Differences between Inkscape and Illustrator

For vector design there is more than one option of which program to use, and at FabLab Reykjavík we have Illustrator and Inkscape installed on the computers. Illustrator is a commercial product by Adobe and Inkscape is an open-source program. I have mostly been using Inkscape for now, but while learning about Illustrator, I am taking notes of the differences, trying to construct some kind of a guide.

My first impression of Illustrator is that while in inkscape the basic approach is to work with shapes, Illustrator seems to see things more as collections of lines. For example, while tracing a bitmap, Inkscape by default traces it as shapes on top of each other, but Illustrator as strokes that may or may not be connected at their end nodes.

Movement tools

Getting used to moving around in one program has clear advantages while it makes you able to move around efficiently without having to think about it, but when shifting to another program it's a bit frustrating how the same commands suddenly produce different results. Both of the programs have similar ways of moving around the canvas, but through a bit different key combinations.

	up & down	left & right	zoom in/out	pan
Illustrator	mouse wheel	ctrl + mouse wheel	alt + mouse wheel	space + left mouse button
Inkscape	mouse wheel	shift + mouse wheel	ctrl + mouse wheel	space

One of the things I have to remind myself about is that while in Incscape pressing ctrl+z undoes and ctrl+y redoes, in Illustrator, while ctrl+z is undo, to redo is ctrl+shift+z instead of ctrl+y.

Draving tools

		left & right	zoom in/out	pan
Illustrator	mouse wheel	ctrl + mouse wheel	alt + mouse wheel	space + left mouse button
Inkscape	mouse wheel	shift + mouse wheel	ctrl + mouse wheel	space