About Krita

Krita is a powerful, full-featured, open-source paint program. Its extensive array of features rivals what you'd get from Adobe Photoshop, but delivers it all free of charge.

Krita Diffusion is a plug-in to Krita that gives you generative AI functionality right within the paint program. Behind the scenes, this actually uses ComfyUI as a back-end, but the plug-in takes care of downloading all of the files it needs for you, so you never need to see the version of ComfyUI it installs, or interact with anything but the Krita Diffusion interface.

Once you have Krita running with the "AI Image Generation" box visible, you can click the 'gears' icon in the upper right to load SDXL models, and optionally load ControlNet elements if you want to explore those.

Much like the Generative Fill function that paid subscribers use in Adobe Photoshop with Firefly, Krita Diffusion lets you just select any area of an image, type a prompt in the "AI Image Generation" box, press Generate, and in a few moments see something new appear in your image.

I loaded a winter snow scene that I had previously generated using the Flux model in SwarmUI and tried to add a snowman to it. It took a few tries to get right, but eventually I got a pretty good snowman, and pressed the "Apply" button beneath the choice that I liked.

Staying within Krita, I used other painting and retouching tools to get rid of an extra set of eyebrows and other distractions in what was initially generated.

Krita Diffusion can also generate new images from scratch. I started with an empty canvas at 1024x1024 pixel resolution, typed prompts into the "AI Image Generation" box, and was able to generate basic quality SDXL images, ranging from realistic to stylized and fanciful. While Krita Diffusion does function as a Stable Diffusion interface in this way, it doesn't include all of the options that a more full-featured interface like SwarmUI offers. For example, there was no option to refine the image into a more detailed scene with twice the resolution, and there was no option for face detailing and refinement.

Compared to Adobe Photoshop (with its Firefly-powered AI functions) Krita with Krita Diffusion has some advantages, and some disadvantages. Starting with the advantages:

• Krita and Krita Diffusion are free, and don't change a monthly subscription like Adobe products.
• Krita Diffusion is uncensored and can be used to generate edit any kind of art or images you want to work with. Unlike Firefly, Krita Diffusion never scans your images to see whether it approves of their content or not, so Krita is never in an adversarial position with the artist using it.
• Krita Diffusion has a handy "Strength" control. At 100% Krita will behave like Photoshop with Firefly, entirely replacing the content of the area you selected. But lower percentages allow it to modify what was there instead of entirely replacing it, without the hassle undoing your generation, editing mask densities and retyping the prompt the way you need to in Photoshop.
• Krita Diffusion supports other Stable Diffusion functions such as ControlNet (to guide generations with line drawings, pose reference, or the structure or depth of an image) and Negative Prompts (an optional prompt saying what you don't want to see.)

On the other hand, Photoshop also has advantages:

• Photoshop has better retouching tools, including an extremely useful "remove" tool that Krita can't match.
• Photoshop has a Liquify mode for warping and reshaping images, including "Face-aware Liquify" functions that edit the proportions and expressions of faces. Krita does have other image warping tools, but nothing exactly like Liquify.
• Krita Diffusion is limited to using SD1.5 or SDXL models. Newer and more powerful models like Flux aren't supported in Krita Diffusion yet, so Adobe's Firefly model still has advantages in generating print-resolution output.
• Photoshop's Generative Expand (uncropping) outperforms the similar functions available in Krita Diffusion, especially if you want to expand a print-resolution image or expand a complex image in several directions at once.

Adobe Photoshop with Firefly comes in plans that cost at least $10 a month, with many people paying $20 or more. I'd recommend Krita and the Krita Diffusion plug-in to anyone who doesn't want to pay those fees, but still wants a full-featured paint program, including modern generative AI functions, all in one integrated package.