Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw are the commercial vector editors that most people are familiar with.  But seeing that this is the Frugal Web Designer, we prefer something else.

To work with images on the web you need two types of applications.  A bitmap image editor and a vector graphics editor.  (I addressed the bitmap editor GIMP in another article.) 

For those who are unfamiliar with vector graphics, vector images are defined mathmatically.  In contrast to bitmaps which are defined by colors mapped out over a large grid.

So what does that mean?  Practically speaking, you can edit a vector image all you want without the image corruption that happens when you stretch and resize a bitmap.

Introducing Inkscape. 

Inkscape has been around for a number of years and has gone through several revisions and updates. The result is a stable application that is useful and user friendly.

The download and installation page provides a variety of options and download locations.  I installed it easily on my Windows 2000 machine.

Learning how to use Inkscape is fairly simple.  The tools and icons are fairly obvious and well designed.  But should you run into problems support is available through the application's user community.  There is also an online manual available.

Features and Benefits:

• Compatible with Multiple Operating Systems: Linux, Windows & OSX
• SVG Format
• Utilizes transparency and gradient fills
• Node editing
• Pattern fills
• PNG export
• Trace Feature, translates bitmap images to vector
• Performs complex path operations

Essential Links:

• Inkscape.org
• Inkscape Online manual

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