Got a tablet for my birthday a bit ago. Feel like it hasn't necessarily improved the quality of my pixel art (since I'm still placing pixels by hand at the end), but has made the blocking process, and background mockups, way faster.
Also used the opportunity of learning new tablet thing to switch from GIMP to Krita, since GIMP is pretty clunky and more focused on photoshop anyway. Even with that, this only took me like one evening to to, so hopefully shit being faster will make me more motivated to actually art after being tired from selling my labor all day
Still far from proficient with it, but it looks like it has 90% of what I used in GIMP, plus a lot more control over brushes. Of course, all the hotkeys are different, and the eraser being a toggle on the brush rather than its own separate tool keeps tripping me up.
Only real think I miss it the way GIMP and photoshop can 'index' to a palette, and force only use these colors. Feels like its something that Krita ought to have, but digging around I bit I haven't been able to figure out any option for it.
There's a way to set a handy shortcut to switch to a specific eraser and back to your last brush. If you just search Krita shortcuts you should find a video with that and a bunch of other nice workflow shortcuts.
Edit: here's the video
Lol, like that the video has TW: FRENCH on it.
But good advice! Got 8 programmable keys on the tablet, and just on the one evening when I made this, I reprogrammed what tools they were for, and how they're arranged, like 5 times, so its real helpful to know what shortcuts to go with. Currently have them, from top to bottom, as Selection tool, Bucket tool, Brush tool, Eyedropper, Space (for moving), Undo, Redo, and toggle scrollwheel (between zoom and brush size). Eraser is the side button the pen itself.
But that eraser tip is real slick, hope there's a way to make it press on, rather than press to toggle. The lighter/darker tool is also awesome; makes me sad again there's no index option. That was one of my favorite tricks in GIMP, where the dodge/burn tool used on an indexed image auto bumps the colors up or down to what's the preset lighter/darker shade.