While Inkscape may seem like a knight in shining armor at this point, there are plenty of drawbacks to vector. It’s also worth noting that since these circles are composed of only a few points, the final SVG file size will be tiny compared to a JPG. The circles below are also at 1600%, but remain crystal clear and sharp because vector formats such as SVG or AI will re-render the graphics each time you zoom in, move, stretch, etc. Instead of the pixel based rendering of GIMP, Inkscape uses the geometry of points, lines, and curves as a basis of graphics - vector. At this point, it’s very clear that when I drew circles using GIMP, what it really did was create a bunch of colored squares (pixels) to give the illusion of a circle. Rasterīelow are the circles I drew in GIMP zoomed in 1600%. This is the basis of file formats such as JPG and PNG. This is because GIMP uses raster graphics, which in this case is a pixel-by-pixel grid where each individual pixel’s color value is saved and then displayed on your monitor/screen. So how come Inkscape’s circles are so much sharper when zoomed in?

You probably can’t tell the difference, can you? Vector vs Rasterīelow, I’ve drawn a few circles in each program. The difference between Inkscape and GIMP is that Inkscape uses vector graphics while GIMP uses raster graphics.

It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.” - 2. “GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is used by design professionals and hobbyists worldwide, for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics.” - GIMP “Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. While Inkscape and GIMP do have some similarities as far as open source graphic software goes, they actually have different technology entirely. Whenever I hear somebody ask about the “Inkscape vs GIMP” comparison, I think it’s safe to assume that they may not know the difference between vector and raster graphics.

Inkscape crop raster