Krita Keyboard Shortcuts
Krita was built from the ground up for painters rather than adapted from a general image editor, and its shortcuts reflect that focus — canvas rotation and mirroring have dedicated single-key bindings in a way most photo editors don't bother with, since checking a painting's composition by flipping or rotating the canvas is a routine part of a digital painting workflow rather than a rare edge case. Brush size and opacity adjustment are also tuned for fast, repeated access mid-stroke. Brush-size adjustment via bracket keys respects whatever unit the active brush preset uses, so the same keypress can feel like a bigger or smaller jump depending on which brush you've got loaded. This page is aimed at illustrators and concept artists using Krita as a primary painting tool rather than for photo retouching or general raster editing, since that's where its distinctive canvas-manipulation and brush-dynamics shortcuts actually pay off compared to a more general-purpose image editor. Krita's shortcuts are also fully customizable through Settings > Configure Krita > Keyboard Shortcuts, and because the software is community-driven and open source, default bindings have occasionally shifted slightly between major versions, so it's worth a quick check there if a binding listed here doesn't fire on your particular installed version.
Canvas Navigation
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rotate canvas | 4 / 6 (numpad, or Shift+drag) | 4 / 6 | Rotates the canvas view (not the actual artwork) incrementally left or right, letting painters work at whatever angle feels most natural for a given stroke, a workflow borrowed directly from traditional drawing on a physical tilted surface. |
| Reset canvas rotation | 5 (numpad) | 5 | Instantly snaps the canvas back to its default unrotated orientation, useful after rotating to check a stroke angle and wanting to return to the normal view quickly. |
| Mirror canvas view | M | M | Flips the on-screen canvas view horizontally as a pure display mirror, leaving the actual image data untouched underneath. Krita additionally offers a permanent mirror-axis guide (accessible from the toolbox) that can be left active while drawing, letting an artist sketch one half of a symmetrical character and have Krita mirror brush strokes live onto the other half in real time, a step further than the simple temporary view-flip this shortcut performs. |
| Zoom in/out | + / - or Ctrl+Scroll | + / - or Cmd+Scroll | Adjusts zoom level on the canvas, with scroll-wheel zoom centering on the cursor position for quickly zooming into a specific detail area. |
| Fit canvas to window | Ctrl+Shift+M (varies) | Cmd+Shift+M | Recalculates zoom until the whole canvas fits neatly inside the current window, the reset you want after spending a while zoomed in tight on one small detail area. |
Brush Painting
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Increase/decrease brush size | ] / [ | ] / [ | Adjusts the active brush's diameter in small increments, the most-used shortcut during an active painting session for adapting brush size to detail level without opening a slider panel. |
| Sample color from canvas | Hold Ctrl while painting, or K | Hold Cmd, or K | Temporarily switches to the color picker tool while held, sampling whatever color is under the cursor on the canvas, then returns to the previous brush tool on release. |
| Toggle eraser mode | E | E | Switches the current brush into eraser mode, using the same brush shape and texture but removing pixels instead of adding color, rather than switching to a separate dedicated eraser tool. |
| Toggle symmetry painting mode | Shift+S (varies by version) | Shift+S | Enables mirrored symmetrical painting, where strokes made on one side of a configurable axis automatically mirror onto the other side simultaneously, useful for symmetrical character or icon design. |
| Adjust brush opacity in fixed steps | Number keys 1-0 (10% increments) | Number keys 1-0 | Sets the active brush's opacity to a fixed percentage corresponding to the pressed number key, a fast way to jump between a few frequently used opacity levels without dragging a slider precisely. |
| Fill selection or contiguous area with foreground color | Shift+Backspace | Shift+Delete | Fills the current selection, or the whole layer if nothing is selected, with the active foreground color in one action, faster than switching to the bucket fill tool for a simple flat-color fill. |
Layers
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create new layer | Ctrl+Shift+N | Cmd+Shift+N | Drops a fresh transparent layer into the stack right above whichever one is currently active. |
| Merge layer down | Ctrl+E | Cmd+E | Merges the active layer with the one immediately below it in the stack, combining both into a single flattened layer. |
| Toggle Alpha Lock on layer | / (forward slash) | / | Constrains painting on the current layer to only its already-opaque pixels, letting you shade or recolor a flat-filled shape without spilling color outside its existing edges, a heavily used toggle in flat-color illustration workflows. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why would a painter need to rotate the canvas instead of just rotating their wrist?
Digital painters often replicate a habit from traditional drawing, where artists physically rotate a sketchbook or canvas to make a particular stroke direction easier to control with consistent hand motion — Krita's canvas rotation reproduces that same flexibility digitally, since a fixed-angle screen and tablet otherwise force every stroke into whatever angle is comfortable from a static position.
Does Mirror Canvas affect the saved file?
No — Mirror Canvas (M) only flips the live display for visual inspection purposes; the underlying image data and saved file remain in their original unmirrored orientation unless you separately and deliberately apply an actual horizontal flip transform to the image content itself.
What's the difference between the Eraser tool and toggling Eraser mode on the current brush?
Toggling Eraser mode (E) on your current brush keeps that brush's exact texture, size, and dynamics but makes it subtract rather than add pixels, which is useful for erasing with the same organic texture you were just painting with. A dedicated separate Eraser tool, by contrast, has its own independent settings that don't automatically match whatever brush you were just using.
Do the number-key opacity shortcuts (1 through 0) override pressure-sensitive opacity from my tablet?
They set a base opacity ceiling for the brush, but most Krita brush presets that use pressure-based opacity dynamics still scale within that ceiling according to actual pen pressure, so pressing 5 for 50% opacity generally means your pressure-sensitive strokes vary up to that 50% cap rather than always painting at a flat 50% regardless of how hard you press.
What's the practical benefit of Alpha Lock over just being careful with the brush?
Alpha Lock removes the risk entirely rather than relying on careful cursor control — even a confident brush stroke can slip slightly outside a shape's edge, and with Alpha Lock enabled on that layer, any paint applied outside the existing opaque pixels simply doesn't register at all, which is significantly faster than working cautiously or repeatedly undoing small mistakes near an edge.
Can I quickly toggle the canvas rotation back to 0 degrees with a shortcut in Krita?
Yes — pressing 5 on the number row resets canvas rotation to exactly 0 degrees regardless of how far it's currently been rotated with the canvas-rotation tool, a fast way to return to a level view after tilting the canvas to make a specific brushstroke angle easier to draw.