There are a few things Inkscape needs to become more competitive: 1. CMYK (which is in progress), 2. A decent, stable text edit tool that is comfortable to use. Soft spaces, text that is easy to work with when there is a large amount of it. 3. Filters that are nice, stable, predictable and easy to adjust. Current filters are useless. The filter gallery helps, but does not solve the problem. 4. Better font management - preview and style, easy size setting 5. a more convenient clone layout tool that would allow you to make nice, dotted gradients. 6. Generally improve the ease of work for example like adding noise to gradients.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

What's a dotted gradient?

@Inkscape-tutorial-pl

3 ай бұрын

One more comment. For some time now, instead of recreating random graphics in Inkscape, I've been trying to recreate it in Illustrator. And sometimes things that are very easy in Illustrator are difficult and look worse in Inkscape. I also have few problems with Inkscape 1.3, but I know they are fixed in 1.4 (working with text on grids, and font preview), so it seems to be in the right direction.

@Inkscape-tutorial-pl

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo A halftone gradient for example. We can do it in Inkscape but for now it's pain. Creating 10k clons and then deleting parent makes it unstable. So yah it works but it's really hard.

@michaelbuddy

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Off-hand I'd say it's a half-tone gradient where the dots could change size, color, density, transparency from each end of the gradient spectrum.

@Inkscape-tutorial-pl

3 ай бұрын

​@@michaelbuddyCorrect. You can do it now using Tiled Clones, but it's hard and makes Inkscape undstable.

Inkscape has some quirks but I am not willing to use something different than open source software (OSS). I am very grateful for all these people who make OSS possible.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

Open source is funded by users like you. 😉

I purchased the entire Affinity suite, despite almost exclusively using Photo. I moved to Affinity from Adobe because of the subscription model, and was happy to support Affinity because it wasn’t subscription. I feel quite a sense of betrayal at the moment. The language used in the announcement from Affinity didn’t give me confidence at all. The old “no current plan” for change really means “we will wait a short time before we introduce the new model”.

@relativenormality

3 ай бұрын

Same here and I recently did a job using Publisher - it was great being able to dip into the Photo and Designer personas in a page layout app to quickly fix problems. It is a very sad announcement - I thought the user base was growing and growing and it would simply run alongside Adobe as a viable alternative. You know they will screw the users at some point now.

@WolfCatalyst

3 ай бұрын

They put out another announcement assuring us nothing was changing. What's likely to happen is canva will include affinity in their suite for canva users, but affinity will continue to evolve as an otherwise separate product

@Liam_Maddog

3 ай бұрын

@@WolfCatalyst "…continue to evolve…" You wish. Affinity went from promising to pathetic in a few years. They gave up on becoming truly competitive with Adobe and settled for putting out mediocre, non-intuitive, inferior software, especially with respect to Designer. We Designer users have had enough of Affinity's lame "Feature not available at this time" excuses. At least be honest and say, "The requested feature will never be implemented. Go sod off."

@liquidminds

3 ай бұрын

You already purchased it. you already own it. There is no way for them to go back. More likely that there will be a subscription model for the new online content, that you can opt into. But I see the experience they have with AI as a very good sign that we could see more content in the suite that we are waiting for. Neither of us knows it, but it is your choice whether you want to be positive, negative or neutral about it. It won't affect the outcome, only your experience.

@MyAmazingUsername

3 ай бұрын

I once contacted their support and they have me the rudest response. A few years ago. Since then I swore to never pay for their stuff again. Their "we are the good little guy" was always an act.

I moved from Adobe to Affinity to Inkscape about two years ago. CMYK is the only reason I still use Affinity software from a Virtual Machine. Inkscape is an absolute Joy to use otherwise. 1) CYMK support 2) The Text tool could use a little love too.

@rolandixor

3 ай бұрын

Definitely the text to could use a dedicated focus. Perhaps we can do a dedicated study of the tool and compare to other applications to see how it could be improved. One example I can think of straight up, is exposing small caps/other font variant/feature support from the toolbar. It's a bit difficult to discover in the panel atm.

@dvdvnr

3 ай бұрын

Agree, I like Inkscape but because of the lack of CMYK which is an absolute requirement for output for printing, I am too am forced to be an Affinity user.

@ImCurrentlyNaked

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, the CMYK thing is a big one. Frankly, I don't understand why that was a priority much MUCH earlier. It's what's stopped me from using inkscape (despite the fact I always check in on the program to see if they have addressed this). If they had a greater integration between gimp/krita/scribus, so you could work more quickly between them, that'd also be swell.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

@@ImCurrentlyNaked CMYK has been a priority in Inkscape for about 10 years. Every year, we'd all get together and talk about how to make CMYK happen, and the problem is, our pizza money just wasn't enough resources to make the project happen. We want SO much for Inkscape, but we are given so very little to build it with. The project is a miracle of frugal investment and generosity of passers by.

Since this is not the first time Adobe buys a product and immediately kills it, here is a "conspiracy theory" Canva buys Affinity, Adobe buys Canva and kills two competitors to make way for Adobe Express and Illustrator. Sorry, I'm just bored...but on the other hand, who knows? 🤔😆

@FlameForgedSoul

3 ай бұрын

After what happened with Figma? Highly unlikely.

@CTRL_SMarcos

3 ай бұрын

@@FlameForgedSoul And that is why regulatory mechanisms are so important. Without that threat, Adobe would have made the purchase of Figma without batting an eyelid. In fact, I think Adobe tried that with Canva. The problem is that regulatory mechanisms are also susceptible to being bought or pressured by lobbies.

@Grant_S_M

3 ай бұрын

Agree

@jayedwin98020

3 ай бұрын

Adobe did the "buy and destroy" thing with Macromeda's Freehand, years ago. At that time, I found Freehand had an easier learning curve than Illustrator, and was disappointed when Freehand was gone. • FYI: Still use the last version of Freehand that Adobe released, on one of my old Macs. Still enjoy using it.

@hipflipped

3 ай бұрын

@@jayedwin98020 Inkscape reminds me of Macromedia Freehand in a lot of positive ways.

Instead of paying a subscription for temporary access to Adobe under the guise of funding continued development, it would be better to have a recurring donation to Inkscape to actually fund development. With the latter, you still have access after you stop paying.

@gbrown2984

3 ай бұрын

I was just thinking about that. I wouldn't mind paying a donation subscription to Inkscape or Gimp

@exzld

3 ай бұрын

I donate monthly like $10 to one of the developers in gimp who is helping add functionality... I highly recommend donating to projects you find helpful for any work.

@ravencourt88

3 ай бұрын

Buena idea.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

​@@exzld ​ @gbrown2984 You can join my Patreon at patreon.com/doctormo and check out my videos for what I'm working on in Inkscape.

