for it. What an awesome program. Here's the description from the website, much of which may not mean much to you, if you're not a graphic designer, but I'm going to show it to you here anyway. Then I'll give you my full review.
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. Inkscape's main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development
Of course, I can't say for certain just how closely Inkscape's feature set compares against Illustrator, Freehand and such, since I've never used any of them (didn't ever run across what I thought was a great need for them - considering their price), but from the other reviews I've read of InkScape, the feature set is close while lacking only some of the most advanced features of these other programs. The kicker is, most of the other available vector graphics editors are the $400 - $500 range if you're not a student and you're not upgrading a version you already own. In other words, the likelihood is that YOU would pay $400 - $500 for most of the other programs that will do what Inkscape does - with one notable exception. Xara X(treme) is one that seems to have very good reviews and is much less expensive than most other retail vector graphics software (only $79 if all you want is the full version CD). As with the others, I have not personally used it, so I can't make a specific recommendation of the Xara program. However, if you'd like to check out the Xara Xtreme program as possibly a more advanced alternative to InkScape, you can click here. But, this review is not about the Xara X(treme) program, since I haven't actually used it. This is a review of the totally FREE Inkscape by a NON-graphic designer (me). So, here's my personal review. It's Awesome!! Ok, I know, I already basically said that at the beginning of this review, but it's true. Not having anything to compare against, I was really impressed with this software. One thing I really like about vector graphics editing software is that you can scale ANY image up or down without losing any image quality at all. Try that with a standard image editor. For years I had troubles with this issue because once I designed an image, scaling it then caused a significant loss in quality. So, I'd always have to create multiple different sizes of each of my images. Not so with vector graphics editing. Any size, same quality. Perfect. I'm not really going to spend a great deal of time on the actual editing features of the program. They are listed in the description from their website which I copied above. What I
176