making figures

Umesh recently discussed making figures with Inkscape (video tutorials), whose motto is ‘Draw Freely’, which we’ll get to (associated files). Inkscape is another vector graphics editor. It’s free and open source (information about open source alternatives). You can use it to edit figures generated using MATLAB and can also use it to make posters for conferences.

Umesh started his presentation by reviewing the differences between vector graphics (VGs) and raster graphics (RGs), which include that VGs are composed of fonts, line art and illustrations, whereas RGs are images. VG formats include EPS, PDF, AI and SVG, whereas those for RG are JPG, BMP, PNG and TIFF.

He also reviewed what we’d covered before: MATLAB, use code to generate your figures, try to do as much as possible in it (so before export), and what you see on the screen does not map to what prints in a straightforward way (meaning you need to do work to get it right); Adobe Illustrator, powerful vector graphics editor, but expensive (in Umesh’s view); Intaglio, simple interface, but Mac only. This gets us to Inkscape. Well, how did he get to Inkscape?

He had been using Microsoft PowerPoint which he thought of as convenient, but constrained in having a max page size (bad for posters). That size constraint was fixed, meaning there was nothing you could do in the case of conferences for which you needed to go bigger. From there, to Adobe Illustrator, which he used and liked, but found to be too expensive to install on his personal machines. He started to use Inkscape. Everything looks pretty simple, with a single bar of tools, similar to those in Adobe Illustrator and Intaglio.

Here is his first real Inkscape project, which was to make this greeting card for Prof. Al Bovik. The background is text from his work (papers, etc.).

Here is Umesh’s first poster with Inkscape. He notes that it was very easy to add images, it takes EPS and PDF files. You can also use LaTeX equations (no problems with that). Probably made this poster on a Mac. On running on Mac, we believe it is possible to run Inkscape natively and found a video that seemed to support that, but we’re not really sure.

Stepping back and reviewing, things Umesh likes about it are: that it’s free, so you can use it anywhere (on any machine and for any purpose); it provides the features that he used in Adobe Illustrator; it has useful extensions, such as for equations (built-in LaTeX engine with editing), function plotters and replace font. Adobe Illustrator is $200 and works on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Inkscape is free and works on the three major operating systems. More feature comparison is available from Inkscape. In some sense, these application wars are a variant of ‘Get a Mac’.

Here are links to a couple things made in Inkscape, in case you’re of the belief that it’s impossible to use it to make professional looking things: a yellow Ferrari by Gilles Pinard and a lady named Megan by Luciano Lourenço.

Final thoughts from Umesh were to give Inkscape a shot. It’s free! You might find it ‘professional enough’. Current users in LCV are Umesh, Yan, Rich and Rob. Also, remember that there is proprietary software and there are proprietary formats. So don’t send things as DOC or AI, but as something that everyone can open and edit. Umesh also wanted me to mention plot2svg.m, which converts 3D and 2D MATLAB plots to SVG.