Open Source SVG Editor Inkscape 1.3 Now Available With New Shape Builder Tool, Many Changes

2023-08-02 08:00:00

Inkscape, the powerful free, open source, cross-platform Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editor, was updated today to stable version 1.3, a major release that introduces new features and many improvements.

Inkscape 1.3 is here one year and two months after Inkscape 1.2 and introduces a new tool called Shape Builder, which allows you to create new shapes by combining and building new paths even from multiple overlapping shapes. Best of all, the new shapes will also retain their original color.

Also new is a Document Resources dialog that can display statistics about your documents and gives you a more efficient way to organize your Inkscape documents. Also, a new font collections feature will help those of you who have too many fonts in your collection to better categorize them.

Inkscape 1.3 also brings a new pattern editor that allows you to adjust a pattern, adjust pattern parameters such as shapes, sizes, and rotation, as well as change colors for your version of a pattern, and adapt offset.

The Layers and Objects dialog received some enhancements in this release to allow you to adjust the opacity or blending mode of a layer using the slider, as well as hide or lock objects with a single swipe by dragging multiple objects at once.

This release also makes it easier to quickly adjust snap settings, gives you more control over the margins and bleed of a document when preparing for printing, and makes it easier to select nodes that are difficult to select with rectangle selection by holding Hold down the Alt key and draw.

Last but not least, the Live Path Effects (LPE) dialog has been redesigned for quick and easy access, the PDF import functionality has been rewritten with a new dialog that gives you an overview of what Inkscape will do with each font it finds in a PDF Document and improved node removal logic.

Inkscape 1.3 also makes it easy to find your favorite colors on the palette by pinning them, as well as customize the size of color swatches, allows you to copy and paste objects from one page to another that will land in the same position, and makes the Filters dialog easy to use. Easier to use.

For more details about the changes implemented in this version, see the release notes . In the meantime, you can download Inkscape 1.3 right now from the official Web site as a universal AppImage binary format that you can use on any GNU/Linux distribution without installing anything on your computer.