Large Format Printing

Save Money and Extend your Capability with  InkScape

If you’re designing banners, or more complex projects you can take advantage of this free software from Opensorce.org

B3 just added some new personal and needed to have access to design files.  There were also some simple design projects where we needed a vector graphics editor.  The standard graphics editor in our industry is Adobe Illustrator, a powerful full featured product.  The problem we encounter is many users need some of the basic features of AI but do not justify the expense of additional licenses.  The solution can be an Open Source program called InkScape .

InkScape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Many will find the program familiar and easy to use.

There are extensive help and tutorial resources available, also free of charge.

Screencasters.Heathenx can get you started quickly with video tutorials along with links to other resources on the web.

Inkscape is not a complete substitute for having the latest applications in a prepress operation.  What it can do is save you a lot of money in tough times while extending capabilities to many more on your staff. The program works on Microsoft XP, Mac OS and Linux.  I have only used the program running on Win-XP where it works just fine.

The only problem I have encountered in viewing some EPS files, where the accompanying AI file worked just file. InkScape can import AI, SVG, and PDF files. There are extensions available for a number of other formats including EPS.