There are even some handy tutorials at the program's Wiki page. Unlike some other open source programs, documentation for Inkscape is actually pretty good, too. The image at right is one of the first diagrams I created with this program - any crudeness in the rendering is my fault, not Inkscape's! As you can see, it's easy to integrate lettering, shading, and line drawings or photos.

The user interface is pretty intuitive, and I can do most everything I want to do in preparing illustrations for publication. I have prepared a number of illustrations using Inkscape and have been immensely pleased so far.

Thus, like Illustrator or Corel Draw, it's not intended for photos by themselves (see my previous post on GIMP for that flavor of software). Inkscape is a vector illustrator - this means that rather than dealing with images as a set of pixels, it uses mathematical formulas to describe the curves, lines, text, and shapes that form the image. Among open source problems, however, Inkscape takes the cake. In the world of commercial software, there are some really nice options out there, such as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw. Often, it's nice to to include a little diagram, or line drawing, or composited photo collage, in your paper. A scientist does not live by photos alone.

Photo to line drawing inkscape