Only been using (learning) Affinity Designer for a short period for SVG files for my laser. I just downloaded Inkscape and will learn that now. So Thank You for being here for us all!

Affinity designer user here. I don't know how helpful this is, but it was always my impression that not having an image trace tool in the Affinity suite was a huge miss on their part. I know inkscape and illustrator both have one (and to be honest i haven't used inkscape in a couple of years) but just making sure that some tools that already exist within the inkscape environment continue to get tweaked and updated to keep up with the industry standard would go a long way. Thanks for all the great work you do :)

@gbrown2984

3 ай бұрын

I traced in inkscape. I learned that when I cut and past the tracing into Affinity designer, it worked immediately.

@chrisnash584

3 ай бұрын

@@gbrown2984 same that's what I would do too. I use Adobe for my day job but I prefer to use affinity and inkscape when freelancing

@SuleymanAkhundov

3 ай бұрын

Inkscape image tracing feature is superior to the one in Adobe Illustrator.

@yxmichaelxyyxmichaelxy3074

17 күн бұрын

Interesting since Corel have had the capability for years. 😎

Martin, you never blather. I'm very pleased to have found your channel. Inkscape user for nearly 20 years and very happy with it.

I would love to see some sort of “Pixel Persona”, introduced into Inkscape. Being able to “paint” with actual raster brushes, would open huge opportunities for open source artists, allowing them to stay within Inkscape for vector and raster mixed media work flows. 👍

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

The idea is to paint using for example krita style brushes and it would end up inside a raster image object? Love your work Tim. :heart:

@TimJones105

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Yes sort of… In Affinity Designer you have a mixture of Vector and Raster layers within the same document. For example, if I use a vector tool, a child vector layer is auto created, likewise if I use a Raster brush, a child raster layer is created. Like the sub object layers currently in Inkscape. So yes, you would import some sort of open source brush engine to work along side the vector tools but on their own layers. Hope that makes sense? Keep up the great work Martin. 🎨👍

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

@@TimJones105Would it make sense to be able to open up Krita and have a live integration such that your brush strokes in Krita apear in inkscape instantly? I'm somewhat adverse to duplicating effort when the problem has been solved really well by Krita.

@TimJones105

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo I understand you not wanting to duplicate existing projects. Thanks for taking the time to consider the idea 👍

@hipflipped

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Agreed, having to duplicate pixel editing in a vector programs seems kind of a waste of time.

The way you place text on pathes and ellipses and then move the text along the path/ellipse (using the bottom green/red things) is much more easier in Affinity Designer. Dark mode makes Affinity user interface look more professional: Grey Inkscape looks like a 90s software.

@MrMoon-hy6pn

3 ай бұрын

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment but doesn't inkscape already have a dark mode theme?

Inkscape is great software. Keep up the good work.

Just finished my latest work with both Affinity Designer and Inkscape. Mainly use Affinity Photo but after the acquisition and watching your video I found that I need to pay more attention to FOSS creation softwares like Inkscape and Krita. Thanks for your contributions and contents Martin!

I really like your image to svg tracing feature. As far as what you could do to appeal to Affinity users, I think you could add some visual hierarchy to the UX/UI to make it more like Affinity. Their icons are slightly larger and more differentiated. Also depending on the area, some tool icons and controls are visually larger such as the persona and color tools at the top. The panel designs could be updated as well to model Affinity's and Photoshop's layouts. That's just what designers and artists are used to these days. Inkscape is just as powerful as Affinity software however the UX/UI design could be updated to match Affinity's more modern visual style. I know as a developer you're much more focused on the features rather than icons and panel layouts, sliders and color boxes but looking at them visually side by side, it does make a difference. Thanks for all the awesome work you've been doing! I really appreciate it.

@DradoJJa

3 ай бұрын

totally agreed ! the confusing UI was the biggest reason that stopped me from using inkscape.. hope we see major improvments like what happened to blender 2.8

I use Affinity just because of the CMYK support. It's very easy to work or convert exiting work into CMYK with Affinity Designer.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

Do they provide automation for that process? For example Inkscape supports cmyk, but it's hard to use (something I'm spending an insane amount of time fixing this year) but I haven't planned for any automated tools, so it'd be interesting to know more about how that works for your workflow.

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo The easiest way is to import Inkscape SVG into Affinity Designer (2) and go File -> Document Setup -> Colour -> Colour Format -> Switch from RGB to CMYK. That converts all the vectors and the rasters like images, filters etc. Scribus has a nice way of converting individual colors but all the importing, exporting, layout fixing going from Inkscape to Scribus is just too much for me to still be doing that. And Scribus doesn't convert images to CMYK. I used to do a lot of graphic design and photography but I was tied to Linux. So eventually I gave up on graphic design and photography for now, it's just too laborious to do it on Linux or with FOSS tools. That said, for web development, app development and any kind of RGB work, I still use Inkscape every day. For printing or even video work tho, Inkscape, Darktable, Krita, color calibration, opencl, cuda, rocm, Wayland, Olive, Blender, Da Vinci Resolve, amdgpu-pro... It is all a big, a huge, big huge mess and even tho I did develop a workflow it was so complicated and error prone that I hated every single second of my life. 😅

@jochendamm

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Kind of. I use Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher as well. For me, too, the main reason for switching to Affinity was the support for CMYK, as well as the whole Affinity suite with Publisher, which was supposed to replace Scribus for me. Well, let's say halfway, because I worked with Inkscape for many years and am more used to it, I still do a lot of tasks in Inkscape. I prepare things in Inkscape with the familiar tools and then transfer them to Affinity for the final touches. Working with colors is very easy. You define colors and they are simply converted as needed. This has advantages and disadvantages. For example, the default color palette for grayscale is RGB and is converted to 4C CMYK instead of 1C grayscale. However, it is not possible to replace this palette with a global palette with CMYK, only an additional palette can be created. The same applies to the transfer of colors from linked or embedded documents. If these documents have other color profiles, these are (incorrectly) converted. However, this can be avoided if you remember to specify in the embedded document to leave the colors as they are. Personally, I miss under color reduction (UCR) like gray component reduction (GCR). Although I work with Inkscape and Affinity Designer most of the time, I primarily do media design such as magazines, newspapers and the like in layout programs such as Affinity Publisher. I also used to work with InDesign, Corel Draw and Scribus. A big problem for me is the exchange of SVG files between the two programs. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying to rescale the documents again and again. So far I have not been able to set Inkscape so that the document size matches that in Affinity. Both programs open the SVG files of the other program almost perfectly - only the size is not correct and must be scaled accordingly. I also tried to take over the scaling values of the SVG files from Affinity. Then it no longer fit in Inkscape.I can't tell if it's due to Affinity's programming, but no matter what settings you save in the file, Affinity opens it with pixel scale, even if the file specifies centimeters or millimeters. Affinity always opens them automatically in pixel values at 72 dpi. The files are saved with the size definition of 100%, which is not permitted in Inkscape. Originally I'm primarily a hobby photographer, but I do very little image editing like retouching, just rudimentary basics. I slipped into desktop publishing. I've always enjoyed designing, but in my opinion I lack creativity and expertise - I'm a theorist, not a doer. Typography allows me to express myself and achieve appealing results.

