Adobe Illustrator Free Alternatives
As a freelance artist or a small business, the adobe creative suite often is not cost effective, but it may still be necessary to design logos or modify graphics for your work. I think many alternatives to software like Photoshop and InDesign are relatively well known (Krita, Paint.net and Canva to name just a few,) but I so rarely see suggestions of good alternatives to Adobe Illustrator, so today I want to talk about inkscape, an open source vector editing software, and the things it does better and worse than illustrator
As of this post, the current version of inkscape is 1.1.1 and features many of the primary elements core to vector design. The disparity between the two programs is far less than it used to be prior to the 1.0 release, and the software has become fully viable for commercial purposes.
Inkscape pros
Open Source
When software is open source, that means that the source code for the software is publicly available. While you may have no interest in delving into the code yourself, having it publicly available means that you will find many passionate users who are deeply familiar with the software, and will want to help you troubleshoot if you have any issues.
Less hardware intensive
Illustrator is not the most resource intensive software, but when working with lots of complex shapes with effects, it can really start to slow down, even on a good computer. This issue becomes far more pronounced when working on hardware that is either not built for visual processing, or is several years old. Inkscape is far more optimized, and can make working on a slower machine far easier.
Gradients
Working with gradients in illustration is quite frankly, a pain in the ass. The inkscape gradient tool is far more flexible, and honestly makes the one in illustrator look amateurish by default.
Adobe Illustrator pros
Industry standard
If you intend on working for a larger company, or with several other designers, using illustrator is basically a must. Luckily in these circumstances, you may have it available to you through work, getting to know the software is necessary before you even enter the door. If you want to get hired for inhouse design or a design firm, being familiar with the industry standard software is a must.
Good documentation
Adobe is very good about documenting what tools and resources are built into their applications, and how to effectively use them. Inkscape's best alternative would be community forums managed solely by passionate users. While this may be helpful for more uncommon troubleshooting scenarios, it certainly is not the most practical when all you need to know is how to use a certain tool or feature.
Cross compatibility
If you’re working with free and open source software, cross compatibility is going to be minimal. For example, if you want to import a vector file into raster software like Gimp or Krita, you may need to export every single layer separately if you want them to stay separate when importing into the new software. With Adobe Photoshop, you can simply import an Illustrator file and choose to keep all the layers intact. This comes down to a matter of convenience, because you can reach the same end result in other software, but using.
Additional Features
Illustrator has quite the collection of specialized features such as Envelope distort, Batch export and a nicer typography interface that Inkscape lacks. While none of these are crucial for professional design work, it can make your workflow faster and also open up certain design techniques that aren’t practical in inkscape.
You can find the newest version of Inkscape at Inkscape.org if you want to try it for yourself. If you want to learn more about the specific differences between the two pieces of software, I would highly suggest a youtube video by Logos by Nick, as it was one of the major inspirations for me in writing this this article.