Using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format you can manipulate shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.
Inkscape's main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development process, and by making sure Inkcape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.
Smoother performance, HiDPI support, new & improved Live Path Effects & native macOS app
After a little over three years in development, the team is excited to launch the long awaited Inkscape 1.0 into the world.
Built with the power of a team of volunteers, this open source vector editor represents the work of many hearts and hands from around the world, ensuring that Inkscape remains available free for everyone to download and enjoy.
In fact, translations for over 20 out of all 88 languages were updated for version 1.0, making the software more accessible to people from all over the world.
A major milestone was achieved in enabling Inkscape to use a more recent version of the software used to build the editor's user interface (namely GTK+3). Users with HiDPI (high resolution) screens can thank teamwork that took place during the 2018 Boston Hackfest for setting the updated-GTK wheels in motion.
Smoother performance & first native macOS application
This latest version is available for Linux, Windows and macOS. All macOS users will notice that this latest version is labelled as 'preview', which means that additional improvements are scheduled for the next versions. Overall, 1.0 delivers a smoother, higher performance experience on Linux and Windows, and a better system integration (no more XQuartz!) on macOS.
So many new bells and whistles
One of the first things users will notice is a reorganized tool box, with a more logical order. There are many new and improved Live Path Effect (LPE) features. The new searchable LPE selection dialog now features a very polished interface, descriptions and even the possibility of marking favorite LPEs. Performance improvements are most noticeable when editing node-heavy objects, using the Objects dialog, and when grouping/ungrouping.
Color-managed PDF export using Scribus
An experimental Scribus PDF export extension has been added. It is available as one of the many export formats in the 'Save as' and 'Save a Copy' dialogs.
To be able to get a correct and color-managed CMYK PDF file with text converted to curves that corresponds to your drawing in Inkscape, you must:
- have Scribus 1.5.x installed (the Scribus executable must not be called scribus-ng)
- have enabled color management for your document
- have selected one color profile to use for the colors in your file
- assign all colors in the document with the color managed color selector in the Fill and Stroke dialog
- not use filters in your drawing (this includes blur)
- not use any transparency if you're exporting to PDF/X-1, PDF/X-3 or PDF 1.3
- not include any bitmap images
- not use markers
- not use any other SVG features that are not supported by Scribus
The page size corresponds to the document size in Scribus. When you add a bleed, an area of the given width outside the page area in Inkscape will be included in the PDF file.
Please test the extension, and always carefully check the result before you send it to a print service. You can leave your feedback about what works / doesn't work at https://inkscape.org/inbox.
Selectors and CSS dialog unhidden
The Selectors and CSS dialog that had been hidden and labelled as 'experimental' in Inkscape 1.0 is now available from the Object menu.
The dialog makes it possible to add, remove and edit CSS properties that are saved within an element's 'style' attribute, as well as styling objects in the document using CSS classes and other CSS selectors. These additional styles are written into a style tag in the SVG document.
It can also be used to select all objects that belong to a specific class, so users will again be able to create collections of objects that are independend of the document structure (e.g. they belong to different groups in the drawing).
This dialog replaces the Selection Sets dialog that had been removed for Inkscape 1.0.
What's New
Inkscape 1.2.2 is a maintenance and bugfix release, which brings you 4 crash fixes, over 25 bug fixes, 5 fixes for extension bugs and 13 improved user interface translations.
Notably, the OpenClipart import is now available to everyone, regardless of the selected packaging format or operating system, spellchecking finally works on macOS, performance is improved (in exchange for dithering disabled by default), extensions that modify colors can now also modify colors in patterns again, and for our maker community, we fixed some issues with the measure tool, the DXF14 export and with hairline strokes.
Note for macOS users:
Do not update to macOS Ventura if you rely on Inkscape! There is an unresolved issue that currently affects all GTK3 based apps on macOS Ventura, making the app unresponsive to certain mouse events. (GTK is used by many different programs, and builds those programs' user interfaces for you to interact with.)
General
- Symbols that contain a clipping path or mask no longer cause the Symbols dialog to create a high processor load (Bug #3607, MR #4567).
- The keyboard shortcut that is meant to scale the selection by 1 screen pixel now does so again (Bug #3799, MR#4818).
- Raster images that are opened with Inkscape now end up in the page area even when the document origin is set to the bottom left corner (MR #4866, Bug #3939).
- Dithering (for smooth gradients) is now disabled by default (even if it was enabled before you update to 1.2.2), because it was causing a loss of performance while drawing (MR #4816).
Dialogs
- The 'Export' and 'Align and distribute' dialogs are no longer confused about what area to export / what type of item to align (MR #4800, Bug #3847, Bug #2732, Bug #3591).
- In the same dialog, tooltips now reliably show up when hovering over any of the buttons (Bug #3585, MR #4571).
- Clarified wording of an option shown when importing SVG files (MR #4525).
