2

FIELD TEST

he most popular vector design

programs are Adobe Illustrator and

Inkscape. Years of development and

updates have kept these applications

toe-to-toe as far as features go. The

most glaring difference is that Inkscape

is open source, which of course makes it completely

free. Illustrator, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, can

be licensed alone or as part of a suite of dozens of

other design applications. On its owe it’s going to

cost you at least $19.99 per month (if you commit to

a full year).

You won’t find many feature differences between

the two programs. Both contain the core tools for

designing for laser cutting, such as creating shapes,

drawing freehand curves, working with metric and

imperial systems, detailed control point editing, and

even converting bitmaps (though Illustrator’s presets

and faster previews make it much easier to get a

laser-ready result). Locating all these tools is where

these programs start to diverge.

T

Adobe Illustrator

vs Inkscape

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR $19.99/MONTH adobe.com INKSCAPE FREE inkscape.org

Adobe Illustrator

A solid product

with tons of

features, great

support, and

familiar controls

Inkscape

Can do all the

essentials

and more, but

interface and

speed can’t

compare to

Illustrator

9

7

/ 10

/ 10

VERDICT

Illustrator uses the classic Adobe interface, with

icons and toolbars you may be familiar with from

other Creative Cloud programs. Tools are grouped

together on the toolbars and windows, and tabs for

other features can be moved around and hidden,

letting you set up quick access to anything you use

frequently. If you can’t find a tool, the search bar will

not only track it down for you but also drop a giant

arrow on the menu where you can locate it next time.

Inkscape’s UI is very different, but not necessarily

in a bad way. Familiar Adobe icons are replaced with

colourful ones that do an excellent job of describing

their use. Even the menu bar and its sub-menus have

descriptive icons next to them. When it comes to

detailed manipulation of control points, Inkscape has a

sidebar on the right for setting various snapping rules.

Illustrator has fewer options buried in a menu, but it

outshines Inkscape in that it makes snapping control

points automatic. When you get near another point

(even a point in another object), Illustrator will nudge

you right on top of it and preview in real-time where it

will land. Inkscape, on the other hand, only snaps the

point once you drop it.

Inkscape can also be slower to use. For starters,

it is literally slower. The non-standard keyboard

shortcuts and lack of trackpad support forces users to

actually find and click on tools (the default for zoom,

for example, is a bewildering F3). Inkscape lacks tabs

or multiple artboards like in Illustrator, which we’ve

found lets you work on different layers of a laser cut

side-by-side. Maybe the most trivial but frustrating

thing as a designer is that Inkscape’s interface isn’t

high-res and looks pixellated on newer monitors. One

last bonus for Illustrator is its connection to the Adobe

Cloud, allowing you to sync files between machines.

Ultimately, either of these programs can do

everything you need to create a laser-ready file, so it

really comes down to which is more convenient for

you to work with.