InkScape


What is Inkscape?

When you think of editing or creating digital art, two programs usually come to mind - Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. What's the difference?

 

Photoshop is typically used for photos. It is good for photo manipulation and editing, and stores information as pixels (individual dots - primarily because that is the format a digital camera creates). This is called a rasterized/bitmap file. They work great for photos, but the larger the images are printed, the more likely you will see the individual dots on the image. When working with photos, this is your best option. When working from scratch, Illustrator and vector files are a better option.

 

Illustrator is typically used for creating digital art, usually from scratch. It saves information as lines called vectors - essentially two points that make a line. These vector-based images can be resized to any size and they still will print cleanly. The nature of the file also gives you a lot more flexibility in what you can do with the individual elements when you are developing it.

 

They have different applications and uses, but can be used together to create an overall piece of art. At a very high level, usually Photoshop is used for photos and web graphics and Illustrator is used for most everything else.

 

Inkscape is a freeware application very similar to Illustrator. It is missing some of the features that the very expensive Illustrator has, but for our uses, it's perfect.

 

Tell me more about vector and bitmap images

Review these two files - About Vector Images and About Bitmap Images.

 

What can I download Inkscape?

It is available for free at http://www.inkscape.org/download/.

 

Want to know more?

Inkscape itself has several tutorials built in. Go to Help on the menu and select tutorials. There also are a lot of great tutorials available at http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/suggest-a-tutorial/tutorial-list/.

We will be going through the following in class:

Inkscape Tutorial 1 - Basics

Inkscape Tutorial 2 - Drop Shadows

Inkscape Tutorial 3 - Text Styling

 

These tutorials are to build to the final project - building a logo for a student-invented company.

For a presentation on Logo Design and Development, see Logo Design 101. The details of the class project can be found at Creating a Logo Project.