I wouldn't act a fool as to imply that I don't regard Adobe Photoshop® as most eligible candidate for reigning as the king of kings of Digital Imaging Software for the home pc enthusiast using a Microsoft Windows platform; amateur and professional graphic design artists alike, however, it is not the end-all, be-all of graphic design, and in my opinion, not the preferred application for creating drawings from scratch. I will be so bold to suggest it is foolish not to investigate the possibilities for the high quality creative vector drawing results to be had using the Open Source SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) software, Inkscape.
Inkscape
Don't be so surprised if you've never heard of Inkscape-- in fact, I believe that not nearly enough people are aware of the powerful capabilities available in Inkscape. Surely, I mean to do my part in spreading the news.
I am quite fond of Inkscape. I find that I rule a creative dominion when working with Inkscape, quite more ethereal and free to peruse my thoughts in shapes and colors; expressions in artistic form than what might be fostered for me by Adobe Illustrator, or even my previous favourite, Macromedia Freehand. I highly recommend you download and install the Current Stable Release of Inkscape for Windows.
If you're into trying nightly builds and beta software, then you just may be blown away by what the Inkscape developers have up their sleeves for forthcoming releases of the software. From new interface icons and buttons in general, to a plethora of realistic, practical effects in the collection found in the latest nightly build of the Software-- it's clear that Inkscape users are in touch with greatness. After you've installed the stable release, go grab one of the nightly builds at the Inkscape.org Win32 Nightly Build Download Mirror to see what fun is on the horizon for current and future Inkscape users.
the Palette Grabber Firefox Extension
But this article isn't all about endorsing Inkscape, though it would be fine to leave it at that. If you're a Firefox, Seamonkey, Netscape, or Flock user (or any other mozilla gecko-based browser which supports user-developed .xpi add-on extensions), and a creative artist of some sort, chances are you'll find a use for the Palette Grabber extension.
Paulette who?
Sometimes, the best way to create a new digital image; graphic design drawing with just the right colors and hue is to adhere to a strict set of colors, known as a palette. A digital imaging software palette, such as the Adobe Photoshop® .aco file, or the .psppalette file of PaintShop Pro® are not unlike the set of colors chosen by an oil paint artist who tends to be seen with so many gobs of paint on the physical, wooden palette in his grip.
The Palette Grabber affords just such a color collection for the everyday web developer, or graphic designer who's been fortunate enough to get his or her hands on this extension. A simple click of the Palette Grabber toolbar icon saves as a palette, all of the colors of the currently loaded web page into one (or several if you like) of the multiple digital imaging software file formats available-- one of which is .GPL, the palette file format native to the G.I.M.P., the GNU [Open Source] Image Manipulation Program-- the same palette file format of Inkscape.
Making Magic
Point your web browser to the site of your choice, click the Palette Grabber and save the document as G.I.M.P. format. Ensure that Inkscape is NOT open, and copy the .gpl palette file into the Inkscape program path (probably C:\Program Files\inkscape\share\palettes on your system). Open Inkscape, select View ⇒ Palette. You should find your freshly saved palette among the standard Inkscape list. You may switch the current design palette by selecting a button on the palette toolbar (bottom-right of the Inkscape interface), and then selecting your custom palette from that pop-out list. The custom palette should appear in the toolbar, providing you only the colors of the web site you saved with Palette Grabber. (note: upon experimenting with this process, i found that my saved palette was the one without a title. this might indicate a need to move such custom palettes in and out of the Inkscape palette folder as needed. i'll update this article if i discover more reliable, conclusive data on this minute particular.)
With Inkscape and the Palette Grabber in your arsenal of artistic mayhem, you're bound to unleash upon with brute force, and conquer your own creative domain! What are you waiting for? Go grab the software and get to work!
NOTE: This is a duplicate of an entry from my Primary Web Log, NoviceNotes.Net , where the Mozilla XPI Author, kprevas, has provided some commentary
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