Features of Inkscape
Object creation
- Drawing:
- Pencil tool (freehand drawing with simple paths)
- Pen tool (creating Bézier curves and straight lines)
- Calligraphy tool (freehand drawing using filled paths representing calligraphic strokes)
- Shape tools:
- Rectangles (may have rounded corners)
- Ellipses (includes circles, arcs, segments)
- Stars/polygons (can be rounded and/or randomized),
- Spirals
- Text tool (multi-line text, full on-canvas editing)
- Embedded bitmaps (with a command to create and embed bitmaps of selected objects)
- Clones ("live" linked copies of objects), including a tool to create patterns and arrangements of clones
Object manipulation
- Transformations (moving, scaling, rotating, skewing), both interactively and by specifying exact numeric values
- Layers and Objects (lock and/or hide individual objects, rearrange them and organize with hierarchical tree)
- Z-order operations (raising and lowering)
- Grouping objects
- Alignment and Distribution commands
Fill and stroke
- Color selector (RGB, HSL, HSV, HSLuv, CMYK, Color wheel, CMS)
- Color picker tool
- Copy/paste style
- A gradient editor capable of multi-stop gradients
- Mesh gradient
- Pattern fills (bitmap/vectors)
- Dashed strokes, with many predefined dash patterns
- Path markers (ending, middle and/or beginning marks, e.g. arrowheads)
Operations on paths
- Node editing: moving nodes and Bezier handles, node alignment and distribution, etc.
- Converting to path (for text objects or shapes), including converting stroke to path
- Boolean operations
- Shape builder
- Path simplification, with variable threshold
- Live Path Effects (30+ effects)
- Path insetting and outsetting, including dynamic and linked offset objects
- Bitmap tracing (both color and monochrome paths)
Text support
- Multi-line text
- Uses any installed outline fonts, including right-to-left scripts
- Kerning, letterspacing, linespacing adjustments
- Text on path (both text and path remain editable)
- Text in shape (fill shape following stroke)
Rendering
- Fully anti-aliased display
- Alpha transparency support for display and PNG export
- Complete "as you drag" rendering of objects during interactive transformations
File formats
- Perfectly compliant SVG format file generation and editing
- Live watching and editing the document tree in the XML editor
- PNG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, sk1, PDF, EPS and PostScript export formats and more
- Command line options for export and conversions
Learn more about Inkscape