What is it and what can I do with it?

Micki

You can read about it and download it here.

It is free open source software aka FOSS.

Inkscape is probably one of the best SVG (scalable vector art), development tools out there.
Vector can be scaled to any size without image destruction. (It can also be used as math expressions to create images).. like say as a website logo.
Even SVG images can be converted to bitmap and look much clearer.
Here is a crow i created with it. Of course it is converted to PNG format.

You can create real nice Icons with it - i create all my Rocketdock icons with it.
It's basically a really nice packed to the gills paths editor. =)

Downfalls - you can not open EPS files with it yet. I'm sure that will come soon though.
Here is a Halloween thingy in InkScape.
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=557

A guitar ..


It's great fun and FREE!
Here are some tutorials you may like..
http://screencasters.heathenx.org/

Thanks for the link to the tutorials. I have a very hard time with Inkscape. Hopefully some of those tutorials are beginner tutorials.

I'm terrible at Inkscape all I can really do in it, is design buttons, and logos lol. When it comes to actually creating objects, or characters I'm probably the worst person to ask about that lol, but I got the basics down at least.

I found out a very cool way to use Inkscape. I had a piece of scanned lineart that I wanted enlarged to incorporate into a personal wallpaper. My best fiddling with scaling naturally pixellated the art to the point of uselessness. Then it hit me that I could clean up the lineart in Gimp and save it as a bitmap, then import the bitmap into Inkscape and convert it to paths. Once the art was paths, I could scale it however large I wanted and it would remain smooth, and then be exported back as a bitmap of the size I wanted for additional editing into the final image.

The hitch in the process is that the Trace Bitmap option in Inkscape generally produces paths that seem illogical and overly complicated in the way they overlap to produce the image. This is probably why people who regularly vectorize bitmaps suggest a different method . Also, after completing the trace, I would sometimes get the whole image as one path with a mega-ton of points but the points were not sequential even if they were adjacent on a path, which made additional editing very challenging. (It's partly my fault for thinking raster when working vector.) In retrospect, more image prep in Gimp would have made the conversion much better in Inkscape.

It's kind of the opposite of gimp. Gimp makes/edits bitmaps and Inkscape makes/edits vectors.

You think like I do, Bob. I do the exact same thing. It's my way of speeding things up.

Computers and their software are supposed to help us and make us more productive, right?

I also use it to prepare my screens for screen printing. It's not "perfect", but good enough for me.

I kind of do it differently. I like to copy other images and save them as vector.
What i do is open an image and using the path tools in Inkscape, i duplicate each shape.Then i add the colors.
As you can see in the guitar image, i created all the gradients first.

The guitar is about ohhh ... 200 separate shapes .. lol
There is a man who does this with Harley Davidson Motor Cycles, and sells his work.
I forget his name though. Here is another great tutorial site.This is where i got my guitar tutorial.
http://speckyboy.com/2009/04/28/35-tuto ... -inkscape/

@Rod,
Yep, that's the other method I was referring to. Sometimes it as much a PITA to do it that way as to let Trace Bitmap run - for me anyway. I've also tried Vector Magic, but it is nearly identical to Inkscape's Trace Bitmap.

If I was to do a wishlist for Inkscape's Trace Bitmap, I'd ask for each path/shape to end up on its own layer, but I don't think it is possible with the way Trace Bitmap works on an image.

Is there a good website for inkscape tutorials for beginers?

Take a look here. There are tutorials and a guide. You may want to do a Google search also for Inkscape guides.

http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/suggest-a-tutorial/tutorial-list/

Oh thanks. Inkscape isn't as natural to me as Gimp was.

http://screencasters.heathenx.org/

Best series of inkscape webcasts, FTW!

-Rob A>

I use Inkscape as part of my workflow when creating comics, among other things, as outlined in the tutorial here: http://www.gimptalk.com/index.php?/topi ... -inkscape/
.
Griatch

Inkscape is very friendly when you get used to it. Different from Gimp but just as useful and easier to work with. You need to find a good explanation of bitmaps and vectors to understand the difference between Gimp and Inkscape. I used to have one online but I just checked and it's gone. I'm sure you can google the difference between the two formats. A bitmap is like filling spaces in a grid with color, looks nice until you try to resize it then it crushes. A vector is a mathematical instruction, which will stay the same regardless of how big or little you scale it to. That's a very simple explanation.