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Krita on Steam: digital painting and 2D animation in one open-source app
Krita is a professional painting and animation tool used by illustrators, concept artists, comic creators, animators and game artists worldwide. It's fully free and open-source, developed by an international community of artists and programmers around the Krita Foundation. No forced subscriptions, no ads — just a powerful tool built specifically for artists rather than office graphics.
On this page you're buying the Steam edition of Krita, which we deliver to you as a Steam gift straight into your library. Feature-wise it's identical to the free build from the website, but it adds two nice perks: one-click install and updates through Steam across all your devices, and direct support for the development team. In short, it's a way to get the same Krita more conveniently while thanking the people who make it.
What Krita can do
Krita was built by artists for artists, and it shows in every detail. Its strengths include:
- Dozens of brush engines with fine-tuned settings and pen-pressure support — from soft watercolor to textured oil strokes.
- Frame-by-frame 2D animation with a timeline and onion skinning so you can see neighboring frames and build motion smoothly.
- A flexible layer system: masks, blending modes, filter layers and groups for complex compositions.
- Transformation tools — perspective, warping and liquify to reshape forms without redrawing.
- Drawing assistants and G'MIC filters that help keep perspective and process images fast.
It's equally good for finished art, sketches, storyboards and pixel graphics for games.
How the Steam version differs from the free one
The most common question about Krita on Steam: why pay when there's a free version? The honest answer is convenience and support. The app itself is identical. But the Steam build installs in one click, updates itself to the latest versions and syncs across all your computers via your Steam account. And the money from your purchase goes directly into Krita's development: new brushes, engines, fixes. If you already love this app, buying it on Steam is the easiest way to give back.
How we deliver Krita
We send Krita as a Steam gift through our bot. After payment the bot adds itself to your friends via your invite link, sends the gift, and removes itself once delivered — no need to accept anything manually. The whole process usually takes a couple of minutes. You just open Steam, accept the gift, and Krita appears in your library. Steam Guard is not required for this.
For everything to go smoothly, two things matter: your Steam account region must match the gift region, and Krita must not already be in your library — otherwise Steam simply won't let you accept the gift. So at checkout pick the variant for your region and enter it in the order fields.
Where it runs
Krita runs on Windows 8.1 and newer, macOS 10.14 and newer, and popular Linux distributions. The purchase is tied to your Steam account, so you can install it on any computer where you're signed in. For comfortable drawing a graphics tablet with a pen is recommended — Krita reads pressure and tilt beautifully.
Why an open-source app matters
Krita is developed transparently, with no commercial tricks: no watermarks on your art, no crippled “free” build, no cloud lock-in that could shut down at any moment. Files are stored locally in the native .kra format, and you can export to PNG, JPEG, PSD, TIFF and other common formats, so swapping work with other editors never becomes a headache. The community ships new versions regularly, and the Steam build pulls them in automatically, so you always work on the latest release without manual reinstalls.
Who it's for
If you draw illustrations, do concept art, run a comic, build 2D animation or prepare graphics for games, Krita covers almost everything without subscriptions. Beginners get a gentle entry point and a clear interface, while pros get deep brush and workspace customization for their pipeline. Like exploring creative tools on Steam? Check out Aseprite for pixel art and sprite animation, or Wallpaper Engine if you want to bring your artwork to your desktop.