@sgredsch

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo you switch the document color space from (probably) srgb to cmyk (with a profile) and affinity converts the colors from srgb to cmyk according to the profile, however srgb black will be rich black in CMYK, if you want 100K black, you need to manually change the color of these objects to 100k.

@hipflipped

3 ай бұрын

@@jochendamm Paragraph breaks are your friend. Justy sayin'....

Hi Martin, I use Inkscape for most of my vector drawings with the exception of when it comes to putting text on a path, especially when it comes to placing text on a circle. In Affinity Designer placing text on a circle is so much easier and more intuitive than it is in Inkscape that I often stop and switch over to Affinity Designer for the text on a path work and then switch back to Inkscape. Doing this creates its own issues, but I can often work within those constraints with a little bit of planning.

@markjohn8472

3 ай бұрын

Yes, a very good example of “go use that” from one of the replies above.

@raybeer549

3 ай бұрын

I do the same thing with text on path. I'm so much more comfortable with inkscape for 90% of everything else but text around or within circles, I swap over to affinity and save it back out to carry on.

Martin, first CMYK, second CMYK and 3rd... Guess CMYK, without that inkscape will never be attractive to other professional and heavy users, who are the ones that actually spread the words and... Well there's a lot to talk about. I'm a graphic designer for more than 30 years and I love inkscape but always have a hard time to finish my projects because of that. I'm always ending up having to find an alternate software to finish it, and that's why I bought affinity, but I always start the work in inkscape. Anyway I hope you understand my frustration and all the hope I put on you and on your marvelous work. Anxious to see when inkscape will finally see the light 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼. Thank you again for your work. God bless

@KellyClowers

3 ай бұрын

CMYK is one of the major things he has been working on in fact! It's a lot of work to do that kind of conversion to support that, so it takes time.

you completely get it right. People always think of free software as in a free beer. But being for free / gratis is just a minor aspect. The free in sense of freedom is far more significant, especially today, where cloud software is nearly omnipresent. and people get used to it. Just want to share a file real quick, upload it to this cloud hoster, just want to convert this pdf, upload to cloud app, just want to edit photos -> cloud app. That they are paying with their data, the people have no clue. Also exactly as you said. Nearly everything is subscription based - the owner of the software can simply add higher fees or shut down the service and one is left with nothing. That is why I am only using free software on my own personal computer.Thank you for developing this great piece of software. I use inkscape now and then and it is a solid piece of software

Thank you for all your work on Inkscape Martin! It helps us sleep at night knowing that we truly have ownership and control over the software we use thanks for selfless people like you :). Open source for us is simply about accountability, it's giving the user the keys in case the project ever becomes misaligned with their values.

as an affinity user, what I'm missing in Inkscape is mainly the non-destructive workflow. for example, non-destructive booleans. masks. that stuff.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

These do exist if you use the live path effect booleans. Though I can't say how well they work compared to Affinity's

@hipflipped

3 ай бұрын

Non destructive booleans are available via "path effects" in Inkscape. Inkscape also has masking.

@torq21

3 ай бұрын

Oohhh ! I didn't know this! I was just wishing for this feature yesterday.

I use affinity and Inkscape. First of all, thank you for the great work you do. I use more affinit because of the layers and how they work 1. the way the elements are organized 2. non-destructive work 3. No matter which of the 3 affinity programs I use, the layers work the same 4. Layers are not ruined when switching from one program to another

I've been using both for a quite while and what i like to see on Inkscape are - 01. CMYK support, 02. Performance with PDF files and overall software. I do hope Inkscape would pull off a Blender.. 😊❤

"Ain't nobody acquiring us." - Well, in my understanding of the English language, that would be a double negative. So "Ain't nobody acquiring us' turns into 'Somebody is acquiring us'.

@user-sl6gn1ss8p

3 ай бұрын

Yes, in your understanding : p

I'm really looking forward to the gtk4 port! That might especially improve the cross-platform support and it'll probably be the biggest non-gnome gtk4 app

Guess who will announce the sale in the subscription model soon

I regularly donate to blender, godot, krita and I'll send you a donation now. If every person donated to FOSS we'd have no need to buy from closed software.

Affinity user who would love to be able to move to FOSS. I struggle with what feels like a clunky interface (might need more practice) I would love to have pixel based editing tools as well as the vector ones - having both in one a huge draw for me for Affinity. Obviously we need CMYK because I do a lot of poster design. I've donated to the project regularly because, while I don't use it yet, I want it to get to the point where I can use it without feeling like I'm moving at half the speed.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

That's very progressive of you, thank you. Have you tried Krita? They have that mix of vector and raster graphics and certainly support cmyk in a way that I'm very jealous of (and totally read all their docs to learn about)

@ComradeHaz

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormoI have! I support them financially as well. I'm really glad you asked because I was struggling with what I thought was lag - so I opened it to check and turns out I just had the stabiliser on high X_X I think the interface confused me at first and I didn't put in the time to learning how to make it work for me. But now that I know it's not a performance issue I'm going to give it a red hot go!

As an Inkscape and Affinity Designer user I think there's some things that would make Inkscape easier for Affinity users: 1- CMYK support (which is under works right now so... great!). 2- Unified transformation tool. 3- Text tool be more reliable and easier to use.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

What would be a unified transformation tool? Would this be like PenPot's layout managers?

@RenanMayrinckDesign

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Not exactly... What I mean by that is when you select an object on the canvas you can shear, rotate and resize from the same box without multi-clicking to get to the transformation type you want (something like you can do on Karbon). I think I just added a misleading name, I think "unified transformation box" is more accurate to the idea...

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

@@RenanMayrinckDesignOh I see; that wouldn't be very hard to do. I kinda wish I could get a commercial sponsor to just buy that feature.

