Krita VCSStop saving copies of your .kra files.
The usual way to keep a painting safe is Save As: painting_final, painting_final_2, painting_FINAL_use_this. It works, until you have twenty near-identical files, no idea which is newest, and a drive filling up fast. Krita VCS replaces the whole pile with one tracked folder.
The trouble with saving copies by hand.
Every manual copy is a full duplicate of a heavy, layer-packed file, so disk use climbs fast. Names drift out of order, cloud folders sync half-finished saves, and none of it tells you what actually changed from one copy to the next.
Artist Mode reads version control in plain language:
One folder, every version, only what changed.
Krita VCS keeps all of your history in a hidden folder inside your own project, and stores only the pixels that changed between saves, already around 50% smaller than a full copy by your second save. No _final_2, no duplicate .kra files cluttering your drive.
It all stays on your machine. No account, no sync, no server.
And you can actually see the difference.
Instead of opening two files to guess what moved, compare any two versions side by side or on a swipe slider, with changed layers outlined for you. Branch off to try a bold new direction, then merge it back or drop it, without a single extra file on disk.