How to color faster in Krita using Colorize Mask

Coloring is one of the most time-consuming parts of the digital art creation process. Many users do not know that Krita has a tool with the ability to reduce coloring time to just a few minutes. You can easily color your drawings and create digital masterpieces with the help of the Colorize Mask tool in Krita.

1. Add a Colorize Mask layer for the lineart

Before you can start with the Colorize Mask, you need to prepare the appropriate lineart. You should draw lineart on a layer using the brush of your choice. The aliased brushes may yield slightly better results due to their sharp, defined edges, but the blurry anti-aliased brushes will work just fine as long as you take your time working with the edges afterwards.

You are not limited to only coloring part of your lineart. Colorize Mask is an especially powerful time-saver when you use it to animate in Krita.

Once your lineart is ready, right click on the lineart layer and choose Add > Add Colorize Mask . Your lineart layer will become the root layer of the Colorize Mask layer.

Next, you'll need to find the Colorize Mask tool and select it from the options in the leftmost column. Finally, choose a suitable hard-edged brush from the brush options.

2. Fill Colorize Mask

Now you are ready to start coloring your drawing. You can first plan and create a palette using Procreate or any other tool if needed.

Choose your color and add small strokes of color to each part where you want a specific color. Make sure to add color to the small areas of your lineart, otherwise Krita may color them incorrectly.

If you want part of your drawing to be transparent, choose a separate color to represent the transparency and fill it with that color. For now, leave this color as is.

After coloring the lineart, you are ready to render! Select the Tool Options tab and uncheck Edit key strokes . Finally, click the Update button and see how your drawing looks. Krita will fill each area with the specified color.

You may need to add color to some points to edit the drawing. You can adjust this by re-enabling Edit key strokes and pressing Update when you add new colors.

Note : You should enable Limit to layer bounds in the Tool Options panel if you are displaying a small part of a large artboard. Enabling this option is useful because it will make each update render significantly faster.

3. Set the Colorize Mask's Transparency

Before you continue, you'll need to adjust the Colorize Mask so that the distinct color you've chosen that represents the transparency is actually displayed correctly.

Scroll down through the Tool Options tab until you see the Key Strokes panel with swatches for each color in your artboard. Select a transparent placeholder color and then click the Transparent button . Finally, update the artboard to add transparency.

4. Convert Colorize Mask to paint layer

The last step you need to take after completing the Colorize Mask is to convert it into a paint layer. You can easily do this by right-clicking on the Colorize Mask layer and choosing Convert > Convert to Paint Layer . Krita will quickly process the change and convert this layer into a regular paint layer. With this, you're ready to start shading and rendering your drawing.

You can make the process of rendering your drawing easier by separating the new paint layer by color. Choose Layer > Split > Split Layer from the top row of options. Use default settings and press Apply . Finally, hold R and left click on the color of your choice to easily select different color layers. Doing this will allow you to select and display each color individually in your drawing.

Jessica Tanner

Update 04 August 2023