Bye, Photoshop

Despite being around for nearly 20 years not many know about Krita It is an opensource free graphics editor that is designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation Itrsquos available on several operating systems including Windows macOS and various Linux distros In itself Krita is an exceptional drawing program offering support for drawing tablets various brush options layers and excellent builtin animation tools However we are most interested in Kritarsquos ability to use pluginsKrita AI DiffusionThis is possibly the most important plugin you can install in Krita right now It seamlessly integrates Stable Diffusion into Krita by installing and running ComfyUI in the background It comes with preset options and you can build your own workflows tooThis image was drawn by hand while the image on the right is what was generated using this image as the baseIt enables you to leverage the latest imagegenerating models to help bring your ideas to life You can use either a cloudbased comfortable UI installation or a local installation This one plugin will let you generate images perform inpainting refine existing images create live paintings upscale images and even customise posesHow to installThe first step is to download Krita httpskritaorgenAfter installing Krita on your OS download the Krita AI Diffusion Plugin httpsgithubcomAclykritaaidiffusionreleasesThe next step is to start Krita Then in the menu go to ToolsgtScriptsgtImport Python Plugin from File Select the Krita Diffusion zip file you just downloadedOnce installation is done restart Krita After restarting the app Create a new image and use any size you want It doesnrsquot matter Once the image appears click on SettingsgtDockersgt AI Image GenerationThis will add AI Image Generation at the bottom of the right toolbox In the AI Image Generation section click the gear icon This will open a new window titled lsquoConfigure Image Diffusionrsquo In that window select the first option on the left called lsquoConnectionsrsquo For this example we will use a Local Managed Server Select a path where you want the AI model files to stay make sure it has 3040GB free space at least Then under Workloads select Stable Diffusion XL everything under Upscalers everything under Stable Diffusion XL models and everything under NoobAI XL models Click on Launch and go away for a couple of hoursDepending on your Internet connection this can take a while It will download all the files autoconfigure Comfy UI and get everything readyThatrsquos it Now every time you start up AI diffusion will also start Comfy UI in the background Be warned that the time it takes to generate an image will strongly depend on the graphics card you have or lack thereof Nvidia cards work the best Also start with a smaller canvas 512x512 pixels is ideal You can always upscaleWhat can you doWith the AI plugin installed you can for starters generate images Itrsquos straightforward enter a prompt in the box labelled lsquoDescribe the content you want to seersquo Then click on Generate The dropdown menu allows you to select from the available models You can even create your own workflow using the gears option on the rightThe brush icons with the sparkles icon left in the AI Image Generation tab lets you select the mode There is Generate Upscale Live Animation and Graph The images above were made in the Live optionYou can also select bits of the image and retouch or repaint using AI There are also tutorials online to use depth maps and a pose tool These are linked on the Krita AI Diffusion Github page You can also take images and use them as a base to recreate the images in specific styles such as the Ghibli images that are currently everywhereKrita with Diffusion is a game changer It works so well that it may be time to bid farewell to the notsohighly affordable subscription of PhotoshopImportant linksgtgt thinspKrita httpskritaorgengtgt thinspKrita Diffusion httpsgtgt thinspkritaaidiffusioncomgtgt thinspKrita Tutorial httpsdocskritaorgengtgt thinspKrita Diffusion Tutorial httpsdocsintersticecloudatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params