Krita vs Tayasui Sketches

Price

Krita is free with every tool included, while Tayasui Sketches is free to download with paid upgrades.

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.

Tayasui Sketches is free to download. Its Pro tools are unlocked with a $7.99 one-time Pro purchase or a premium subscription, both offered on the US App Store.

Platforms

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

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.

Tayasui Sketches is one app for iPhone and iPad that also runs on Apple silicon Macs, and there is a separate Android version. Cloud sync keeps drawings in step across your devices.

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.

Sketches has more than 20 carefully tuned tools, including pens, felt pens, oil pastel, acrylic, airbrush and wet and dry watercolor brushes that react to pressure and angle like a real brush on paper. A brush editor lets you tweak them.

Comics and manga

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

Tayasui Sketches has text, shapes and a ruler, but does not advertise comic panel layouts or screentones.

Layers and editing

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.

Tayasui Sketches: Layers can be exported as separate transparent PNGs, and layered PSD files can be imported and exported. Editing tools are deliberately simple, with a cutter, smudge tool and fill tool rather than a full adjustment suite.

Drawing tools and extras

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.

Tayasui Sketches: The interface hides tools while you draw for a calm, minimal canvas. It adds a ruler, shapes on iPad, text, custom patterns and folders to organize your sketchbook.