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Overview
Inkscape is a commanding, open source desktop application for making two-dimensional scalable vector graphics. Though it’s mainly an illustration tool, Inkscape is used for a wide range of computer graphic tasks. The diversity of what can be done with Inkscape is vast and sometimes astonishing. It is used to make diagrams, logos, programmatic marketing materials, web graphics, and even for paper scrapbooking. We can also draw game sprites, produce banners, posters, and brochures. Others uses of Inkscape is to draft web design mockups, detail layouts for printed circuit boards, or produce outline files to send to laser cutting equipment. No matter how advanced or novice of an Inkscape user you may be, the basics are absolutely essential.
Highlights of Inkscape
Inkscape has an impressive tool and feature set, including:
- Clear and user-friendly interface
- Learning curve could be shallow or relatively steep depending on the user’s requirements
- 3D Boxes tool allows quick drawing and editing of boxes with perspective
- Bezier Curves tool allows the drawing of complex shapes
- Powerful path options to allow the production of complex shapes through combining paths
- Layer transparency effects
- Apply Gaussian Blur to objects
- Save files in several important formats including the open SVG standard, EPS, PDF and PostScript
- Effects menu to automatically produce useful and unusual elements to use in designs
Why Use Inkscape?
While it may appear that GIMP is an all-around tool that does Inkscape’s job and more, there is a key difference between the two applications. GIMP is a pixel-based editor and Inkscape is vector-based.Vector-based image editors, like Inkscape, produce graphics that can be resized infinitely without any loss of image quality. For example, a company logo may need to be used on a business card and the side of a truck and Inkscape can produce a graphic that can be scaled and used for both purposes without loss of image quality.if you were to use GIMP to produce a similar logo for a business card, that same graphic couldn’t then be used on the truck as it would appear pixelated when increased significantly in size. A new graphic would need to be produced specifically for the new purpose.
As mentioned earlier, Inkscape does suffer from a couple of significant limitations, though these should only really affect those working professionally in graphic design. While a powerful application, it doesn’t match the full range of tools of Illustrator, with some features, such as the Gradient Mesh tool, having no comparative tool in Inkscape. Also, there is no inbuilt support for PMS colors which may make life a little more complicated for designers producing spot color work. In most cases, these points shouldn’t detract from your usage and enjoyment of Inkscape.
System Requirements
Inkscape is available for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. The Inkscape site doesn’t publish minimum system resources required, but earlier versions were reported to run successfully on systems with 1 GHz processors and 256 MB RAM, though obviously, the software will run more smoothly on more powerful systems.
Inkscape has a Wiki site set up to offer a range of information and advice for Inkscape users. There is also the unofficial Inkscape Forum which is an excellent place to ask questions and find more information. Lastly, you can type ‘Inkscape tutorials’ into your favorite search engine to find all sorts of interesting websites, such as inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com which has a wide range of tutorials for new users to get started with Inkscape.
Basic Tools and Methods
There’s plenty of tools and methods to become overwhelming, so these are the tutorials you’ll want to take a look at for learning the foundation of Inkscape.
Fun Tricks With Inkscape’s Polygon Tool
The Polygon tool in Inkscape has a slight learning curve, but can be an excellent way to speed up the creation of complex shapes. In this quick tip, we’ll go over some neat tricks to make the Polygon tool more useful with your designs.
The first time you open Inkscape, it may take a while to finally discover gradients. When you do, they can be rather overwhelming and confusing at first. Check out this quick tip to learn some tricks with Inkscape’s gradients, Gradient Editor, and Gradient Tool. While I’m using linear gradients in this tutorial, the same principals apply to radial gradients.
Group/Ungroup vs. Combine/Break Apart in Inkscape
The fact that Group/Ungroup and Combine/Break Apart are two sets of complete synonyms, you might not think that Inkscape would have these as separate functions. While these are pretty similar at first, I’ll show you just how different they actually are.
Tips and Tricks For Working With Inkscape’s Nodes
There are so many things to learn when it comes to nodes, but this quick tip should get you on the right track to properly using and manipulating your nodes, and ultimately, your artwork in Inkscape. Let’s check out some neat tips and tricks with nodes!
How to Export Your Artwork in Inkscape
So you’ve spent hours on end drawing a magnificent design in Inkscape and now you want to publish it once and for all! Thankfully, Inkscape has a ton of options to export your artwork to more friendly and compatible file types. We’ll also go over a couple of neat tricks you might not have known.
