a lot and this can bring a lot of bugs with them. Which fortunately are quickly patched in the next release.
Con Documentation is lacking
Krita's official documentation is incomplete in some areas, especially for new features that are constantly added. But this is compensated with it's great design and usability which makes it easier to understand how things work.
Con Poor touch controls
They are still pretty much a WIP. But they are getting there.
Con Working with text is not that pleasant
