In this lesson video, we are going to discuss how to start and work with documents in Krita. When you first launched Krita, you will see something like this. There is not much to do or to discuss, as there is no document opened at the moment. So to create a new document, we can go to File, and then choose New in here. Or you can also use Ctrl N for the shortcut. Or you can also click on this paper like icon up here in the toolbar area.

Or, if you have nothing yet in a document feel like this, you can simply click here. If you do any of those methods, the Create new document window will open. We can see there are quite options we can or need to set in here. First of all, let's discuss the left area in here. Down here we can quickly start a document based on existing templates. We have animation templates.

We have comic templates. And we have common design templates such as a tree paper, a4 paper, four by three screen template, etc. Now these templates are more than just a size preset, but they are actually create a document files complete with layers and its graphic content. For example, let's pick comic template and choose European BD template and then click the use this template button down here Krita will create a new document based on the template file. And there you go. We have this document complete with comic panels common to European comics format.

Now if you are working with a certain layout over and over again, you might want to save your custom document as a template so you can start your work faster. To do that, it is actually very simple. Just go to the File menu and choose Create template. From image, a window will appear. In here, you can give it a name, you can set this new template to be part of any existing template group. Or you can also create a new group by clicking this add group button.

By default creator will generate an image preview for your new template. But you also can use your own custom image for the preset preview if you want to by clicking on this Select button in here, I'm not going to save this as a template. So I hit this Cancel button now, and let's close this document. To close a document. We can click this X button in here or go to File menu and choose close in here. If we have multiple documents opened, and we want to close them all we can use this command close all or by using the shortcut in here Ctrl Shift w Okay, let's press Ctrl N To open the Create New Document Window again, let's be custom document so we can discuss each of the options more in depth.

In the dimension tab, we have a preset in here. The preset in here essentially store all of the settings we have in this tab, such as the width, the height, and the resolution. The color settings information down here are not included in this preset. For example, if we select a three 200 PPI, we get these numbers. If we select the texture 1024 we get another settings like this. For now, let's change the width to 1920 pixels.

So make sure the unit in here is set to pixels. Then change the height to 1080 pixels. And for the resolution, change it to 72 dpi. DPI stands for pixels per inch essentially is the amount of pixels in one inch square 72 is the standard for screen resolution. Although nowadays, some modern screen devices have very high density pixel resolution, but we'll leave this at 72 ppi. If you never have a need to print the image, like for example, the drawing you want to create will be published to the web or to a game engine, which basically just another screen devices, then changing this value is not really that important.

Okay, we can swap the values between the width and height using this button in here. This is landscape and this is portrayed. This image size setting we use in here is actually a full HD video resolution. And because we are going to use this image setting throughout our course, let's save this as a size preset. To do that, we can name it in here. Full HD, for example, and then hit the Save button in here.

Now, next time we create a document, we can click in here and choose or preset Full HD. Okay, for the color, we'll talk about RGB channel and alpha channel, and also the bit depth for a channel previously, all of these settings are already correct. So we don't have to change anything. We do want to use RGB and have alpha channel in our document so that we can have transparency and it will be standard image file, not a high dynamic range image. So eight bit per channel is already correct. Okay.

What we haven't discussed before is this profile value in here. This is for choosing the ICC profile. If you don't know what ICC profile is, ICC stands for international color Consortium. Basically, it is a set of data Explaining the characteristic of color both four inputs and four outputs of a certain device. So it is specific to a certain device. Now, most screen monitor in the world use sRGB profile as RGB stands for standard RGB, although there are several variances of sRGB profile, but mostly they are similar.

Okay, so that is for screen devices, but for other devices like cameras, scanners, and printers, they all have different type of color profiles. If you want to learn more in depth about each color profile supported by Krita, you can click this color space browser. What this ICC profile do is to make sure that the color reproduction in a multi devices workflow will be more consistent. For example, if we are working from camera to monitor screen And then to printer or any other multi device scenario. But to really make use of this ICC profile, you need to have your monitor calibrated using a calorie meter. Okay.

Now this will be too advanced topic for our course. And this topic alone can be a course on its own. And also if you only use a monitor screen for digital painting, and the final output will be on screens. Also, ICC profile is not that important. Throughout this course, we will be using the default creators ICC profile, which is s RGB l version two. Okay.

Before you click the Create button in here, let's discuss this tab called content. Essentially, this tab controls what will be included in the new document. We can set the name of the document in here, we can set how many layers we'll be in cluded by default, it is set to two layers, one transparent layer on top and one background layer at the bottom, which will have this white color and 100% opacity. Now, mostly you want to have this white color as a background layer and not as Canvas color. Why? Well, because having the background color as layer will make it easier for us later to show and hide it.

If you set it as canvas. The two layers you'll create will be both transparent layers. And when you need to show and hide the background, you need to go to the background color of setting which is very inconvenient. Next, you can add description in here. This might be useful to store additional information about the file. Maybe you want to add revision notes to your team or to yourself.

I'll leave it blank for now. Okay, let's click the Create button. Now if you select an image from Krita, or from any other graphics software such as Photoshop or GIMP, for example, and then press Ctrl C, that image data will be stored in the memory of the operating system, which is in my case, Windows 10. Now, this memory where the operating systems store copier data or image is called the clipboard. So again, I repeat, the term clipboard is basically a temporary memory slot where the operating system stores copy of data. For example, I have Photoshop opening here.

If I select the image like this, and then press Ctrl C, or go to Edit menu and just copy right now we actually have an image in a clipboard. Okay. If we go back to Krita, then press Ctrl N to create a new document we can see this create from clipboard button. If we click on it Krita will create a new document based on the size of the image in the clipboard. After we have the document opened, the image we copied from Photoshop before will be pasted in to creator and as we can see, the image has the exact dimension with our document. The last thing we are going to discuss in this lesson video is the file formats, the native file of Krita is.ca file, although creator also support complex image file format, such as PSD, and the file etc.

It is always recommended that you save your work as dot craft file. This will ensure that all of the data and the features specific to Krita such as different types of layer and animation, etc. are all still intact. So to save the file, you can go to File menu and then click Save As you can determine where to save the file up here, you can name the file in here. And in this pulldown list, make sure we are using Krita document, which is essentially a dot crop file. Okay, if later you want to publish your file to internet, you can save the image to JPG or PNG or GIF file formats.

To do that, we can use the same Save As command just like before, or we can also use the export command in here. Okay, I believe we already covered all of the basics that we need to know about image document in Krita. So let's move on to the next lesson.