4:27 a.m.
Some more praise:
We use Inkscape to make posters for scientific meetings. The ease with
which we can create beautiful, unintrusive text boxes and flow charts is
unparalleled. And of course cartoons of all sorts. I can't hardly
believe we used to bring in PowerPoint for the task! those nightmarish
days are over. Plus, Inkscape intergrates very well with the host OS,
i.e. dragging and dropping images and text just works.
In this regard, I must mention that exporting to PDF is a big deal.
Figuring out the exact dimensions of the poster relative to the final
print is some sort of obscure magic for us, simple mortal users. With
PDFs, printers (or their drivers) have zero problems to scale on the fly
and thus generate perfect maximized print outs of our gigantic posters.
What surpises me, though, is that exporting to PDF seems to leave images
uncompressed, resulting in 300+ Mb posters.
In short: congratulations! And keep at it! We take time to tell our
visitors (at the poster, during the conference) how the poster was made,
since they usually comment on how beautiful it looks (no kidding).
Inkscape, Blender and ImageJ are always mentioned.
Albert
--
Albert Cardona
Molecular Cell Developmental Biology
University of California Los Angeles
Tel +1 310 2067376
Programming: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/trakem2.html
<http://www.pensament.net/java/>
Research: http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Hartenstein/
6:43 a.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
On 2007-April-28 , at 06:27 , Albert Cardona wrote:
We use Inkscape to make posters for scientific meetings. The ease
with
which we can create beautiful, unintrusive text boxes and flow
charts is
unparalleled. And of course cartoons of all sorts. I can't hardly
believe we used to bring in PowerPoint for the task! those nightmarish
days are over. Plus, Inkscape intergrates very well with the host OS,
i.e. dragging and dropping images and text just works.
In this regard, I must mention that exporting to PDF is a big deal.
Figuring out the exact dimensions of the poster relative to the final
print is some sort of obscure magic for us, simple mortal users. With
PDFs, printers (or their drivers) have zero problems to scale on
the fly
and thus generate perfect maximized print outs of our gigantic
posters.
That's very nice to know! I also use Inkscape to do scientific
posters and as I don't want to bother with scaling computations I
usually design it directly at final size. Inkscape deals as easily
with a 1m*1m page than with an A4 one and it allows me to specify
sizes (including font sizes) in cm and get a better feeling of how
big things will actually be. In addition, raster images (jpeg, png,
tiff and the like) are often imported among the scalable objects and
having them included at their final size allows me to know how
pixelized they will appear in print.
What surpises me, though, is that exporting to PDF seems to leave
images
uncompressed, resulting in 300+ Mb posters.
I don't know which pdf exporter you used (regular PDF or Cairo PDF)
but at some point these exporters "rasterize" some elements (another
reason why designing the poster at final size in interesting: these
elements still look sharp and crisp). Transparent areas or gradients
for example are converted from scalable entities to a bunch of
pixels. Given how big posters usually are it implies creating a large
number of pixels hence the size. Nevertheless I never experienced
such large sizes!
In short: congratulations! And keep at it! We take time to tell our
visitors (at the poster, during the conference) how the poster was
made,
since they usually comment on how beautiful it looks (no kidding).
Inkscape, Blender and ImageJ are always mentioned.
I usually include inkscape logo in a corner of the poster, together
with the website address, to give credit to the Inkscape team for
their work. Inkscape logo is so nice and original that it can even
attract readers!
There is section on the website dedicated to use cases of Inkscape in
"real life". What about adding a part explaining the design of
scientific posters? I had prepared a few screenshots some time ago
and I re-wrote accompanying texts (see below - please correct my
english where necessary). What do people think? Is it good enough for
the website?
BTW Bryce or anyone, it seems I can't connect to inkscape.org
currently (I get a 104 error: "Connection reset by peer" from osuosl)
--------------------------
A scientific poster has to be precisely organized, full of
information, yet visually attracting to gather a large audience.
Furthermore it should be printable at different sizes (final size
poster and handouts). Inkscape gives us scalability and an
unparalleled ease of use which allow to meet these goals elegantly.
It make you forget the nightmarish days when you used PowerPoint for
the task!
The poster below was designed entirely in Inkscape for presentation
on a 4-foot-high by 8-foot-wide poster board (1.2m x 2.4m). The page
size was set up to be the final printing size because Inkscape deals
with it as well as with an A4 page.
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/
poster_publish_ghostscript.pdf
[WARNING: big file. 7.5 Mb]
Temporarily masking layers and using the outline mode allowed to work
on this complicated file (> 5000 paths, large amount of text) while
keeping things responsive enough even on a mid level laptop.