Hello Martin, I switched to Affinity Suite v2.0 as my main apps for vector art / game image editing. I've been keeping my eye on Inkscape but a few areas make it difficult to use as my main vector editor. #1. Performance. Panning around the viewport I usually notice update lag / screen tearing, I know it sounds meh but if rendering performance could be smoother it would attract my attention #2. Shape Builder. I know it's a new tool still getting worked on but complex shapes don't always carve the way you'd expect. That leans more towards math operations in the background getting tweaks Those are just a few things I noticed in my testing. The rendering is also something Krita and Gimp kind of struggle with too so Idk if the screen tearing performance lag can be fixed without a lot of experimentation or hardware debugging. I love the idea of FOSS and look forward to seeing Inkscape update over the next few years :)

Sadly we have discovered OSS is no protection against 'enshitification'. Either it ossifies because there is insufficient revenue to support continued development, or its key developers get 'acquired' by some corporation and along with them, the active development fork. We badly need a revenue model for creative and maker software that is based on usage rather than functionality so hobby, student and start-up users can access the full function software at an affordable price while specialist and professional users who live in it 40 hours a week and bill their time pay a price that reflects its value.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

You have a decent handle of the economic problems we face. It seems like you need a system which is coercive enough to get things properly funded but not so coercive that the fundamental ownership belongs with some VC funded corporation that has no problems abusing that power.

@MyAmazingUsername

3 ай бұрын

​@@doctormoFlathub payments will solve a lot of this. I dunno what the status is of that now.

@birendrasilva1225

3 ай бұрын

ClipStudio Paint has a mixed pricing model, as you've explained here. They offer a subscription model for hardcore users and provide new feature updates under the subscription. There's also a basic version available as a one-time purchase for people who don't require all the new features. Toon Boom also has a similar model offering both subscription and perpetual licenses. Personally, I wouldn't mind such a pricing model.

I tried Affinity and had a feeling this would happen. Inkscape is the way.

I'm not a designer, I'm a developer, but I use inkscape for editing or cropping svgs like icons or adjusting a company logo sent to me by a customer. Just wanted to say it's a great tool for what little I use it so thank you to you and the team.

Honored to meet your channel. I'm a new Inkscape user who loves this software.

Something I miss from Affinity Designer when I’m using Inkscape is they have nicer brush stroke stabilizing/smoothing options. You can do “rope” which is like dragging the draw point around with a virtual rope or “window” which is like how inkscape’s stabilizer works.

I've been a graphic designer for almost 30 years. I use all Adobe products with my work, and have used them with my freelance side jobs, up until they went subscription. I've always had my eye on Inkscape, since I value their open source model. Last year I made the switch over to Affinity, but didn't like not being able to have certain tools like illustrator, especially image trace. Something I use a lot. That very thing was the reason I picked back up Inkscape. After seeing all the improvements, I've completely switch to Inkscape. But one of the things I did like about Affinity was how it masked objects by using layers. It is one of the things I do miss. It was much easier than illustrator. Plus also having the capability of doing some image editing within Affinity was also nice. But I have no problem using Gimp to do my edits, then bringing them back in to Inkscape.🙂

Can't wait to dig into the replies here! I use Affinity Designer V1 as a bridge between Inkscape and my windows only Roland print/cut machine. I design in Inkscape/Linux -- export/import .pdf into my windows PC -- add CMYK spot colour contour cutlines (has to be named CutContour using pure magenta) in Affinity -- export/import the .pdf to the Roland software for rip/print/cut. I can get in more detail on Mastodon with links to videos showing what's involved in setting up for the contours.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

That would be very useful to see; the setting of specific colors for cutting machines is so close to working and doesn't require a lot of fancy pdf support that I could see it being fixed fairly easily. You might even be able to try the capypdf based exporter when it's ready for alpha as you'd have the smallest requirements.

@Grant_S_M

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormoThank you! I'd certainly give it a try. The machine I'm printing/cutting with is the Roland VersaStudio Signmaker BN-20A. The software that drives the machine is Roland Versaworks. I'll send a link on Mastodon to the youtube video I used to help me setup the cutline swatch in Affinity. I was also able to setup a CMYK cutline swatch in Scribus, but it's a bit of jumping through hoops to bring in the SVG and align it to an image that has to be brought in as a raster. Too finicky when it's fairly easy using Affinity. It would be awesome to be able to do the entire design process including cutline all in CMYK in Inkscape and export to Versaworks ready to go.

Inkscape has to excel in 2 fronts to be as polished as Affinity: 1. Have a few raster tools (brush, paint-bucket, eraser, paint masking, lasso tool) 2. Simplify the UI like Affinity did with the Personas: basically have a few predefined workspaces placed on top to switch between them so that the UI doesn't feel so overwhelming with all the options and tools it presents. One simple example is the ruler tool: most people don't use it unless they are into engineering/science and need to make measurements. There could be a Science Workspace dedicated to people who utilize these tools the most. Then you can have an art workspace for the pencil and calligraphy. Again, nothing would be removed, only hidden (like with the advanced options for snapping).

Just did a deep dive into Inkscape last week before this news came out. I have one small suggestion. I have been using Inkscape for some isometric technical illustrations I am designing. Overall very impressed. But one thing I discovered when trying to align items along an isometric axis. You can hover over an item and see the small crosshairs where the item's center is. But as soon as you select that item, the crosshairs disappear when the handles appear making alignment much more inaccurate. Thanks! Otherwise, Inkscape is really great!

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for the specific issue. I would say the best thing to do is report this to inkscape.org/report as it's certainly a bug and we should be able to fix it quickly.

I'm a affinity designer user and I have tried Inkscape many times in the past. The only issue that keeps me from adopting Inkscape is performance, that gets boosted and I'm pretty sure you will see many new users.

Nice vlog chap. This appears to be common place now in the software industry. I long for the old days when I purchased software and installed it knowing that now it was up to me if I wanted to keep the software up to date with the "latest features" and pay for what was called an upgrade in the day. If choose not to pay for the latest and greatest I was still able to use the software that "I" "purchased". Today I find myself in a world where I purchase any media I actually don't own it because, as off tomorrow it could be gone. Fellow technologists, let us embrace this cosmic library-a shared consciousness. For tomorrow’s software, like the morning mist, awaits. -onelove

I'm an Affinity user and I've never used Inkscape before. It's good to know that it's out there as a back if Affinity goes the way of Adobe. I like Affinity Designer better than illustrator, because the default workspace is already set up for most common use cases. They put a lot of thought into the defaults. One big thing Affinity lacks is good SVG export options for web, specifically making svg exports that are easy to animate with css.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

While I won't say that Inkscape will be as nice to use, some of that is subjective. I can tell you that Inkscape IS svg. It's internal document format is editing svg, there's no part that you see ont he screen while editing that's not svg. So in a very real sense, it's an SVG editor. It even has an xml editor like you have with a web browser and many web users like Inkscape for this kind of reason. No animation though. Sorry 😅

If I were you I'd start with creating a more appealing landing page for Inkscape, to at least level with Affinity Designer on that. The landing page should contain much more up-to-date appealing screenshots, and be well designed, since this is essentialy a design tool, so its website should really shine to showcase good design. I think that this alone would attract many more users, even before implementing any new features.

I've recently started using inkscape again after a few years and I was really happy to see the use experience has improved quite a bit!

