Awesome plugin for Krita that adds lots of features for making Pixel Art!

Installation

1. Download the .zip.
2. In Krita, go to Tools ‣ Scripts ‣ Import Python Plugin…, find the .zip file and press OK.
3. Restart Krita.
4. Go to Settings ➡ Dockers ➡ SZK Pixel Art Suite

A new docker with the plugin will appear:

Tabs

1 Color shading

2 Color replace

3 Index Painting

4 Export

5 K-Sprite

6 Options

Color Shading

This is inspired by the color shading panel from Pyxel Edit, which provided interesting color shadings very easily.

It brings its original functionality to Krita and expands on it by adding a few more options.

It works by generating color variations based on a color. This base color is always at the center of a palette (except for the “mix” (mixer) palette).

To generate a shading palette:

• Press the FG / BG button to grab your current foreground/background color and build the shading palettes around it.
• Press the Middle MB on a swatch. See ‘Swatches’ section below for more info

Swatches

A ‘swatch’ is a single color sample of a gradient.

Mouse Button (MB) shortcuts/actions:

When you click a swatch, the color becomes active:

Once a color is selected, you can:

• Move easily forwards/backwards in the active shading palette with a shortcuts. (See shortcuts section)

• Add the whole shading to your active palette.

Managing Palettes

The Color Shading tab is “connected” to the native Palette docker by Krita.

How to show the Palette docker

Go to Settings -> Dockers -> Palette

A docker like this will appear:

Add colors to palette

When you have a gradient selected (by having selected a swatch), you can add all its colors to the active palette. For that, press this button:

Sort Palettes

It includes actions for adding and sorting colors in Krita’s default Palette docker by different criteria (hue, value, saturation, perceived lightness, color similarity, etc.), similar to other softwares.

This is something I personally find very useful when working with limited color palettes.

To sort your active Palette, press the … button:

Most are self explanatory. Even though, some ones worthy to explain:

• Perceived lightness: This sorts the colors according how human eye perceives lightness. Is not always the same as the “value” sort.

• Cielab similarity: Sorts the colors of your palette according by how similar they are to your active (foreground) color.

Color Replace

Allows to precisely replace an specific color in the selected layers/groups or in the entire document.

This is useful when you want to change a palette or a certain color of an entire document or layer.

1 - Color to be replaced (left) and new color (right)

Same shortcuts like in the Mixer apply here

Shortcut	Action
Left MB	Triggers the color selector
CTRL + Left MB	Triggers the color picker to grab any color
ALT + Left MB	Picks the Foreground color
Left MB	Picks the background color

You don't need to remember them! Just **hover** the mouse under the colors **to see a tooltip** with these **shortcuts**:

2 - Swap replaced and new color.

3 - Alpha for the new color (in case you need to set a new one).

4 - Replaces the color in the selected layer(s).

5 - Replaces the color in every layer of the active document.

Index Painting

Sets up an index painting group for a layer (or group) with a single click.

It comes with a pattern editor that allows to create, save and load different patterns-pressets for the dithering effect:

This is mostly to play, experiment and discover new and cool pixel gradient effects.

Interface

• 1 Matrix Size: Increase/decrease the rows/columns of the dither matrix.

• 2 Rotate: Rotates the dither matrix.

  

• 3 Invert: Inverts the color in the dither matrix.

  

• 4 Clear the matrix: Resets all cells.

• 5 Dither Presets: Change the dither preset.

• 6 Save Preset: Save your own dither preset for using it later.

• 7 Delete Preset: Deletes the selected preset.

• 8 Dither Matrix: Here you can paint/modify each cell of the dither matrix. Each cell represents a pixel of the dither pattern.

There is some different ways for painting the matrix:

• 9 Create Index Painting: Press to generate an Index Painting folder for the selected layer/group.

• 10 Repaint the dithering layer: Updates the dither pattern. Useful to call it after drawing on the matrix.

  The active layer must either be the “Dither” layer, or a sibling of the “Dither” layer.

  Note: The dither layer must be named “Dither”. This is due that after pressing the button, it searches if there is an Index Painting group set up with a dither layer.

• 11 Create dither pattern layer: Adds a dithering layer with the dithering pattern set on the matrix

  This can be used as a pattern generator (useful for making textures for brushes, gradients, etc).

Setting an Index Painting group

Having a black and white drawing (or an empty layer if you want to draw from scratch):

Press the button Index Painting, in the Index Painting Tab:

It will result in something like:

It makes a group with everything needed for Index Painting.

The group consists of:

• A Gradient Map / Index Colors filter layer, depending on your Index Painting Options

  Note: Right Click on this layer to open the Properties and edit the colors used for the shading.

• Dither: This layer holds the dither pattern from the dither matrix.

  Note: If you are using a Gradient Map, you can change its pattern in its settings (Right Click on the layer -> Properties). Having both patterns combines them and increases the dithering effect.

  
  

  TIP: Increase/reduce its opacity to change the dithering effect.

• Gradient (optional, depends on your Index Painting Options): It helps to visualize the effect and to sample colors.

