Inkscape 1.4 vector graphics editor release
On October 13, 2024, the open multi-platform vector graphics editor Inkscape 1.4 was released. The project provides flexible drawing tools and allows you to save images in SVG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, WMF, EMF, sk1, PDF, EPS, PostScript and PNG formats.
Ready-made builds of Inkscape are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows (including a portable version). The source code of the project is published on GitLab. The previous stable version of Inkscape 1.3 was released in June 2023.
Major changes and additions in Inkscape 1.4:
• a new Dash icon set with over 500 additional icons available for buttons, cursors and other interface elements. The collection has both symbolic and scalable versions adapted for light and dark design themes;
• a new dialog “Filter Gallery” (Filter Gallery) is offered with an interface for selecting filters that supports both keyword search and navigation by thematic categories. Available filters are displayed as visual thumbnails that demonstrate the results of applying the filters. You can change the size of the thumbnails to your liking. A separate personal category is offered for filters added by the user;
• added mode “Modular grid” (Modular Grid) with the implementation of an alignment grid in the form of repeating rectangular blocks, the size of cells, borders and indents in which can be adjusted by the user. In the properties of the document, new buttons for choosing the display mode of the aligning grid are proposed;
• reworked the Swatches dialog for working with palettes, to which a drop-down menu with a list of available color palettes was added. Palettes can be displayed as a list or as a grid with adjustable cell size. For each palette, a thumbnail is displayed in the list to evaluate the available colors. New palettes can be imported, including palettes from the Adobe Color Book in the CIELAB color space. Improved conversion from CMYK RGB color space;
• new buttons for deleting and sorting glyphs are proposed in the SVG font editor;
• proposed experimental universal font browser (Edit ➞ Preferences ➞ Interface ➞ Dialogs: Text and Font), in which you can immediately see how the text entered by the user will look with different fonts. Various sorting modes and the ability to search based on the font collection are available;
• it is possible to adjust the size, color, width, outline and opacity of the “handles” (handles) used to manipulate objects on the canvas;
• the tool “Shape Builder” has added the function of editing raster images, which can be useful for quickly correcting or cutting out parts of an image;
• dialogues with properties and attributes of objects (Object Properties and Objective Attributes) were merged;
• the possibilities of import and export have been expanded. Added the ability to open files saved in the Affinity Designer vector editor (.afdesign) or distributed in the Computer Graphics Metafile format (. cgm). Improved support for importing DXF files (Autodesk R13+). Exported PDF documents support internal links. Export capabilities in batch mode have been expanded;
• added templates to quickly create multi-page booklets. User templates can use categories and tags.