While not directly on the topic of the video, as a long time Inkscape user for laser engraver/cutter work in combination with Lightburn, I'd wish for some devlove in that application domain. Top pinch points missing features I'd like to see: 1) Feature: Ability to change on-screen coordinate orientation to Y+ Up, and associated ability to set ruler origin to document corner(UL, LL) or center. This doesn't have to change the internal or file representation, just the on screen representation and associated input boxes 2) QoL: shortcuts to type in coordinates and coordinate offsets (avoiding mouse clicks): X and Y as command input keys where the keystrokes for example "DX12.3" would duplicate the current object and then move it to X 12.3 and "DX+12.3" would duplicate and offset current object by X +12.3. Ideal would be to be able string this together as "DX+1.23Y+2.34" 3) QoL: Bulk Export layers as pages Current bulk export exists, but exports with size and origin of each layer/object rather than sharing a common origin and document size 4) QoL: Expand path by stroke width A common aspect for precision lasering is offset for the laser kerf. While I can do this today with the workflow: a) set stroke width to laser kerf width b) "Stroke to Path" c) delete original path d) delete nodes for the "interior" new path Could perhaps be solved by using the existing "path" "dynamic offset" if that supported numeric entry for the offset amount rather than just dragging 5) Feature: Layer associated Guides or guide line grouping (in the layers view) with associated visibility and lock attributes. While I appreciate greatly the flexibility of the existing guide system, it's one limitation is its global nature. Thank you for all your hard work on such a fantastic piece of software!

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

1) is mostly avaialble, you can set the origin to the bottom left or top left. Though not the middle yet. 2) This sounds neat, you should develop this idea into a UX proposal in the project. inkscape.org/report 3) That sounds fairly easy to fix, if you can express how it would look. See above link for adding a report for that. Maybe some mockups? 4) It's a fair idea, I'm not sure how that would be added to the interface, so any ideas would be good. 5) Layer and page based guides and grids are on my todo list.

@IFS

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Thanks for the feedback. I'll submit the ideas via the report link as you suggested. I must have missed the coordinate orientation feature addition so I'll go look for it. Thanks for the tip!

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

Oh and the shape builder's flatten action is actually mostly what you need for strokes. 1.4 will be good.

@IFS

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Fantastic, looking forward to it. Submitting the UX items via the link is still on my todo, just finishing a cloud system release this week has me buried.

Thank God I use Inkscape 🎉🎉🎉

Lol Martin - I just purchased the Affinity suite 2 weeks ago. Should have just sent the money to you. Hahaha! My first impressions of Affinity? For my particular historic workflow - prefer Inkscape.

@hipflipped

3 ай бұрын

I own affinity 2.0 and (compared to Inkscape) kinda hate it. Awful, unconfigurable UI with teeny icons and just kind of a shit workflow.

I’ve used Affinity Designer for a few years, just recently bought 2.0. Checked out Inkscape after the latest major update last year. I’ve kept both around, but rarely use Inkscape. My impression of Inkscape was that it’s a whole lot better than it was a few years ago. Super powerful modifiers. Great clipping features, shape builder, etc. Super nifty features like multiple strokes, which was missing from AD 1.0. That said, I also experienced crashes while testing the various features. So my takeaway was that it’s a more powerful, less stable editor. In my opinion, the AD interface just looks easier on the eyes too - which might be because I’m so used to it. I think Inkscape could take over as my main vector editor at some point. I guess what I would miss is the raster features and the exporting features of AD - some of which might already be present in Inkscape.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

The raster features are where I recommend people try Krita. It's a really powerful editor for that kind of workflow.

I haven’t used Inkscape so far, so I am not really aware of its current feature-set, but I generally appreciate it if a tool has support for 1) the file format „openEXR“ and 2) the OSS framework „OpenColorIO“ (OCIO) as I often need to have „control“ over 1) Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs) or 2) be able to en-, or decode different color management specifics, through OCIO for instance. - not sure if this is something Inkscape already has, is planning to, or does not make any sense to implement with regards to its current user base.

Yea, I think they just so disappointed most of their userbase today ;) To be fair, if I knew I would rather drop the money I paid for affinity update to V2 into Inkscape and 50% to Krita, maybe Gimp ( if they prove themselves ) with 3.0, because so far Gimp is 50/50 in my opinion - I'm not hating, just looking from a pro photoshop perspective. Also remember one thing, as much as I'm fully for FOSS and Ink in this case, proprietary is and probably will be always upfront in some areas, mostly in very heavy files, Affinity Designer is able to take a ton of layers, objects and stuff without big issues, Ink can be bumpy in that situation - it will probably change with GTK4 and GPU acceleration. Ink for average Joe is perfect, for something bigger and professional usually yes but not always. BTW. Lovely teapot with a jacket :D

@slizgi86

3 ай бұрын

About ideas, it would be lovely if Gimp, Inkscape, Krita and Blender can work on opening each files, or importing it with ease, within some reality of course, I'm not expecting to open blend in Krita, rather otherwise. To create this FOSS GFX Software Ecosytsem, some stuff works, not all. Ink can take look how font editing working in Affinity Designer, it is the best, probably. And stability and performance is always important for pro and in business.

@ronnetgrazer362

3 ай бұрын

@@slizgi86 Blender is kind of showing us that OSS can provide enterprise performance as long as you have enough sponsor capital to throw at it. They're not quite there yet but the improvements have been impressive for years. It's chicken-and-egg, obviously, but just imagine what Inkscape could do with a month's worth of adobe subscription money :)

@francisquebachmann7375

3 ай бұрын

@@slizgi86 I agree with this, one weakness the existing FOSS software are cross compatibility. I usually use vector to create precise shape which inkscape is good with that, but Doesn't have the raster tools found in Krita and Gimp, But at the same time the Vector tools of Krita and Gimp is kinda lacking. If cross compatibility is impossible maybe we might need another FOSS software that combines the all of the 3 software. Affinity Designer apparently have done something that photoshop lacks, Having the best features of Both Vector and Raster software in one package.

The biggest boost Inkscape can get if it can get something similar to Affinity Designer's Persona, the ability to very easily switch between Vector and Raster graphics with speed.. I use a Mac Mini and a Linux system.. on Linux (I think it's also true for Windows.. maybe I am wrong) Inkscape is damn good, I mostly use Inkscape (for SVG vector) Pinta or Krita (for PNG Raster with transparency) to fast initial concept development for my work and then I use Affinity Designer & Publisher to combine stuffs for finalization on Mac Mini.. now imagine if Inkscape had ported some good stuffs from Pinta (which is very fast and easy for editing) and Krita (good for digital painting) inside it and worked little bit on performance optimization for Apple Silicone platform how many more people would jump from Affinity or Adobe products. Inkscape already can be used somewhat as a publishing tool.. it's page layout and output options are very good, simple to use so in this scenario it would be a viable Photo editor (alternative to Photoshop/Gimp/Affinity Photo/Pinta), an even more excellent Vector illustrator (alternative to Affinity Designer/Illustrator), a freehand digital art + publisher (Krita + Affinity Publisher) under one roof. I can see three tabs on the interface for switching between Raster, Vector & Publisher "Persona" (Inkscape have to rename it to something else).. in Affinity's case the Affinity Publisher can easily "call in" features of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo within itself (if someone uses the full Affinity suite they will know what I am saying).. that to me is most one of a kind attractive thing about Affinity..