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/poster_inkscape_outline.png
The gradients and scripts from the "Effects" menu helped to create an
attractive look [note: this was pre 0.45 so blur was not current
yet]. The bitmap tracing feature and Open Clipart Library provided
scale independent eye candy for some illustrations.
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/poster_inkscape_eye_candy.png
The text was flowed into custom shaped frames so that it had a
"clever" position with respect to the graphics. It was edited though
the Text Tool palette which was easier on the eye and helped to focus
on content rather than on layout for a while.
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/poster_inkscape_text.png
All scientific plots were produced in scalable formats and converted
to SVG. They were therefore completely editable within the poster
which allowed to have a unified look (for the fonts, line width,
colors etc.). The "Apply style" command (SHIFT+CTRL+V), the styles
bar and the swatches panel, helped to work with styles quickly and
easily.
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/poster_inkscape_style1.png
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/dropbox/inkscape/poster_inkscape_style2.png
Finally the SVG file was exported to EPS or PDF for print. The text
was converted to shapes to avoid font problems when bringing the file
to the printing company. The PDF scaled down nicely to fit an A4 and
hence serve as handouts.
--------------------------
JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
7:35 a.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
Hi Jiho,
I have no problem in writing a short article on how to compose posters
for scientific conferences. I will put though a lot more attention to
the poster itself -the art of catching the eye, balancing color
contents, and doing whatever possible to attract attention, while
delivering minimal but memorable information. Then, inserted, I'd put in
tip-boxes on how to accomplish a given feature of the poster using Inkscape.
Sharing my posters is not a problem either, but they are *big*. 100 Mb
is about the smallest -they're heavy on high-resolution images (I can,
of course, make low-res jpegs if them, since they are uncompressed tiffs
in most cases). Images are usually way bigger than their actual printing
size in the poster (like, close to 12000 x 30000 pixels in one
instance), that is why I don't care about automatic on-the-fly rescaling
of the PDFs that Inkscape generates.
Before 0.45, I had to create an encapsulated postcript and then use
eps2pdf to create pdfs -but then transparencies were gone (AFAIK
postscript doesn't support them, or for some reason they didn't make it
to the .eps file). Otherwise printers take the postcript and never
rescale it to fit in the 43 inch paper roll -which is, honestly, a pain
I should not spend time worrying about. And noone else for that matter.
There is a measure of "good enough" where any work has reached a very
presentable state while managing to avoid almost all annoying,
voraciously-time-consuming details.
Albert
Albert Cardona
Molecular Cell Developmental Biology
University of California Los Angeles
Tel +1 310 2067376
Programming: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/trakem2.html
<http://www.pensament.net/java/>
Research: http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/Hartenstein/
8:21 a.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
On 2007-April-28 , at 09:35 , Albert Cardona wrote:
I have no problem in writing a short article on how to compose
posters for scientific conferences. I will put though a lot more
attention to the poster itself -the art of catching the eye,
balancing color contents, and doing whatever possible to attract
attention, while delivering minimal but memorable information.
Then, inserted, I'd put in tip-boxes on how to accomplish a given
feature of the poster using Inkscape.
I don't know if it is really the intend of the showcase section to
explain the design part of the poster, in particular because there
are already numerous resources about this on the web (I guess you may
know this one: http://www.tos.org/pdfs/sci_speaking.pdf). In my
opinion it is more a showcase for Inkscape *features* i.e. explaining
what makes it easier to work with Inkscape than with other software,
how to achieve some effects with Inkscape etc. However if you write
such an article I will surely be interested in it!
Sharing my posters is not a problem either, but they are *big*. 100
Mb is about the smallest -they're heavy on high-resolution images
(I can, of course, make low-res jpegs if them, since they are
uncompressed tiffs in most cases). Images are usually way bigger
than their actual printing size in the poster (like, close to 12000
x 30000 pixels in one instance), that is why I don't care about
automatic on-the-fly rescaling of the PDFs that Inkscape generates.
OK that's probably the explanation for the large size of your
posters. It is true that high resolution uncompressed TIFFs are the
best way to get nice results once printed, especially if you scale
them up, but it is possible to achieve smaller sizes without
sacrificing quality. I usually resize my images to their final
physical size using a good quality scaling algorithm (Cubic or
Lanczos interpolation in Gimp), use a resolution of 150dpi, and save
them in PNG. 150dpi is smaller than the printer's resolution but I
find it good enough for a poster, given that they are meant to be
viewed from a distance. PNG compression does not affect image quality
(as opposed to JPEG compression). This results in 1300*1750 pixels
for a A4 size picture for example, which weights 2Mb in PNG versus
6.5Mb in TIFF.
The only cumbersome part is that Inkscape does not currently honor
resolution settings of imported image and rescales them to obtain a
90dpi resolution so I have to manually resize them in the toolbar
after importing them but, well, I need to do it only once for each
image.
