Adobe Fresco vs Krita

Fresco's Live Brushes don't just look like watercolor — they behave like it. Paint bleeds into wet areas, dries at the edges, and oil colors mix on the canvas the way they do on a real palette. Krita has a solid brush library with material simulation, but it's approximating the look, not the physics. For painters who care about process, not just output, this gap is enormous.

Fresco runs on iPad, iPhone, and Windows — and it's clearly built with the iPad Pro as its spiritual home. Krita runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which makes it the only serious free option for Linux artists and a stronger desktop-first choice for Mac users. If you're on an iPad, Fresco isn't just better — it's in a different league. If you're on Linux, Krita isn't a compromise, it's the answer.

Fresco's full feature set requires signing into an Adobe account, which means your usage is tied to Adobe's servers, terms of service, and ecosystem. For most people that's a non-issue, but for educators, privacy-conscious users, or anyone burned by Adobe's subscription history, it's a real friction point. Krita is open-source, offline-first, and owes you nothing — and you owe it nothing.

Fresco was designed for iPad with touch-first simplicity baked in, and it shows. Beginners can get to a finished painting faster. Krita's interface is more like professional desktop software — powerful, but dense. Community posts consistently describe Krita as 'similar to MS Paint but with layers,' which undersells it, but also signals that its UI doesn't hold your hand. If you're just starting out, Fresco gets you painting in minutes; Krita might take a weekend to feel comfortable.