Four FREE and GREAT Programs I discovered this week

Inkscape Does The Vector Work For You

The week started off with me spending hours creating vector images in Illustrator CS, that does not have live trace. I yearned to try live trace and while researching various forums to see if it really was the be all and end all of vector-creation, I was led to a completely free program called Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org.) I don't usually like to download and install new programs on my own, but was in a daring mood that night and did it, anyway.

Wow.

I mean Wow.

I played with that for days, converting photos I had taken into beautiful, full-color vectors. Wow. The only drawback is that if you get too carried away, you'll end up with 100+ meg EPS files.

That led me to another problem. Windows, in all its wisdom, wouldn't allow me to delete the files. I could reboot until the cows left again and every time I tried to delete I'd get a message saying the file was being used by another program.

Deleting Problem Files In Windows On A PC

In searching for a solution to this problem I discovered Unlocker Assistant at,
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/. It too is a free program, but they accept donations. I installed it and once again was blown away. To get rid of the unwanted files, all I had to do was right click on the file and poof, it would give me an option to delete and it worked. It also told me what program was tying up my files; Turns out it was Internet Explorer. Go figure.

Free Plugin Checks Vector Paths

Now, after doing all this, I had to make sure that all those vector paths were closed in my new artwork, and if you use Illustrator, you know this can be tricky. That's when I was told about a free Adobe Plugin called The Select Menu Plugin (CS and CS2) that allows you to check for open paths, closed paths and much, much more right from Illustrator's select dropdown. It worked like a charm. The program is available here, http://rj-graffix.com/software/plugins.html. It saved me hours of work and I can't recommend it enough.

Make Your Own Grunge Brush Font for $9

Then, this morning, I discovered the coolest way to create your own grunge brushes that will work in any program. I have many little vector fleurons that I use to create backgrounds. I create larger projects by piecing together the small fleurons and scrolls, but I was thinking today that it would be great to have a font made with the basic shapes. Then I discovered Fontifier (http://www.fontifier.com/). At this site you can submit your handwriting and have it turned into a font. The test is free and you can see the font before you purchase it (USD $9). I downloaded their template, pasted all my little fleurons and shapes into the designated squares in Illustrator, exported a 100 dpi jpg and uploaded it to their system. Now, as you can imagine, this did not give me a good quality glyph (I hear it works great for handwriting though, which it was designed for). What it did give me was a really convenient way to create a grunge effect in my artwork. I just used my battered font glyphs! You can add dozens of them and have them all there, in any program, to use at your convenience.

Comments

[India]

Boy, do I wish I'd had Inkscape at my last job. I have CS2 at work now, but it's still good to know about!

And a friend of mine set the title of this bestseller [http://www.amazon.com/Man-without-Country-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/158322713X/] using a Fontifier-made typeface.

[Kevin Cole]

You actually converted the files with Inkscape? In my rather limited experience, it merely embedded the original file inside SVG tags. My images pretend to be vector images, in actuality appear to be bitmaps with vector trappings.