Same here. As a quite graphically-challenged person, Inkscape is the only tool I feel reasonably comfortable using, and can produce passable results with. Most of the other graphics tools I have tried confused me to no end. In Inkscape, maybe the UI isn't as beautiful and flashy as in other tools, but it's very understandable and the amount and arrangement of tools feels logical to me.

I can't speak for people who don't suck at design, probably for them Inkscape falls quite short, but for me it was a godsend (despite the presence of some bugs, namely copying and pasting to/from different instances used to be a lottery, let's see if it's better in this version). Kudos to the team.

My experience is with Inkscape is quite different; it certainly doesn't feel intuitive to me.

I find myself unable to grasp the way all the avaialbe tools are expected to be used together, even after following the basic shapes tutorials; and I always seem to have the wrong thing selected, or the wrong tool active, or the wrong properties panel opened. And I still can't make sense of the differences between "object" and "path".

Maybe you can help me. When I want to change the way the current selected tool works, how do I know whether I have to change the options in the above contextual menu bar, or those in one of those dozens of hidden panels (that I can't manage to open again when I dismiss them)? How does one change more than one color in a gradient? And how does one create a shape with radial symmetries? (I found about tiling and the symmetry tab, but I couldn't make sense of it) I've been unable to complete any of those tasks.

Here's a crash concept guide to Inkscape for you.

* A "path" is a collection of nodes connected by Bezier splines; nodes can connect them smoothly or in a cusp.

* A path has an outline (with color, line thickness, etc) and a fill (none, a flat color, or a gradient).

* An "object" is either a path, a constrained path (like a rectangle or a circle / arc), a bitmap, or a text, or a group of these. You can nest groups arbitrarily.

Key tools:

* Pointer, the arrow, shortcut F1. This is your main tool. Used to select, move, rotate, stretch objects. Shift-click to select multiple objects. Click-drag to select objects within a rectangle. Ctrl+click to select inside a group. Alt+click to select things under the object on top. Space bar switches between this tool and your other tools.

* Node pointer, the triangle, shortcut F2. Used to edit paths. Click-drag on a path to change curvature, or click on nodes to move / edit them, or ctrl+click to add a node, or drag the spline handles. Does different things to rectangles, circles, stars, by moving their control points.

* Rectangle (F4) and circle (F5) are good starting points for most things.

* Line / polygon drawing tool (Shift+F6). Click on places where you want nodes, press Enter to finish. Press F2 to move nodes and make segments curved.

* Curve drawing tool (F6). Click-drag to draw a freehand curve. Ctrl+L to smooth down the curve.

* Text tool (F8). Click where you want your text, type. When frustrated, press Esc, click the text, Shift+Ctrl+T, edit the text in a convenient dialog.

Most useful keyboard:

* Cursor keys: move the selected object(s) by a small amount.

* Shift+Ctrl+F: fill / stroke dialog (if clicking on colors is not precise enough).

* Ctrl+D: duplicate the current object.

* Ctrl+G: group selected objects, or ungroup a selected group.

* PgUp / Pgdn: move the object up / down in Z-order.

* Shift+Ctrl+A: align and distribute things.

* Shift+Ctrl+M: precisely transform things.

* Space: Switch back to pointer from your current tool.

* Press space, click+drag: scroll the window.

Context menus, accessible by right click, are your friends.

Re symmetries: look at the star tool (press asterisk). Explore clones: clone an object with Shift+D, mirror it with H or V, then try editing the original object. Shift+D brings you from a clone to the original.

How is this all intuitive to me? Well, I started with Corel Draw 3 ca. 1992, and most concepts and shortcuts still apply.

Decades of using CorelDRAW have made it impossible for me to use Illustrator. So Inkscape has been a godsend!

Same for me. Corel on win 3.11. ;) InDesign is a good option for vector drawing. (Perhaps I have to change some keystrokes interiorized during the flash era)

Helpful! I probably won't do much more than use Inkscape for sketches with that helpful perspective box tool and the ability to work at low resolution and rescale, but it's good to have a reference like this.

wow thank you for writing all that.

Cool! Thank you, that will be useful.

It is impossible IME to use Inkscape unless you run through all the tutorials. The interface is not usefully discoverable. You have to understand the app's model of things, and that's opaque at best. I think it's worth learning though.

I learned Inkscape years ago by firing it up and going through Wikipedia images that needed to be converted to vector graphics[1]. I could pick images as simple (or hard) as I was comfortable with, and Wikipedia benefited.

[1]https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_that_sh...

A very simple tutorial for new users who never saw a vector drawing program would definitely be nice.

You definitely have to understand the app's model of things; this applies to every app, including things like notepad.exe. Users just happen have some prior exposure to certain models.

