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Office stuff, Graphics etc
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Free Productivity Software Page 6

Graphics (vector illustration)

I’ve been looking for a free vector drawing application that would provide a good free alternative to the likes of Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw and Macromedia Freehand and I think I finally found it.

Inkscape is open source and uses the standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. The version at time of writing is 0.44.1 so this is still an evolving yet already very impressive application.

You can import EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP and TIFF formats into Inkscape and you can export to PNG and a number of vector based formats.

Just some of the supported SVG features in Inkscape are: text, clones, alpha blending, basic shapes, paths, transforms, grouping and gradients.

Inkscape is probably not software that you will be able to use proficiently after just ‘playing around’ for 5 minutes. It installs with a number of good tutorials to get you started (you can find them under the ‘help’ menu) including one on calligraphy and one on the elements of design. This software has many features and is definitely one for the graphic artists out there to check out.

When you go to the website be sure to take a look at the screenshots to see what this software is capable of.

Download it from: http://www.inkscape.org

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