  Having the “Gradient” layer selected, you can sample its black and white colors with CTRL+ALT+LeftMButton, and have an idea of the dither amount that value will have.

• [Your selected layer/group] (B&W sphere in this example): This is where you have fun and paint (in black and white)!

Export Tab

Allows exporting the document (or any selected layer(s)) scaled by a factor very easily and fast.

Useful when you want a higher resolution image of your Pixel Art drawing.

Image settings

• Scale: Size multiplicator.

• Quality: Image compression quality. The higher, the better quality (and the file size).

  Since Pixel Art normally tends to have lots of contiguous pixels with the same value, a low value usually keeps enough quality.

• Directory: Suports both relative and absolute directories.

  • relative example: Setting a value of, lets say, Exports/Version 1 will make the exported images to be in a subdirectory relative the current path of the active document.
    • Eg: if your document is placed in C:\Users\Dexter\Desktop\my-awesome-pixel-art.kra, the exported images will be in C:\Users\Dexter\Desktop\Exports\Version 1
  • Absolute example: Setting an absolute path (like, lets say: C:\Users\Mike\Pictures\My Pixel Art) will place all exported images in that folder, and ignore the document’s path.

• File name: Add a custom name for the exported image.

  Leaving it empty will add the document’s name.

• Format: Select your preferred image format. (Supports .png, .jpg, .webp and .bmp)

Naming Options

• Add scale: If true (checked), it will add the scale factor to the file name.
• Overwrite: If false (unchecked), will add an unique time stamp for avoid overwriting files.

  This is useful if you want to manually save some “snapshots” of your drawing and don’t want to overwrite the images.

  • If true (checked) the files with the same name will be overwritten.

• Selection only - If true/checked, it will only export the region selected. Useful if you want to export only an specific area/region.
• 📁 - Click to open the folder with the exported images.
• Export Scaled - Exports the whole document.
• Export Selected - Exports only the selected layer/layers/group
  • Trim - If true/checked, the exported layers will be cropped to their bounds. If false, their size will be the document size.

    This is useful, for example, for exporting different sprites for a game easily 🎮.

K-Sprite

K-Sprite is a Pixel Art editor inside Krita that is meant to add all the Pixel Art features that are missing in Krita. Like a pixel perfect brush, or tools for propper ellipses/circles, bezier lines, pixelated text, etc.

It’s not meant to fully replace the process of drawing Pixel Art in Krita (because Krita is still a great tool for that!). It’s meant to add all those tools that I always missed while doing Pixel Art, and to make creating Pixel Art in Krita an even more awesome experience! 🥳

Tutorial

To execute K-Sprite, go to the Pencil Tab ✏️ in the docker, or press the shortcut for Open SZK K Pixel Art Editor (SZK Pixel Art Suite) (Default Alt+F3).

A new window will appear on top of Krita 1, and will grab the active layer 2:

1 - The window will render on top always so you can still use other krita dockers/plugins while drawing in K-Sprite.

2 - The active layer will be temporarily hidden in Krita’s UI. This is due K-Sprite renders the document, and having it visible will make it impossible to see changes in case you erase parts of the active layer inside K-Sprite

You will be able to draw in the layer you had selected when you executed K-Sprite.

This layer will appear on top, while the rest of the document will be in the background:

Once you submit the changes, it will appear as usual in Krita, in its correct layer position.

Interface

• Active tool options: Options related the selected tool.
• Actions: Diferent actions, like undo/redo, solo mode, etc.
• Tool Bar: Contains all the drawing tools.
• Canvas: This is where you draw.
• Export Buttons: Buttons for submitting your changes to Krita.
• Info Bar: Offers different information about the selected tool, the hovering elements, etc.

Tool Options

Tool Options

Options for the different drawing tools.

Actions

Actions

Tools

Tools

1 1px Brush

2 Antialiasing Brush

3 Lines

4 Bezier Curves

5, 6 Squares & Circles

7 Fill bucket

8 Text

9 Zoom Tool

Brush

1px brush with pixel perfect option for clean pixel art strokes. Shortcut: B

Antialiasing brush

Brush for helping doing antialiasing. Shortcut: A

This calculated color is a “bridge color” between the current pixel, and its surrounding neighbours, for achieving that antialiasing effect. If you don’t know about Pixel Art antialiasing, or want to know more, check this awesome article..

Lines

Tool for creating lines. Shortcut: V

About snaping

I’ve added mooooooore snapping angles for making perfect lines than what is usual in most Pixel Art editors:

This is due I personally like to draw perspective buildings, streets, etc. and I’ve always missed that some editors do not offer more snapping angles for doing some lines more easier.

Bezier Curves

Pixel Perfect cubic and quadratic bezier curves! Shortcut: ALT+V

To make a Bezier Curve:

1. Click and drag to define start and end points on mouse click and mouse release.
2. Place the first control point by clicking a second time.
3. Place the second control point by clicking one last time.

TIP: If you want the curve to still update even when the cursor is out of the editor, press (inside the editor) and drag wherever you need to make your curve.

