Several of the new additions in this release don’t introduce drawing features, but aid usability. Inkscape 0.45 includes a full complement, including color effects such as saturation adjustment, a fractalize effect that subdivides and randomizes drawing objects, and a flexible Lorem Ipsum renderer that can generate pages of “greek text” for designing and testing page layouts.įans of the calligraphy pen will appreciate its new incarnation, which boasts a variety of new options and some important fixes for the jitter introduced in previous releases when working with graphics tablets. And the extension writers Byak mentioned have been hard at work, too. The 0.45 release comes bundled with a set of example drawings, including some photorealistic renderings of real-life objects such as cars and glasses. Indeed, the Gaussian blur filter can be used for some amazing effects. And now that we have blur, it is easy for programmers and extension writers to add some commonly used things like drop shadows or feathering, based on the Gaussian blur filter.” (Note: feathering is not the same as blur!) Inkscape, by contrast, has started by implementing the universally useful Gaussian blur, which enables these and a multitude of other effects. “Xara has a fancy drop shadow tool and fancy ‘feathering’ but does not provide the basic building block that is the foundation of these effects: Gaussian blur. Inkscape’s Bulia Byak explained the logic on the XaraXtreme-dev list.
In accordance with the SVG specification, you can now adjust a blur setting for every object in a drawing, just the way you would adjust its fill color, stroke width, or opacity.Īlthough it is the only filter for now, it is useful in a variety of circumstances.
The number one most exciting new feature in Inkscape 0.45 is the addition of the first SVG Filter to the feature set, Gaussian blur. It has been stable enough that I am not afraid to use it on my everyday machine, but when downloading such community-made packages, it is always a good idea to start by reading the comments of other posters to get a feel for their success rate.
INKSCAPE FOR MAC REVIEW INSTALL
Strictly speaking, Inkscape only depends on GTK+ 2.8 or later, but using 2.10.7 is highly recommended due to a crash bug.Īfter the Autopackage package failed to install for me on Ubuntu Edgy, I searched through Ubuntu’s discussion forum and found a distro-specific package contributed by a charitable forum member. The dependencies are straightforward, but note that there is a “known issue” regarding GTK+ in the Inkscape 0.45 release notes. If you want to compile Inkscape from source, the project provides a thorough how-to on its wiki. RPM packages for Fedora are available through the Fedora Extras repository users on other distros will have to seek out an unofficial package for the time being.
INKSCAPE FOR MAC REVIEW MAC OS X
provides source code and Autopackage builds for Linux (as well as Mac OS X and Windows binaries).
Inkscape 0.45 packs in new features, speed, and usability enhancements, and offers a tempting look at where the package is headed. The elements in the Flowchart box at the left can be replaced with primitives for a great many other applications.Open source software’s preeminent vector graphics package, Inkscape, made a new stable release last month.
(You get odd results if you try drawing objects from right to left.) But for the most part, Dia is easy to use, and it comes with a whole slew of common object categories - electrical, hydraulic, programming, and so on - that make it easy to jump-start a drawing of most any sort. The controls can be a little persnickety it assumes, for instance, that people will draw new shapes by starting at the top-left corner and moving down and to the right. 7: Dia 0.97Ī simple tool, but not a simplistic one, Dia is a flowchart and diagram drawing tool that is much like an AbiWord for illustration, in that it gives you only what you need to create a certain class of design and doesn't burden you beyond that. Sophisticated tools and precise controls make Inkscape powerful enough for most vector art and design work.ĭesktop productivity tool No. The most recent version, 0.48, adds multipath editing, improved text handling, an interesting "spray" tool, and broad support for ICC color throughout the program. Its native file format is conventional XML, and it can import and export from a whole bevy of existing vector and raster formats, as well as PDFs. 6: Inkscape 0.48įree software's answer to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape is polished, powerful, and loaded with tools that don't require a lot of guesswork to use well.
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