Solstice and Krita

How Solstice Differs from Krita

Solstice is a free painting application derived from Krita 6 and maintained independently. What it adds, what it removes, and how it lives next to Krita.

Solstice started from the Krita 6 codebase and keeps Krita's painting engine, brush engines, layers and .kra files. It now follows its own direction: a Vulkan GPU engine and workflows familiar from Clip Studio Paint. It no longer tracks upstream Krita.

What Solstice adds

• GPU engine: layer compositing and a GPU brush with Vulkan, on by default.
• Brush Stroke Layer: remembers its strokes and draws them again when scaled.
• Puppet Warp: pose artwork with movable and rotatable pins in the Transform Tool.
• Brush settings in Tool Options: an eye next to a Brush Editor setting shows it in Tool Options, like Clip Studio Paint's eye marks.
• Brush Presets: stroke previews, engine and bundle filters, and grouping.
• Photoshop brushes: .abr files import with their tips, patterns, presets and folders.
• Built-in tools: Quick Access, the Asset Library, Rest Note, Lazy Tools, docker locks and a live Overview, written in C++.

What Solstice removes

• Android support and packaging. Solstice is desktop-only.
• The right-click Popup Palette and the On-Canvas Brush Editor. Quick Access provides a color selector, a brush grid and brush adjustments instead.

Using it next to Krita

• Settings: Solstice keeps its settings and resources in %APPDATA%\Solstice and can import a Krita profile on its first start (settings folder guide). Krita's own settings are not changed.
• Files: both open the same .kra files. Krita opens a Brush Stroke Layer as a normal paint layer.
• Platform: Solstice is tested on Windows 11, 64-bit. Linux and macOS are not validated.

Relationship to Krita

Solstice is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or supported by the Krita project or KDE. Credit for the original application belongs to Krita's contributors. Please report Solstice issues to the Solstice repository, not to Krita or KDE. Existing copyright notices and license terms remain applicable.