Whenever we talk about design and the software used in the area, we only remember the Adobe suite and some competitors such as Corel and Affinity. When we put open source software in this discussion, we see that look of strangeness, suspicion and thoughts like: "the UI of these programs is horrible", "it does not do this", "nor that", "it takes me longer to do anything about it" , etc.

We have to agree that the history of these programs really justifies this bias. Theses software not always were well thought out for professionals in the field, looking like those legacy systems without usability, created only by programmers.

Currently, this is not the case with Inkscape. I have used it on a day-to-day basis and it behaves very similarly to CorelDRAW. For those who have already used it, the learning curve will be small. There is even the possibility of adding Corel shortcuts to make the experience even simpler.

Brief history

O Inkscape was born in 2003, as a variant of a program called Sodipodi.

Sodipodi screen: Yes, he was ugly like that...

From the Sodipodi source code, a fork was made and a new vector program was implemented. Unlike the Sodipodi that originated it, Inkscape has the premise of using the SVG format as the standard for the program. Much of the program's limitations come from its base format, SVG¹, which does not support some features.

Cons

• No native CMYK: there is still no native support for the CMYK color format. This ends up limiting, but not preventing, the creation of layouts for printing.
• NO support for multiple pages (artboards): due to the limitation imposed by the SVG format, which does not have a specification on pages, Inkscape also does not have an implementation. To get around this, you can use the layers, and save each one as a separate file in the final export.
• Interface: if you are a little critical about the user interface, you will find that the Inkscape interface is slightly lacking, especially regarding the icons. In version 1.0 at least, they have made a good improvement in this area.
• It is not a professional standard: by using Inkscape, this does not mean that you should not learn Illustrator, if you want to be really ready for the market. However, by knowing the concepts of one program, learning another is easier.
• Instability: it can be a little unstable at times, closing without warning... To me this only happened in 'beta' versions, not in stable ones. Either I was lucky, or the program is not that unstable.

Pros

• It's free: you don't have to pay to start using it. There is no license or monthly fee.
• Large community on the internet: several tutorials are available on the internet to help the beginner in the software.
• Practicality: Inkscape tools seem to be more practical to use, compared to some in Illustrator. As an example, just click a second time on the selected object to go to rotation mode, à la CorelDRAW.
• Light: a lot of my criticism of current software is how bloated and slow they are. Inkscape does not suffer from this problem. Mainly on Linux-based systems, which is the program's native platform.
• Multiplatform: is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

And is it worth it?

If you are interested in using a vector program that does not lose almost anything to competitors, it is worth it. It has everything you need to make good illustrations, images for the internet, social media, icons, fonts, etc.

"Almost nothing? What about CMYK?
I can't work without CMYK!" Graphic designer

Then, indeed, we will have to wait for this implementation. Unfortunately, for designers looking to print their work, we still don't have such a simple flow in Inkscape. At the moment it is necessary to import the SVG file generated in another application with CMYK support, or to convert colors using external tools. If you are not willing to use this flow, Inkscape is not yet for you.