Download Chapter 10: "Gradients and Patterns"

Download Tutorial 2: "Designing a Business Card"

This is it. The complete and definitive guide to Inkscape, the free, vector-based graphics editor that competes with expensive drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW.

In The Book of Inkscape, core Inkscape developer Dmitry Kirsanov shares his design experience and knowledge of Inkscape's inner workings as he walks you through the basics of using the program: drawing, working with objects, transformations and styling, adding text and shapes, and more. Kirsanov couples his detailed explanations with step-by-step tutorials that show you how to create business cards, animations, and technical and artistic drawings.

In addition to the basics, Kirsanov teaches you how to:

• Navigate the canvas and customize your workspace and views
• Create new objects and then transform, style, clone, and combine them
• Use drawing tools, strokes, and Bézier curves
• Use gradients, patterns, filters, and path effects to liven up your work
• Use the XML Editor to view and manipulate the structure of your artwork
• Work with layers, groups, object order, and locks to control your images
• Export your artwork to various formats

This practical guide will show you how to harness Inkscape's powerful features to produce anything from a child's doodle to high-end, professional design projects. Now go ahead and draw something fun.

Dmitry Kirsanov is a developer and a graphic designer, specializing in website and logo design. His articles about Inkscape have appeared in Linux Format in the UK and on TuxMagazine.com. Kirsanov also writes the Design Lab column teaching creative fundamentals of web design, and is the author of Dmitry Kirsanov's Web Design Book (in Russian). Tim Daniels, one of the founders of the Inkscape project, is the book's technical reviewer.