OK so. When I found company software store allow installation of Inkscape, I'm grateful in the way I would be enabled to have degrees of manipulation of vector image. So to answer your question: imagine how someone 50% fresh to the software. Used vector app before but different kind. And they want to make/ create a simple cutout which involved Combine, Cut, Difference those short of function. Intuitive product would enable them to instinctively found what he need to perform this. This is not happening with Inkscape. The function is there, but I have to look and search. But maybe it's just me. I came from Corel, Design and Illustrator background. These are fairly easy to figure out. Especially the 1st time I found out in Illustrator I can just drag straight line to form a curve in the year 2000, instead of having to change tool and drag the nodes in Corel, of which I thought: Wow. How the app designer know this feature would make me feel assisted? Those kind of thing.

I used Inkscape recently (to be honest used it before then jumped to Affinity designer...) and actually Inkscape is a life saver because of the built int XML editor! Thank you very much! That saves someone like me who's a dev a ton of time

I like Inkscape so much! My suggestion would be for you to prepare an Affinity Photo software equivalent, because Canva-Serif will fall sooner than later in a subscription plan, and then we, Affinity Photo (or the suit) owners, will be on the RUN as we were with Adobe.

I wonder if it would be possible to make a proprietary software application that works on a model more like a credit union/building society where every account holder is a member and gets membership shares?

thank you for your developer take

I work in the digital media and online marketing field, making things like interactive graphics (e.g. isomertric layout plans of industrial plants with clickable items), 3d product animations, motion graphics for videos and animations, and lots of other stuff. I ONLY use open source software fir my job, and Inkscape is one of my main and favorite tools (others: Blender, Gimp, sometimes Scribus). Inkscape is so very versatile, it's incredible. Personally I don't miss CMYK features since I don't need to use those, but I can see how that is something people would miss compared to other programs. What I would really find nice to have is a (better) integrated, java script based SVG inreractivity and animation engine (currently I'm doing those in the SVG source code) or a fully integrated 2d animation engine. But that's nothing I really NEED, just pure luxury. One other thing that could vastly improve the (my) workflow is, if in the layer and items screen there would be some kind of marker which paths are masks or clip paths. I don' mean the maskED or clippED paths or images (these already have their icons), but rhe paths that are used for it. Anyway, for me, Inkscape is THE go-to tool for a lot of tasks and workflows - thank you so much for this open source gem!

GIMP and Inscape have the same issue - they are not competitive in the publishing industry, not because of missing some elaborate functions but because of missing basics like CMYK. I was always discouraged by the explanation that this software is addressed to web developers, but that is different in the industry. If you are listening to a client, then that client wants a webpage but also wants something to be printed: t-shir, leaflet, correspondence paper, (name it), etc... If you are looking for an alternative solution to commercial software, you also need have a seamless workflow between vector and raster graphics. If I own a company and use Inkscape but have to return to Photoshop, what is the point of using Inkscape? Inkscape must be closely bonded with other open-source software like Gimp and Scribus.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

What do you think of Krita?

For me Inkscape has that feeling I have between GIMP and Krita, or 3ds Max and Blender. So Inkscape, GIMP and Max - they got old UX that was never overhauled/modernised as a whole. They don't got modern, smooth visual feedback. As a Blender/Affinity user, I've got really hard moments when I switch from Designer to Inkscape. For example: - in AD it is possible to use pen tool and modify nodes with the same tool so I don't need to switch tools - if there's object only with stroke, I can select only by clicking on stroke, but it's better if I could click on inner, "invisible" fill elements and just select and transform, without pinpointing on hairline edge - the need of aplying font is redundant - choosing font should be instant - some things should be more grouped or was a toolbar - layers doesn't have thumbnails ;( What is important, Inkscape doesn't need some new, sophisticated tools or features because it has even more than Affinity Designer! What Inkscape needs is polishing existing tools that they would be easier and better for work. In short: definitely new UI/UX based on Affinity Designer but without loosing Inkscape power! So please look at Designer, analyze it closely how it works, how it looks - of course Inkscape doesn't to be clone of AD!

Nice tea cozy!

Another suggestion is to have inkscape layers compatible with Krita. I usually Paint on top of the vector shapes.

I am not depend in any proprietary or closed source. Fully satisfy with inkscape.. great software. ❤

Hey, Martin! Thanks for the video and development work on Inkscape. Inkscape is INCREDIBLE software. Features that Inkscape can use... One thing I like about Affinity Designer is in the layers panel it will show a preview of the layer with an icon. In Inkscape it only shows the type the layer is. If it could display an icon and type that'd be awesome. I use both Inkscape and Affinity (mainly Affinity). I switch between the two. If I think of other ideas I'll comment again. All hail Open Source.

@DividedWarrior

3 ай бұрын

It would be nice to be able to scroll around the canvas while menus are open too. Also if you can view a new font type to placed text when you hover over a font in the drop down menu.

love inkscape, and I use Affinity too! Was not happy hearing about Canva Acquiring Affinity. Now having said that I agree with most to have CMYK, as well I would say adding a pantone color library, maybe have an add-on to connect to have access to stock photos/royalty free images. The text editor and maybe have more publisher tools integrated would be a very big plus

I can help to document differences of that is useful. I have been meaning to get familiar with Affinity Suite beyond just poking around, and I'm pretty well versed in Inkscape so I could probably more easily spot differences.

I am A great great Fan of Inkacape.. Can't think of a day without Inkacape..

Jumped in at the 1m30s mark and the man starts explaining FSF GNU Free Software principles. Nice. The hat gave it away boss. Cheers. Will have to check out inkscape. Been on the affinity suite. Able to make PDF full blown comics with the publisher tool and got way further than i ever got with photo composition with affinity photo. Never got good with vectors.

I have been using your tool for a long time and I really like it. In the latest updates, you have done a great job improving stability, which makes working with it enjoyable. Recently, I switched to a touchscreen tablet, everything is great except one thing - when I use the calligraphy tool, it's difficult to quickly change the pen cursor size. It lacks a smoother gradient in size adjustment upon clicking, without having to input numbers. 10x

You need to hire a UI-UX professional designer. He must draw a professional-looking application interface. Now it resembles application interfaces 10-15 years ago. So, the first thing to do is to bring the appearance at least to the level of Affinity products.