Helpful Align and Distribute Tips When Using Inkscape
When you begin doing some serious work in Inkscape, you’re going to want to keep your work properly aligned. Let’s go over a few cool things with Inkscape’s Align and Distribute to make your designs as professional as they can get!
Shadows, Blurs, and Other Useful Filters in Inkscape
As soon as you open the filters menu in Inkscape, you’ll notice that there’s a ton of them! When filters are introduced, they present a lot of quick and easy ways to make advanced drawings. Let’s learn about a few useful filters, the filter editor, and check out some cool design ideas.
Tips on Using Inkscape’s Fill and Stroke Options
Fill and Stroke is the heart and soul of Inkscape – it’s all just lines and nodes until some style is applied. In this quick tip, we’ll check out some of the best stuff Fill and Stroke has to offer!
How to Create Tapered Lines in Inkscape
I love tapered lines in Inkscape because you can make them as simple as you want, or as complicated as you need them. This quick tip will go over the basics of tapered lines, using the Path Effect Editor, and a neat drawing comprised of tapered lines entirely.
What are Clipping and Masking in Inkscape?
Clipping and Masking are fantastic little operations that can make your complicated objects conform to another element of your design by changing their entire shape quickly and easily. Let’s go over the differences, benefits, and some neat tricks in this quick tip.
Using and Modifying Brush Strokes in Inkscape
There’s a lot that goes into brush strokes in Inkscape, but it pays off with beautiful results. Let’s break down the many options available for brush strokes in Inkscape and also go over a few tricks that are sure to keep brush strokes part of your designing.
Using Layers and Blend Modes in Inkscape
Once you start creating more elaborate designs in Inkscape, you’ll probably find yourself struggling to click certain things without selecting something else. This is where Layers come in. Let’s go over this simple menu and how to use it (along with a couple tricks).
Duplicate, Clone, or Copy and Paste?
These three ways of creating identical artwork may sound similar, but they all have completely different uses. Let’s go over duplicate, clone, and copy and paste in Inkscape to see which ones fits best in each situation.
Repeating Patterns Made Easy in Inkscape
In this quick tip, we’re going to go over a tool called Create Tiled Clones. It’s a very useful menu with tons of options for creating large amounts of identical, yet dynamic objects, such as patterns. It can be used for so many things, but let’s just dive right in!
Connect the Dots With Visualize Path in Inkscape
Before you think Inkscape doesn’t have something, check the Extensions menu. You’ll be surprised to see that there are a bunch of these additional dialog menus – and they’re pretty helpful most of the time. Let’s look at Visualize Path in this Inkscape quick tip.
Fun With Objects to Marker in Inkscape
In this Inkscape quick tip, we’re going to go over a neat object menu option called Objects to Marker. It’s a really neat way to use custom designs if the prepacked ones just don’t cut it. Let’s jump right in!
Kerning, Spacing, and Other Text Tricks in Inkscape
Inkscape has a lot of nice built-in features for quickly editing text and font. We’ll go over these as well as a few neat tricks to really get the most from your text.
Warping and Sculpting Fun in Inkscape
There are a ton of ways to draw in Inkscape, but sometimes you need to bring in reinforcements to really get that special shape. Sure, you could probably freehand it just fine, but we’re going to go over a tool that allows a controlled the controlled use of warping and sculpting.
How to Optimize Inkscape with Zoom and View
If you’ve worked with advanced drawing in Inkscape before, you may have noticed that Inkscape starts to seriously slow down. In this quick tip, we’ll go over a few ways to get your document back up to speed.
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Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.
For Designers of all Kinds : The design process may begin by doodles on a napkin, a sketched mindmap, a photo of a memorable object, or a mockup in software which really wouldn’t work to complete the project. Inkscape can take you from this stage to a final, professional-grade design format which is ready for publication on the web or in physical form.
Professional Publishing : All Inkscape projects may be exported in formats friendly to web browsers or commercial printer rooms. It is cross-platform, which means it is easy to run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux distributions.
Free Community: Inkscape is free! By this, we mean it is free of cost, free to use and distribute and open to peek into the source code. The Download page lists released builds as well as some developmental and source code links.
The software development of Inkscape adheres to opensource standards and is intended to provide the user community with a solid, usable product. The process is an open, community-oriented development which focuses on a small core and extensibility.
Inkscape on Cloud runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure is built to create or edit vector graphics such as illustrations, diagrams, line arts, charts, logos and complex paintings.
Cognosys provides hardened images of Inkscape on all public cloud i.e. AWS marketplace and Azure.
INKSCAPE on cloud for AWS
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