Clicking on toolbar buttons and reading the menu items, plus a little experimentation, also helps.

The first tutorial does teach you a lot :-)

FWIW I learned to use Inkscape quite productively without any tutorials. That was five to ten years ago though.

This was my experience as well. I did have working knowledge with similar tools though.

It is necessary to understand the basic concepts of vector drawing and memorize the shortcuts. What worked on me years ago, and made possible to switch from Illustrator to Inkscape (it was an happy transition) was this book at Flossmanuals http://write.flossmanuals.net/inkscape/about-inkscape/

Not as difficult as any vector drawing app (Corel/freehand/illustrator/sketch)

Are you using a new version of it? The tool configurations migrated all into the toolbar, and when they require some extra panel, there's a button for opening them there too.

That's fixed. But last time I used it the gradient dialog was still bad (there's an "edit" button on that edit window that only changes one color, you must click on it) and I also could never make sense of symmetries.

I don't like the "intuitive tool" argument because in the case of creative tools, intuition is what you use to actually create something, it is not what you use to know how to use/hold the tool: look at a physical brush, this is the simplest tool, you directly understand with your intuition how to use it, but it can take years to be able to paint something good with it.

Inkscape can be considered as a good professional tool for creative people because it's slogan "Draw Freely" is honored: once you got the basic rules about vector drawing and that you stick with it, you can create something, you won't create something because the tool created it for you by guiding you in a manner that will influence your work too much.

This is how I understand "Draw Freely", that resonate with the GNU/GPL freedom.

You didn't finish your post. You left off the part about how you read the manual and then you were fine.

What part of the 300+ pages? There is such thing as too detailed for a manual, in particular when it lacks a "quick dive-in" section that provides an shallow but wide overview of all the main features.

As I said, I followed several of the shapes and paths tutorials. That still didn't make the tool intuitive. I've just found this [1] "crash course" that might have just the right level of detail; it would be great if something like that was linked from Inkscape's help menu with a neon-flashing "start here!" button.

[1] http://www.chrishilbig.com/a-crash-course-in-inkscape/

I'd have thought he meant the Help menu pages, that are themselves Inkscape files, that run through all the basics. I've found them well made and very useful. Eg Help > Tutorials > Basic.

> My experience is with Inkscape is quite different; it certainly doesn't feel intuitive to me.

You haven't even tried to learn the software and still open your post with a statement like that??

Maybe you should watch some tutorial series on YouTube first?

Having to watch tutorials seems the opposite of "intuitive"

I did. Still doesn't help with making sense with the problems of "what tool is selected?" and "what mode is the tool in?".

Gimp prefers the absolute most surprising and unexpected behavior given all available options. Krita designers should be hired to redesign Gimp. If Krita support image editing slightly better, I'm pretty sure no one would use Gimp again.

Inkscape is excellent at surfacing options. Even a novice can discover how to use it simply by reading options available at any time.

I hear this complaint a lot and it always surprises me. I guess I'm just used to it after using it as my primary raster image editor for more than 15 years.

What is it that's particularly unintuitive?

As a user of Gimp of 10+ years and counting, here's some thing that have bitten me several times:

* The multi-window interface. I know you can change this, but there's no good reason for not being the default since the beginning. God help you if you close the layers window and don't know how to bring it back.

* That you cannot save to any format that it's not XCF, but that you have to export to them.

* The sliders to select tool properties, such as brush width. I can slide them (but not all the way from 100 to 0, that requires 6 slides!), I can use the up-down arrows, and I can type a value. But if I want to slide and I click it wrong, I have to enter a number. So now I have to click somewhere else first, and try again. It's frustrating.

* Overlap in functions between different tools. For instance, the perspective tool and the cage tool.

* Fine-tuning a digital tablet. I doubt anyone knows the difference between "screen", "window", and "deactivated".

* Multi-window interface, yeah, that's the first thing I change whenever I use a freshly installed Gimp. Using i3 with multi-window Gimp is a recipe for frustration.

* Only save XCF and export everything else — I was infuriated by that too at first but when you think about it it actually makes a lot of sense. People hit save with the expectation that they can continue their work later, but "saving" to a PNG (or similar) won't preserve your layers, paths, undo history, etc. That particular design decision has really grown on me even though I still hit Save every now and then when I really want to export.

* Sliders being split and acting non-standard, I'll give you that it takes some getting used to. I don't think it's terrible, but maybe enabling Ctrl for fine tuning or something would be better than splitting the slider in the middle without much except a small and somewhat ambiguous cursor change to indicate it.