@gandolfred

3 ай бұрын

​@@vsz-z2428 If you understand, then for the end user all this "inside kitchen application" is of no interest. I personally don't care why their interface looks so bad. It is important for me that this be modern and at a general competitive level. And how they implement this technically is the task of the developer himself. This video compares InkScape and Affinity. I'm talking about the fact that Affinity products managed not only to get closer to Adobe products, but also to surpass them (application design, speed, more advanced layer technology, non-destructive processing). The editors of GIMP and Inscape are very far from it.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

I don't understand why you, gandolfred of youtube, haven't done anything about it. 😉

Thanks for this Video. I think Inkscape is robust, but CMYK for professional who use Print technics would be a good thing. I know we can use RGB because the postscript Rips are making the conversion, but CMYK is needed for Pros. And something like an official "bundle", Inkscape/Scribus/Gimp... krita. True collaboration and perhaps with gateways between these 3 softwares in order to make them work together smoothly. I have a question even it's not the place : what about Corel Graphics ? Are they so different ? I used Corel Draw long long time ago, does someone hear about fusion or acquisition by another company ? Are they too big ?

Bring CMYK and we are all back to inkscape!

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

See other recent videos about my battle with CMYK.

Contextual and intuitive support of PUA encoded glyphs in Fonts (what alternates are there for that letter, other PUA glyphs available) and simply better tools for text.

Ótima análise!

I bought Affinity because I found Inkscape confusing to use and work with. Granted, that was several years ago and I'm sure Inkscape has improved since then, but I outright love how Affinity's vectors and nested vectors (a subset of their layer system) feel to use, seperation between bitmap and vector modes (yet both being part of the same program), and the boolean add/subtract tools on their shapes and use the pen+node tool for basically everything because placing and adjusting nodes is what I like the most about vector programs. I would love the ability to make nodes act like a CAD software, where I can say these two points are tangent or parallel with X-much space between them, etc to make aligning things easier and more numerically-driven so I have complete control over how things work out with no guess-work required. I also feel like an easier way to export things for use in 2D-rig animation would be nice too, but that's probably just user error on my part.

I just switched to affinity after 23 years of adobe. I was able to open my .ai files more or less without trouble. The workflow is very similar and intuitiv to learn. There is good tutorials and documentation to learn quickly. The UI is modern, logical and clean. And the integration with photo and publisher is very good (embedded documents are a huge time saver for professional work). Sadly, most of the points I just mentioned do not apply to inkscape (or gimp for that matter). It may be ok for hobbyists to use. But it would be impossible at the moment to build a business on it. Also: I would be more than willing to pay a reasonable price for an open source design suit (that might even allow me to use linux). I do not understand why the free software comunity seems to insist on being free as in 0$. The value lies in the independence, security, community guidance, nonbyupbygiantcorporationability and so on. Wouldn't it be easyer to develop compeatativ software if you guys where decently fundet? Can some body explain that to me?

@doctormo

Ай бұрын

Yes. You can pay me to work on Inkscape for you. Please consider joining my Patreon or LiberaPay. Ultimately, that's the difference between open source and not. Inkscape is not a product, you can't buy it because it's not a bunch of bananas. You can however buy people's time to work on it and to listen to your needs and support your work. We can get better at communicating that; because it's obvious you didn't even know you could pay for Inkscape.

@permanentprogress

Ай бұрын

@@doctormo I think you missed my point. Probably on purpose judging from the sarcasm. You asked for feedback from users. That's what I gave you, honestly and without any ill intent. I listed the qualities of affinity that made it possible for me to ditch adobe. I thought that might be relevant information. I am willing to pay for a tool that I can use too practise my trade. As a user I want bananas, because I live from making banana juice. Also: I have donated to open source projects in the past.

@doctormo

Ай бұрын

@@permanentprogress I was and remain very sincere. I understand why many users do not want to pay people to make software for them. But it's a hard truth that the developer must be paid, there is no magic code tree. The people who replied to me in this video were very good about giving me details on what they struggle with in Inkscape, the other video I made with the results bares this out. You seemed confused as to how open source is funded, I want you to be as sure footed as possible that your involvement is critical, if you want the tools in this industry to be developed properly and with your needs in mind.

Brilliant conversation. I switched to Affinity from Adobe about 2 years post subscription model. I was extremely surprised (and upset) to discover the lack of an auto-trace function and edge roughening tool in Affinity Designer. I have moved to Inkscape since for those tasks. The only bummer is working between applications. Affinity Photo & Designer are very compatible workflows. I would go 100% Gimp & Inkscape if they were more compatible (to copy and paste paths, bitmaps and more between the two). I understand that they are totally different projects and highly unlikely to ever support this. Still, one can dream. All the other stuff has been mentioned already.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

It's not entirely unlikely. There are compatibilities already. For example inkscape has an xcf extension, and supports gimp palette files. But each of these compatibilities were gifted to the project by a contributor who wanted to see greater compatibility; and our projects are so inwardly focused mainly because there's so much work to be getting on with internally (lack of resources mostly the problem there). The feature I'd dearly love to see is live editing, where raster images can be live edited in gimp and seen in inkscape instantly. And visa-versa.

The big disappointment with Inkscape is it's so slow on Mac machines with Apple Silicon. It has sometimes even slideshow to just move a canvas :( Unfortunately, this is my main machine where I worked. In this regard, I was also choosing Affinity instead of Adobe because of one-time payment, but also good working on Mac.

I basically learned about the sale because one of such Affinity users appeared in the Inkscape discord I'm a part of ;) So I expect more of them. The problem is, I never used Affinity products, and most of their users don't know Inkscape and won't be able to give feedback past 'make it like there but free'. Maybe once they start actually using Inkscape. I already heard about brushes though. So far they have to be made from scratch.

Affinity user here after leaving Adobe due to subscription fees. I am sure the future of affinity will go subscription based as well. It’s only a matter of time now. I will definitely be downloading Inkscape and trying it out and see if it can replace affinity designer for me. I think subscription based apps are extremely expensive for non professional or large organisations. As a retired personal user for small projects subscriptions are too expensive. That’s why I moved to Affinity. Now it looks like I’ll be trying Inkscape.

I’m a big Inkscape fan, I use it as my daily driver for professional work… HOWEVER!!!! I still depends on Affinity Designer for CMYK support, also the Text tool could receive some love.

I have bought Affinity Designer and Inkscape, but I only use Inkscape since it is easier to work with. But I tend to struggle for setting up a good layout that I used to have before, and there are hard to find videos to explain how to do that. Like I want to have Layers always at bottom, but dragging it down is a pain and it would only stay in a popup window.

New subscriber, and supporter 🙏!!!

