Lately I’ve been using Krita (https://krita.org) to do my pixel art, so this time I decided I wanted to give Gimp (https://www.gimp.org) a try. I’ve used Gimp before with other projects, just not pixel art, and I can say that both Gimp and Krita are good tools, depending on what you want to do. They both have good features and are good art tools. It seems to me that Gimp is also more well-known that Krita.

When it comes to pixel art, as the picture at the top of this article shows, it certainly is possible with Gimp. There were two things though that I found slowed down my work a little compared to Krita.

First was zooming in and out. In Krita, when you want to zoom in and out all you have to do is scroll the scroll wheel on your mouse. In Gimp, you have to hold down the CTRL key while you scroll to get the same functionality. It’s not that big a deal, but it does add an extra step to the process.

Also, I found selecting colors to be a little slower than in Krita, where the color picker is readily available on the side of the screen all the time.

Really though, either tool is good for something like pixel art and it comes down to whichever tool has the feature you need or whichever tool you’re more comfortable with.

Both tools can be downloaded from their websites for various websites, and both tools are available in the Linux Snap package store as well.