* I don't think overlap in tool functions is a Gimp only thing. I would expect that in most software that doesn't exclusively operate on the lowest level possible.

* For tablet/screen mode, that's a part of Gimp that I've never used so I obviously have no idea.

> The sliders to select tool properties, such as brush width. I can slide them (but not all the way from 100 to 0, that requires 6 slides!)

Sliders are split, so the top slides over the full range and the bottom is for fine adjustments.

This is totally not obvious. No visual clue hints at this, except maybe the changing cursor shape, not very helpful.

>God help you if you close the layers window and don't know how to bring it back.

Assuming you even know you need to bring it back! I've had the experience of starting up GIMP for the first time, realizing I want to use it later instead, while trying to close it I close each individual panel first, and then the next time I opened it, it apparently remembered that I had closed all of the panels last time and helpfully didn't open them again. Took me a long time to figure out how I was supposed to do anything because I didn't realize anything was missing. I hope whoever has decided that UIs should be in many accidentally-closable-and-forgettable panels has seen the error of their ways or retired by now. See also: every single IDE...

> The multi-window interface. I know you can change this, but there's no good reason for not being the default since the beginning.

There is. It has bugs.

> God help you if you close the layers window and don't know how to bring it back.

You mean god help those people who don't see the Window menu in the menu bar?

> Overlap in functions between different tools. For instance, the perspective tool and the cage tool.

There is no overlap between those two whatsoever. None. Nada. Zilch.

> doubt anyone knows the difference between "screen", "window", and "deactivated".

Everyone who understands English?

Everyone who understands English knows that "gimp" is an offensive term.

In the Window menu you can now select one-window interface. Works great.

> That you cannot save to any format that it's not XCF, but that you have to export to them.

Every. single. time. I. use. Gimp. I. Open. The. Wrong. Save. Window.

I have a complete lack of understanding of the preference for a single-window interface other than to make GIMP look like Photoshop. I can't stand the single-window interface. Inkscape has been nothing but pain for me to try to use (and I can hand-write SVG just fine, so it isn't a lack of understanding of the format), so I must be on a different wavelength than many.

edit:

> God help you if you close the layers window and don't know how to bring it back.

This is true and awful.

Every time I need to use Gimp to make a collage of two screenshots to file a bug report I want to smash my monitor and throw it out of the window.

Gimp workflow/UI just does not stick in my brain. I can get back to using Photoshop after skipping a year and it will feel like I've left yesterday. With Gimp it is always a painful 15-minute struggle to figure out the right combination of controls to press.

I am the opposite. I can work with Gimp effortlessly, but Photoshop is endlessly frustrating. Why can't I access the things I want to do with the right click menu?

Inkscape is actually perfect tool for these tasks. You can also use it to add some annotations while you're at it.

For something that simple, why not use KColourPaint, or some other basic editor?

Last time I tried Gimp (1 year ago), I searched for an option to rotate an image a few degrees. All I found, was rotate by 90 degrees - like in pre-v5 Photoshop. I went back to Paint.net, which is good enough most the times (sadly it's closed source nowadays and gets little updates) - I open use Paint from Win7 too, for really simple things it's very fast.

Not really sure what you are talking about. "rotate" is on the main tool box and exactly how to do it was first google result.

https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-rotate.html https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-layer-rotate-arbitrary.html

Tools you know will always be faster then ones you don't know but that doesn't help people who don't yet know any of the tools.

That's because image formats are (usually?) constrained to be rectangular. You want to use layer->transform rather than image->transform for what you want (and then probably want to crop so you don't have nothing in the background on the edge).

It's not like the other unintuitive program he learned before and therefore it's bad.

Gimp is never going to change radically, since it has already fixed an user base from people that surprising likes that horrible usability (they are everywhere read some of the comments in this thread), the right thing to do is to leave that software with them. Therefore keeping users with bad usability habits in their own little bubble, that being said, Qt developers could join forces to create a proper open source image editing app that makes sense for MOST users.

In my experience, GIMP-hating seems to have a similar lack of specificity to Linux-hating in general. I generally suspect that people underestimate how much Photoshop has them trained.

> Qt developers could join forces to create a proper open source image editing app that makes sense for MOST users.

Do you also believe in vampires and zombies? :)

Agreed! I actually prefer it to Dia or commercial products for drawing diagrams.

Sometimes, it's even useful for simple 2D CAD (for cutting shapes on a desktop CNC mill), editing PDFs or printing the output of KiCAD's PCB exports to check it for errors.

Truly a secret weapon and certainly my favorite open source graphics program.

>I actually prefer it to Dia or commercial products for drawing diagrams.

Does Inkscape have good routing yet?

I don't think so... but it should be implementable as an extension, I would think.