Krita is quite extensible. You can add new filters, of course, and chunks of user interface like scaling dialogs, and new tools — like weird and wonderful selection tools or a path tool like the one that is right now being worked on for Google’s Summer Of Code. But also new ways for existing tools to paint. I’m working on a Chinese brush simulation based on Clara Chan’s interpretation of Strassman’s Hairy Brushes for Krita 1.6. And finally, you can add complete new colorspaces. We’ve already got various rgb, cmyk and grayscale colorspaces, and also xyz, lab, yuv and lms — but there is no end to the possibilities.

However, the best API is useless without a good tutorial, and I’ve just completed the first draft of Developing Krita Plugins. Apart from extending Krita with C++ plugins (and, if you manage to get automake and gcj to play ball, java), you can use Krita’s document scripting interface to create scripts in python and ruby. And there’s dcop, too, of course, but that’s not as well documented.

So, if you’ve always thought Krita was nothing more than a glorified icon editor, you can now change that. Go ye therefore, and code all kinds of plugins, extending Krita in weird and wonderful ways, in C++ and Java and Python and Ruby.

ps. What I also wanted to say… Krita’s got a pretty good manual, too, in case you just wanted to use this icon editor.

This page will tell you both how to develop a new plugin for KIPI, and how to add KIPI support to a new application (referred to as host application).

First set up the dimensions with some guides to help in the process.

For 8.5 x 11 size paper:

1. Create new document (8.5 x 11 inches and .5 inch margins, default unit *inches*)
2. Page -> Manage guides:
3. Add Horiz. Guides at 0.5, 2.5, 4.5
4. Add Vert. Guides at 0.5, 4.0, 4.5, 8.0
5. View -> show guides
6. Page -> snap to guides
7. Insert shape (rectangle) to fit in upper left area sized for a typical 2x3.5 inch business card, and resize so that it fills entire region bounded by the guide.
8. Now design your card within that region.
9. Group all the elements of the card together as a single unit.
10. <uncheck> Page -> Snap to Guides
11. Select the business card
12. Item -> Multiple duplicate -> No. copies = 1, Horiz shift = 3.50, Vert. Shift = 0.00
13. Select the top row and multiple duplicate vertically to fill the page.
14. Item -> Multiple duplicate -> No. copies = 4, Horiz shift = 0.00, Vert. Shift = 2.00
15. Done.

• Produce a document using 2 (or more) colours.
• Remove the unused colours using the colour manager.

• Save and export to pdf for reference.
• Open the file and change one of the used colours to white, using the colour manager. (remove, and assign white when asked)