Adobe Fresco vs Krita

Price

Both are free to download with every tool included.

Adobe Fresco is free, with thousands of brushes, unlimited layers and animation tools included. An optional subscription bundles it with Photoshop on iPad for $7.99 a month on the US App Store.

Krita is completely free and open source under the GNU GPL, with no ads, subscription or paid tier. Development is funded by donations, and you can also buy it on some app stores to support the project.

Platforms

Both run on Windows. Only Adobe Fresco runs on iPad and iPhone. Only Krita runs on Mac, Linux, Android and Chromebook.

Fresco is one app for iPad and iPhone, and there is also a Windows version. Adobe's system requirements list no Mac or Android version. You can start drawing without signing in, but exporting and cloud saving need an Adobe account.

Krita runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, plus Android tablets and Chromebooks, where the Android version is still in beta. It is not available for iPad or iPhone.

Brushes

Fresco includes thousands of free brushes: blendable raster brushes, vector brushes that stay sharp at any size, and Live Brushes that simulate watercolor and oil paint. It also imports Photoshop brushes.

Krita ships with more than 100 brush presets built on several brush engines, from pixel and color smudge to bristle and particle engines. It imports Photoshop .abr brushes and resource bundles.

Comics and manga

Adobe Fresco does not advertise comic tools such as panel layouts or screentones, though its text, shapes and vector brushes help with lettering and clean line art.

Krita includes comic page templates and a Comics Project Management Tools plugin for organizing multi-page projects.

Layers and editing

Adobe Fresco: Layers are unlimited, with masks, clipping and Photoshop-style adjustment layers for brightness, hue/saturation and color balance. Liquify, free transform and a magic wand are included, and documents open directly in Photoshop and Illustrator.

Krita: Its layer system is one of the deepest anywhere: paint, vector, filter and fill layers, transparency and filter masks, dozens of blend modes, and color management with CMYK, LAB and HDR support.

Drawing tools and extras

Adobe Fresco: Drawing aids include Snap to Shape, rotational and reflective symmetry, rulers, and perspective grids you can build from a photo. Fresco also has frame-by-frame animation with motion paths, GIF and MP4 export, Adobe Fonts for text, and timelapse export.

Krita: Drawing assistants cover perspective, vanishing points and ellipses, and mirror tools, multibrush symmetry and wrap-around mode make patterns easy. Krita also has frame-by-frame animation, a text tool and a recorder for timelapses.