Create Vector Graphics for Free

Vector graphics, ornaments, silhouettes, etc. are everywhere today. In magazines, on websites even on the TV. There seems to be a great demand for this kind of illustrations these days. I am quite happy about it as I think they can be very nice and sometimes a photograph has just too much detail.

That is why I was looking for an affordable solution doing some of these myself because let's face it, the leading applications I don't want to name are pretty pricey. And then I found it. It's open source, it's free and it's great. It's called Inkscape. Get yours from Inkscape.org . It does most of the things other apps would do and as more and more developers and users are getting involved we can expect even more great features in the not so distant future.

It takes a little bit of getting to know it but there are some great tutorials available as well as a large community to help you out. If you ever used a similar software or even Photoshop's pen tool it will be already familiar.

The features I found particularly useful were the "trace bitmap" which lets you vectorize a photograph or any bitmap image and the other was "Simplify" which I think works really well for getting rid of unnecessary nodes while keeping the path pretty close to the original.

If you install it on a Mac first you have to install X11 to be able to run it. You will find links to the latest version of it from the Inkscape site. It's not any more difficult than installing any other software on the Mac and if you don't want you don't have to worry about the X11. Just accept that it's there. Other OS's might need some tweaks too but it can be installed on just about anything including Ubuntu Gutsy which I never even heard about but sounds like fun.

So get it and start drawing freely.