It’s projects like this one that make me love Open Source…

I had some conversations with a coworker the other day about my graphic communications background (small as it may be) and we got to talking about Open Source alternatives.

I really enjoy The GIMP as a free alternative for Photoshop. It lets me whip up simple icons, color correct photos, etc. I wondered aloud during that conversation whether or not something better for vector graphics existed, because what I knew about The GIMP’s abilities to do shapes and paths was less than feature-rich.

So a few Google searches later, up pops Inkscape. I’ve used Adobe Illustrator extensively in my college coursework and I loved it for what you could do with it. Let me tell you… I’m impressed with this piece of software. I mean… wow.

I was a little dismayed that I didn’t see a gradient mesh tool, however after reading the manual I found that they had a gaussian blur tool that I actually enjoy using even more than the gradient mesh tool… I have more control over it. I think I might try my hand at a few illustrations, largely because I haven’t done it in a long time and I *really* enjoyed it in college.