Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)
Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET
Generative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists.
Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free.
What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer?
If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice and 300 tokens, to get you started.
Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would've like to have seen a daily quota of free tokens for casual users, like most AI image generation sites, but at least it's not a subscription. You only need to purchase tokens when you run out.
This was my very first image generation, one of my benchmarks of an alien wearing a business suit, sitting at a desk, using a computer. The floating docker on the left is the Krita AI Diffusion Plug-in.
Installation
I'm not going to go through the process of installation as all that is clearly explained on the plugin website. There's even a visual guide on the Interstice site.
You have three options. Two of them involve running a local server on your machine for the AI. You may eventually want to do that but I recommend you take advantage of the 300 free tokens and the cloud server option to try it out.
Setup for the cloud, is as easy as downloading and installing the Krita AI Diffusion plugin (a very small zip file) and then linking your free account on the cloud server to the plugin. You can be up and running inside 15 minutes.
Note that no images are stored on the server and you own all the rights to the images you generate.
Using Krita AI Diffusion
Krita AI Diffusion installs as a docker panel inside Krita. Once you've started a new document and connected it to your server (in my case the cloud). You're good to go. Type in a prompt and see what happens.
The main AI features you get are Generate, Inpaint, Outpaint, Refine, Live Painting, Control (guided output from image references), Resolutions, Job Queues, History, Style Presets, and Style Preset Customization.
I was both impressed and overwhelmed with what this plug-in brings to Krita. On its own it seems like one of the most powerful AI image generators out there, but teamed with Krita, a full feature graphics editor, I almost don't want to use anything else. It's kind of next level.
If you are using the free tokens of the cloud service I recommend you keep your image size to 512 x 512 pixels. You can go bigger but you'll burn through your tokens faster (the number of tokens per generation is shown next to the 'Generate' button based on your settings).
Krita AI Diffusion's live canvas lets you paint fairly basic drawings which it will turn into more finished art taking your text prompt into account.
Also, avoid using the live canvas feature too much while using your free tokens, as that seems to burn through tokens extremely quickly. My Interstice account said I'd generated 121 images, which I definitely didn't. I can only assume, every time the live canvas updated, that also counted as a generation.
There's too many features to actually cover in an article but if you want to see Krita AI Diffusion in action watch the introductory video - part 2 below by Intelligent Image for a fairly comprehensive overview. Note that part 1 to this video is a walk through of installation and all the plug-in's settings that is worth watching if you want to know what everything goes.
One feature I do like is the ability to have different image generations on each layer of a document. This allows for so much more flexibility as you're not limited to just changing a single layer like most online generative editors.
If I didn't have to pay for tokens I would spend a few weeks learning everything. It's a real game changer for Krita itself as a graphics application. That said, 5000 tokens goes a long way given a standard image generation is between 1-5 tokens.
Final Thoughts
If you use Krita, I highly recommend installing this plug-in and at least trying out the cloud version for free until your tokens run out. If it's not for you, just turn off the docker and never look at it again.
However, what it brings to your workflow is truly astonishing. Aside from the obvious, of completely generating images from scratch, it can be a lot of fun taking your own sketches, that you were never going to do anything with, and spending a few minutes using AI to color and enhance them to finished, digital art.
It's also very good at turning images back into line art. Very handy if you've ever thought of making coloring books of your own artworks.
I can't even begin to sing its praises enough here. I would encourage you to watch as many videos as you can on Krita AI Diffusion to see what is possible. It really is one of the most powerful AI Image Generators out there.
o---o--- ---o--- o---
Did you find this article useful? Subscribe to my newsletter and get the latest articles delivered to your inbox.
Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D...
Wonder Unit Storyboarder. As an independent and solo animator I'm always tempted to try and skip storyboarding my animated shorts because they're usually only single scene sketch comedy type jokes. As a result I have many unfinished projects that kind of petered out due to having no clear finishing line. Storyboarding your productions, no matter how small, gives you a step by step guide of every shot that needs to be completed (no planning shots as you animate). It also allows you to create an animatic that gives you a rough preview of the finished production. In short, you shouldn't skip storyboards as they, generally, increase the chance of the project being completed. Disclaimer - I'm Not a Fan of Storyboarder Upfront, Wonder Unit's Storyboarder is not my preferred storyboarding software. However it's completely free, has a number of very compelling featu...
Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se...
I first heard about Glif through a YouTube video that mentioned you could get access to Flux Pro (the latest 'game changer AI' generative image model) through the site for free. While I had a vague notion from the video of what Glif was, I wasn't expecting it to be so easy to get started with, and so good with my very first results. Glif is an easy to use, low-code platform for creating tiny AI-powered generators called Glifs. While that may not sound inspiring, what Glifs allow you to do is create a tiny app that niches down to a specific type of AI generation that the user modifies with their own inputs. The best way to really understand is with an example. My First Glif I've recently been using VivaGo's AI platform (free and unlimited at the time of writing) to consistently generate full body characters in a front facing T-Pose that I can rig as front facing characters in Cartoon Animator. Unfortunately it can be a bit hit or miss maintaining the T-Pose part...
H ave you ever wanted to send your friends and family fun, 2D animated, holiday messages, or just create 2D animated characters that you can make move and talk without learning difficult to master animation skills or spending hours drawing frame by frame? Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 is a professional quality, 2D animation studio software that is also very easy to produce impressive results with, even if you've never animated before, or can't draw. Don't Have Cartoon Animator 5 Download a free, 30 day trial . Easy Beginner Course I've created a completely free beginners course that teaches you my fast, easy way to rig and animate your first 2D custom character in Cartoon Animator 5 without complicated templates or any drawing skills at all. My online video course includes everything you need, including eight AI generated character sprite graphics, and four AI generated Human voice samples, so you can start learning right away. Eight AI generated character image...
LTX Studio can generate consistent characters across storyboard panels - even if one character is a dragon! W hile text to image, and text to video (and image to video) AI tend to be getting a lot of the press, the real exciting aspect of generative AI implementation is how it can be used to speed up creator workflow. Being able to realize your creative vision in a shorter length of time can lead to more ambitious projects. Particularly if you're a team of one, with a very limited budget, but you one day dream of creating your own epic animated feature film. LTX Studio (beta), a new 'all-in-one' AI film making tool, is not going to let you realize that dream from a single text prompt but, by bringing a bunch of generative AI technologies together, the developers have created a one platform workflow that can help anyone rapidly visualize and deliver a story from initial idea to finished film in days rather than weeks (depending upon how ambitious the project is). Even bette...
Very interesting, I am definitely going to have a look..
ReplyDelete