Before 0.45, I had to create an encapsulated postcript and then use
eps2pdf to create pdfs -but then transparencies were gone (AFAIK
postscript doesn't support them, or for some reason they didn't
make it to the .eps file).
You are right postscript does not support transparency.
Otherwise printers take the postcript and never rescale it to fit
in the 43 inch paper roll -which is, honestly, a pain I should not
spend time worrying about. And noone else for that matter. There is
a measure of "good enough" where any work has reached a very
presentable state while managing to avoid almost all annoying,
voraciously-time-consuming details.
Another reason why I use final size from the start. I really don't
want to worry about the scaling issues with the printer, about how my
images will look once scaled etc. Working at final size throughout
the production phase prevents you from bad surprises at the end (and
given that there is always a rush to get those poster printed before
boarding the plane for the meeting it is really valuable to know that
everything will go smoothly!)
JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
12:41 p.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
On 2007-April-28 , at 10:21 , jiho wrote:
On 2007-April-28 , at 09:35 , Albert Cardona wrote:
> I have no problem in writing a short article on how to compose
> posters for scientific conferences. I will put though a lot more
> attention to the poster itself -the art of catching the eye,
> balancing color contents, and doing whatever possible to attract
> attention, while delivering minimal but memorable information.
> Then, inserted, I'd put in tip-boxes on how to accomplish a given
> feature of the poster using Inkscape.
I don't know if it is really the intend of the showcase section to
explain the design part of the poster, in particular because there
are already numerous resources about this on the web (I guess you
may know this one: http://www.tos.org/pdfs/sci_speaking.pdf). In my
opinion it is more a showcase for Inkscape *features* i.e.
explaining what makes it easier to work with Inkscape than with
other software, how to achieve some effects with Inkscape etc.
However if you write such an article I will surely be interested in
it!
Just some additional thoughts on this: if you wish to write an
article explaining how to catch the eye, how to choose good colors
etc. but focusing on how Inkscape helps you achieve these goals (e.g.
the color swatches which help you keep a unified color palette) I
think it would be well suited for the showcase section. Maybe that's
what you meant by the "tip-boxes".
JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
4:43 p.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 02:41:53PM +0200, jiho wrote:
On 2007-April-28 , at 10:21 , jiho wrote:
> On 2007-April-28 , at 09:35 , Albert Cardona wrote:
>> I have no problem in writing a short article on how to compose
>> posters for scientific conferences. I will put though a lot more
>> attention to the poster itself -the art of catching the eye,
>> balancing color contents, and doing whatever possible to attract
>> attention, while delivering minimal but memorable information.
>> Then, inserted, I'd put in tip-boxes on how to accomplish a given
>> feature of the poster using Inkscape.
>
> I don't know if it is really the intend of the showcase section to
> explain the design part of the poster, in particular because there
> are already numerous resources about this on the web (I guess you
> may know this one: http://www.tos.org/pdfs/sci_speaking.pdf). In my
> opinion it is more a showcase for Inkscape *features* i.e.
> explaining what makes it easier to work with Inkscape than with
> other software, how to achieve some effects with Inkscape etc.
> However if you write such an article I will surely be interested in
> it!
Just some additional thoughts on this: if you wish to write an
article explaining how to catch the eye, how to choose good colors
etc. but focusing on how Inkscape helps you achieve these goals (e.g.
the color swatches which help you keep a unified color palette) I
think it would be well suited for the showcase section. Maybe that's
what you meant by the "tip-boxes".
I think this is an *excellent* idea - things like this would really help
get the word out.
It would be great to see more articles published beyond our usual
Linux-focused publications, to get the word pushed out beyond just the
FOSS circles. So if you know of any science/education type
publications, they might be great to focus on.
Bryce
6:22 a.m.
New subject: [Inkscape-devel] In praise of Inkscape
Hi Albert,
On 4/28/07, Albert Cardona <cardona@...2196...> wrote:
I have no problem in writing a short article on how to compose
posters
for scientific conferences. I will put though a lot more attention to
the poster itself -the art of catching the eye, balancing color
contents, and doing whatever possible to attract attention, while
delivering minimal but memorable information. Then, inserted, I'd put in
tip-boxes on how to accomplish a given feature of the poster using Inkscape.
What about this. Are you still ready to write a short article about
using Inkscape to create nice posters? I'll be glad to see this on the
website and to add my experience to it also, if you need it. Bryce was
also talking about publishing this in a non Linux-oriented magazine. I
don't know to which extent this could be feasible though.
Cheers,
--
JiHO
--
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
6042
days inactive
6065
days old
inkscape-user@lists.inkscape.org
6 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Albert Cardona -
Bryce Harrington -
jiho