Inkscape - The Open-Source Vector Graphics Editor

This application was graciously recommended by Jake T. You can see more from Jake at Jake's Blog. While you're there, be sure to read his experiences with the beta release of Inkscape. Thank you so much for all of the recommendations and subscriptions so far! My first week back has been better than ever.


Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, similar to Illustrator or Xara. It uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. It's capable of creating objects with a variety of drawing, shape and text tools. You can edit previously created objects with scale, gradients, masks, and filtered effects.


The application follows the GNOME Human interface guidelines to meet the goals of interface consistency and usability. All of this works together to make quite a nice interface.

Linux.com writer Bruce Byfield notices this simplicity most in the drawing tools:

As much as possible, a user's attention is kept on the drawing surface rather than on dialogues opened from the menu. For example, when you click a second time on an object you have already selected, a new set of handles appear for rotating and shearing (AKA clipping). Similarly, when two objects are stacked on top of a larger third one, you can make a selection of the two objects without also selecting the third one, and a dotted line around the selected objects makes it easy to see that you've done what you intended.

One of the nice things about Inkscape is the number of tutorials available on the web. Inkscape can be really easy to use, but you have to get past the initial learning curve. There are plenty of screencasts across the web, including this primer on creating a lightsaber by heathenx.



There's still a lot of work to be done in Inkscape, but Jake T reminds us of some of the new features available in the beta:

Despite the fact that Inkscape hasn't had an official 1.0 release yet (0.46 is in beta now), it's really stable and offers a lot of the features that professional vector drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator offers. The blur feature is particular great--create an image, then immediately blur it for drop-shadow, fx, etc. The 0.46 also has a 3D drawing feature that looks really cool.

You can install the stable version of Inkscape (0.45.1) in the usual manner. Open up your favorite Terminal and type in the following:

sudo apt-get install inkscape

If you want to install the beta version, you can do so by following the directions available on the Inkscape wiki.