Reason

This is due the points are added on mouse release, and if the window loses focus without an event pending (such as holding a mouse button), the editor can’t be updated.

Squares & Circles

Tool for drawing Squares and Circles.

Shortcuts:

• Rectangles: R
• Circles: C

Fill Bucket

Tool for filling closed areas. Shortcut: F

⚠️ Warning about the fill-bucket tool

The fill-bucket uses a recursive algorithm (The flood fill algorithm), and Krita has limited the amount of recursive calls a script can execute, and this -sadly- cannot be changed.

This means that if the area to fill is big enough to reach that recursive calls limit, Krita will end that process and the fill won’t be completed and show this window:

I tried some non-recursive algorithms, but they are generally way slower than the Flood Fill algorithm, so it is best to use Krita’s fill-bucket tool for filling large areas.

I considered removing the tool, but since it still does the job well for small and medium areas, I decided to keep it, since sometimes is useful 👍.

Text

Tool for drawing pixel perfect fonts! Shortcut: T

To add a text:

• Click + Drag to create a rectangle that contains the text, or simply Left Click to create a default area.
• Add and edit your text in the pop-up window:

Press OK to submit the text, or Cancel to -drumroll 🥁🥁🥁- cancel/discard the text 🤯.

You can move the text while is being edited by Clicking its rectangle and dragging it:

TIP: It also works great with non pixel art fonts! 🎉🥳 

Zoom Tool

Tool for precisely zooming in on specific areas. Shortcut: Z

Canvas

Canvas

Here is where you draw. This area displays the current state of the document, and you will be editing the layer that was active when you launched the editor.

• Controls

  Shortcut	Action
  Left MB	Paint with Foreground Color (FG)
  Right MB	Paint with Background Color (BG)
  Middle MB or Space + Left MB (Drag)	Pan Canvas
  CTRL + Middle MB (Drag)	Zoom in/out
  CTRL + Left/Right MB	Sample Foreground/Background color
  X	Switch FG/BG Colors
  1	(Zoom) 1:1 pixel scale
  2	(Zoom) Fit minimum width/height
  3	(Zoom) Fit document into viewport

TIP: You can mask regions for painting in K-Sprite by making a selection in Krita:

This way, you will only be able to draw within the selection.

At the moment, there is no visual input inside K-Sprite to know if there is a selection active. You will have to look Krita’s canvas for that.

Export Buttons

Export Buttons

Export the drawing/changes in K-Sprite to a New Layer or to the Active Layer in Krita

• New layer will export the drawing to a new layer above the selected layer.
• Active layer will export the drawing to the layer that was active when executing the editor.

👉 These buttons may show or not depending on the active layer when launching the editor.

• Launching it with an empty layer will make not show the New Layer button (to avoid cluttering).
• Launching it with a hidden layer selected will make not show the Active Layer button (this is to avoid committing changes to an invisible layer by mistake).

Info Bar

Info Bar

Displays information, shortcuts, tips, etc. when hovering a button/tool.

Options

Index Painting Options

• Add gradient: Adds a gradient to preview the dither and to sample colors.

  

  • Position: Changes the position of the gradient (top, bottom, left, right).
  • Size: The size of the gradient as a percentage of the document’s size.
  • Invert: Inverts the gradient.

• Method

  • Index colors: Uses an index color filter
  • Gradient map: Uses a gradient map filter. You can configure its dither pattern in its properties.

    I personally preffer the Gradient Map option. Since is easier to manage colors.

• Dither live preview: When selecting a new pattern preset or editing the dither matrix (by rotating, inverting it, etc), if there is a “Dither” layer selected (or a sibling) of the selected layer, the Dither layer will be updated automatically.

  This is for being able to directly see how changes affect the shading dithering.

  

Shortcuts

Shortcuts provided by the plugin:

Palette

• When selecting a color from a palette in the Shading tab, you can move backward/forward the active palette color with the shortcuts:

  Command	Default Shortcut
  Previous Palette Color (SZK Pixel Art Suite)	Alt+1
  Next Palette Color (SZK Pixel Art Suite)	Alt+2

K-Sprite

• You can execute the editor with the shortcut:

  Command	Default Shortcut
  Open SZK K Pixel Art Editor (SZK Pixel Art Suite)	Alt+F3

Export Pixel Art

• You can bind to a shortcut the action to export your pixel art with your current settings with:

  Command	Default Shortcut
  Export Scaled Pixel Art (Full Document) (SZK Pixel Art Suite)	(Not set)
  Export Scaled Pixel Art (Selected Layers) (SZK Pixel Art Suite)	(Not set)

Credits

Fonts used:

• Minimal4 by Pedro Medeiros (@saint11) ( Thank you! )
• Tiny5-Regular by Stefan Schmidt ( Thank you! )

Mentioned articles:

• HD Index Painting in Photoshop by Dan Fessler.

• Anti-Alias and Banding by Pedro Medeiros

I hope it helps you to create awesome Pixel Art! 🍀