I really miss the ability to customize hotkeys for pen functions - by default, changing the type of pen curve when drawing is done with Shift+L and this cannot be changed in any way, because this function is not in the hotkey settings. This makes working with Inkscape very awkward for me. And I really miss the contour extrusion tool, not as a filter but as a tool. But in terms of capabilities, I think that Inkscape is ahead of all vector editors, it only lacks customization options

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

I believe that can be done by refactoring that key combination into an action. Wouldn't be too much work if you'd like to commission it.

Any project can shittify. That's how MATE and Trinity were born. But that's exactly the power of free and open source software - the developers can take chances to try something new, and other developers can fork the old project to accommodate those who don't want the change.

As profesional Adobe and Affinity user I would love to see two features in Inkscape: CMYK support (I know that You work on it). And as a next step: total ink coverage warning, which none of Affinity products have at all. The lack of TIL is extremely disappointing to me after so many years of developing Affinity software.

As a learner starting out, I got the Affinity 2 package but now I’m starting on Inkscape and GIMP because ultimately these are the only two tools that anyone will be able to rely on in the long term. I’ll use other tools once I’ve got these two nailed down

Affinity Designer user here. I use it for game art. What attracted me to it is real time non destructive effects, quick export preview so I can see exactly what I'm going to get, and performance (can put all art for a game in a single project file, whereas inkscape lags like crazy when I do that).

Although I previously have used Inkscape in the past, I've been using Affinity for the last while because their whole Publisher/Designer/Photo suite integrate pretty well with each other. That's not an easy gap for Inkscape to fill, though. Coming from Adobe before that, though it was an easy jump to Affinity since so many of the tools work the same (or close enough) in Affinity. That feature parity will be what I look at next time I have to jump ship.

Make/Expand Appearance. Thats the biggest thing Im missing in inkscape.

@doctormo

Ай бұрын

What is that?

@nicholasdacek5182

Ай бұрын

@@doctormo its a function in illustrator. So, say I were to draw a box in illustrator. I set the outline stroke to 5pts. Inside fill is a color If i hit expand appearance/expand that inner fill rectangle becomes its own shape. With no stroke. The 5pt stroke now becomes a filled shape, not a path The other good example: say I draw a bunch of thick lines with the pen tool that overlap. But say it has a thick stroke of 10pt or so, so it overlaps and intersects itself If I do an expand appearance, that stroke blob now becomes a shape, not a path I can send you a demonstration if it helps.

I too, went from Adobe to Affinity and bought the suite. I'm going to have a look at Inkscape so I'm ready for when the axe falls.

We need a better version of Inkscape for the MAC computer. More resources towards keeping the MAC version equal to the PC version will motivate me to make the switch to Inkscape from Affinity.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

What version did you last try? It should be much better today than a few years ago.

I'm really grateful for OSS and the Dev's who make it, it's more organic and hopefully has a bit more love in it with the community feedback....thanks to you all!

I'd like to have CMYK colors within Inkscape. I tried Inskape long ago and was surprised: it had no CMYK at that time, and it looked like it never will do. So it was not for my job (print production). Do CMYK colors still absent?

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

CMYK does exist, but it is really silly. You have to add a profile, and then use the cms tab and then export using scribus. A complete mess. See my recent videos about the work I'm doing to put CMYK into inkscape and join my Patreon if you can help fund the work.

Tell Affinity users how you can do it with Inkscape. Oh it can do it? I will use it !

I love inkscape as it can be used free of charge so I don't expect perfection as I would in the paid for ones inkscape is easy to use especially for beginners

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

Inkscape is free once it has been created. But it's actually expensive to build. I certainly don't expect beginners to fund Inkscape, but there are plenty of people who need to get on board with funding the change they want to see in the world. As we say: "It's free as in already paid for" And I'm not happy with the imperfection, we deserve better than imperfect.

How difficult would it be to add a MDI in Inkscape, on a technical level? I had some ideas for how this could be implemented visually, and I wouldn't mind helping to contribute (non-code wise because that'd be outside my current knowledge base 😅)

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

MDI is a tabbed interface right? There was a failed google summer of code project to add it last year if that's the case.

@rolandixor

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormoit can be tabbed (that's the main way to do it these days, but yeah - any form of multi document interface for Inkscape would be a great addition for users who are accustomed to other software that supports it. I'd love to participate in coming up with a design if it's ever approached.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

@@rolandixoryou can take a look at the failed GSoC here gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/merge_requests/4692 and if you'd like to draft a ux proposal, that can be done here gitlab.com/inkscape/ux/-/issues/ but let me know, I'd be happy to walk you through any of this to document your ideas properly.

@rolandixor

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormothank you! I'll check it out!

I moved from a permanent Illustrator CS6 license to Affinity 1 and 2, and now I'm looking into Inkscape. The first thing which happened is that I tried to figure out how to not have to hold down control to zoom with the scroll wheel and it turned out to be quite a convoluted process which involved digging deep into the keyboard shortcut menus. And then I learned that there once was a simple "don't use control for zoom" toggle button, but it had at one point been removed, so I flashed back to Blender which is a nightmare of UX disaster because their developers only care about what is "technically correct" and easy to maintain and thus leave all UX improvements up to add-ons... anyway, we'll see how it goes, but that was my first impression.

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

You are right that it was removed, and the person who removed it was me. The idea was, and still is, that an Affinity designer keyboard profile would be created and would include this setting pre-set so you don't have to search for anything. The rational was, if you are going to have one checkbox for one modifier, how many checkboxes for all the other possible states would be needed? I'm not against either design by the way. Let a billion checkboxes bloom, if that's what's necessary. But I'd like to be *sure*.

I have a question, I think this was in my suggested feed because I am trying to learn how to engrave a photo with my d1 pro laser. I want to turn a photo into a line drawing basically. Does this software do this? I tried using Photoshop but Adobe is really hard for me and the videos I've found so far are complicated!

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

You should be able to use Inkscape to create a monotone image using trace bitmap. It's a bit of an art to get right and I would recommend searching for tutorials for inkscape on this topic. Maybe check out IconEchoDesign or LogosByNick channels. Good luck!

I have been using both Adobe and Affinity 1, now I am going to give Inkscape a try

Inkscape, Blender and Krita are a work of ART, the best softwares out there.

A suggestion I'd recommend is the ability for a user to make curved gradients along a path. So say for example you draw a half-circle with a path, and then a gradient can be filled in, either in the inward direction, the outward direction, or both (mario official artwork uses quite a bit of curved gradients)

@doctormo

3 ай бұрын

This sounds like a mesh gradient, but with better UX. Our mesh gradients currently suck so much. Thanks for responding.

@gameplanetanimations

3 ай бұрын

@@doctormo Oh! I didn't know that's what the mesh gradient does. Thank you so much!