Themes
- win32 theme now contains expand/collapse arrows for expandable lists (MR #3636, Bug #2876)
- win32 theme offers improved contrast when hovering over text (MR #3550)
- win32 theme context menu border looks better now (MR #3550)
- win32 theme offers improved contrast when hovering over text (MR #3550)
Tools
Text tool
- Font dropdown now updates when changing font for the same text multiple times through the dropdown menu (MR #3731, Bug #2056)
- Line spacing works again with current Pango versions (e.g. 1.49) as used on Fedora Linux (MR #3717, Bug #2864)
- Line spacing now always stays the same when only changing the line height units (MR #3640, Bug #2465)
- Unicode mode now accepts numbers entered with numpad keys (a bug with a long beard, reported in 2014! MR #3716, Launchpad Bug #1394559
- Copied style no longer includes the shape of a flowed text and some other text positioning data, which caused all kinds of strange behavior (MR #3899, Bug #2807)
Crash fixes
- Fixed a crash when grouping / ungrouping / importing / pasting a 3D box or after doing so and editing it (MR #3731, Bug #2833)
- Fixed a crash when trying to add the "Measure segments" Live Path Effect to a path with empty / one-node subpaths (MR #3636, Bug #2725)
- Fixed a crash when running inkscape --actions=action-list on the command line if Inkscape has been built with DBUS support (MR #3636, Bug #2813)
- Fixed a crash when exporting to a raster image file with a file name that contains non-ASCII characters (MR #3784, Bug #2548)
- Fixed a crash when importing an SVG file that contains a 3D box (MR #3592, Bug #2881)
- Fixed a crash when pressing Backspace while using the Bézier tool (MR #3715, Bug #2764)
- Fixed a crash when selecting Other locations in the Open/Save/Import dialog, with the preview active (MR #3786, Bug #2549)
- Fixed a crash when dragging a guide line off the canvas to delete it (MR #3899, Bug #3084)
- Fixed a crash when starting Inkscape with the Icon Preview panel open on Wayland (Bug #3047, MR #3937)
- Fixed a crash when copying nodes if there is a Bend LPE in the clipboard (MR #3942)
- Fixed a crash when (freeze) changing the document's license while the Selectors and CSS dialog is open (MR #3939, Bug #2700)
Extension bug fixes
- A crash in the 'Seamless Pattern' extension has been fixed (MR extensions#367)
- A crash in the 'Win32 Vector Print' extension has been fixed (MR extensions#393, Bug extensions#249)
- A crash in extensions that try to access the user's current selection with files containing comments (MR extensions#372, Bug extensions#369)
- Very large documents with deeply nested groups no longer cause extensions to fail when trying to look up a root element (Bug extensions#429, MR extensions#376, Commit extensions#be7e96)
- Very large documents no longer cause extensions to freeze while it's searching for free object ids (MR extensions#348, Bug extensions#378)
- The Hershey Text extension no longer fails if a text has the style attribute line-height:normal; (MR extensions#302, Bug #361)
- The GCodetools Plasma extension now generates GCode again (MR extensions#388, Bug extensions#276)
- Exporting as HTML5 Canvas no longer fails when the drawing contains a text put on a path (but the text is ignored) (MR extensions#318, Bug extensions#292)
Bugfixes in particular extensions
- The Symbols option for 'Barcode' works now (MR extensions#395, Bug extensions#150)
- The space character in the 'Braille' text extension now has the correct width (Bug extensions#410)
- The Voronoi extension now properly respects the page boundaries (MR extensions#382, Bug extensions#403)
- Cell sizes and stroke width in the Voronoi extension allow entering larger values now (MR extensions#356)
- Mockups created with the Interactive Mockup extension work correctly with current browsers again (MR extensions#405)
- The Web Slicer extension now exports images again (Bug extensions#267, MR extensions#406)
- When importing a DXF file, polylines are now included (MR extensions#338)
- Help texts for paper thickness in the Perfect bound cover bookcover making extension were improved (MR extensions#304, Bug extensions#265)
- The Scatter extension now places objects at the correct positions again (MR extensions#323, MR extensions#323)
- The tangential (along path direction) offset for scattered objects is now defined in % of pattern object length (MR extensions#323)
- Help texts in 'Scatter' and 'Pattern along Path' extensions simplified (MR extensions#378)
- Formulas rendered by LaTeX (pdflatex) now more reliably give the correct result (MR extensions#349)
- The JessyInk keybindings dialog now better fits on the screen (MR extensions#340, Bug extensions#261, MR extensions#380)
Improvements that apply to all extensions
- The file chooser in extensions can no longer accidentally choose a directory instead of a file (MR #3716, Bug #2822)
- Compact float notation (such as 1.2 .3 ) in paths is now supported for all extensions (MR extensions#385)
- Extensions that call external programs no longer mangle texts with special characters on systems that do not use UTF-8 encoding (MR extensions#363)
- Improvements for development / deployment
- Developer documentation improvements (Commit extensions#636109)
- Installation metadata updates (MR extensions#369)
- Fixes for the automatical testing on GitLab (MR #369)
- Extension test suite improvements for many of the fixed bugs
Translations
The following UI translations received updates:
- Brazilian Portuguese
- Catalan
- Croatian
- Czech
- German
- Greek
- Hungarian
- Lithuanian
- Romanian
- Russian
- Simplified Chinese
- Slovenian
- Traditional Chinese
- Spanish
- Ukrainian
