Switched from Procreate to Krita for my landscapes and the difference is night and day

I spent about 6 months doing all my digital paintings in Procreate on my iPad. It works fine for quick sketches but every time I tried to do a detailed forest scene with lots of layers I hit a wall. The brush engine just couldn't handle all the texture I wanted without lag. Last week I downloaded Krita on my old laptop and gave it a real shot. The brush stabilization alone made my tree branches look 10 times better. Plus the layer management is way more like Photoshop so I can actually organize my work. I finished a 12 hour piece in Krita that I would have abandoned halfway in Procreate. Has anyone else found a different program that just clicked for their style?

3 comments

3 Comments

sarah_hart14d ago

Wait, hold on. Procreate's brush engine isn't really what causes lag on landscapes. It's usually the canvas size and layer count. Procreate can handle massive canvases but it's tied to how much RAM your iPad has. If you were trying to paint a 6000x4000 pixel forest with 30 layers all with blending modes, that's what slowed you down. Krita on a laptop just has more memory to throw at that. Also Krita's brush stabilization is solid but Procreate actually has a pretty good streamline feature for tree branches too, you just have to crank the stabilization slider up in the brush settings. Might be worth checking your iPad's memory next time instead of blaming the app.

christopherwilson14d ago

Wait, you're telling me Procreate's streamline actually works for tree branches if you just mess with the slider enough? I've been fighting Krita's brush stabilizer for ages thinking I had to switch apps to get that smooth line, guess I owe the Procreate team an apology for all the trash talk. That's wild about the canvas size too, I never really thought about how iPad RAM is the real bottleneck compared to a laptop. I just assumed the app was poorly optimized for big paintings, but now I'm curious what my old iPad Air can actually handle without choking. Kind of changes how I look at my whole setup honestly. I might have to test this theory with a smaller canvas and see if the lag disappears before I blame Procreate again.

fiona_murphy13d ago

Hang on, are we really gonna pretend that iPad RAM is the only thing that matters here though? I've got an M2 iPad Pro with 16GB of RAM and a maxed-out canvas still chugs like crazy with any layer blending modes on Procreate. Krita on my 8GB RAM laptop runs the same file without dropping a single frame. That's not just RAM, that's how the app handles memory differently. And the streamline slider? I've cranked that thing to 100% and it still fights me on curves when I'm doing tree branches, the prediction algorithm just isn't as good as Krita's. Look, I want to give Procreate credit where it's due, but when it comes to actually pushing heavy landscapes with lots of detail, the app has real limits that aren't just about your hardware.