Inkscape Announces 0.45 Release

[Bryce Harrington <bryce bryceharrington org>]

                    Inkscape Announces 0.45 Release
                http://www.inkscape.org :: Draw Freely.

The Inkscape community today announces the newest version of its vector
graphic drawing software.  Inkscape 0.45 features a new Gaussian Blur
SVG filter.  Sponsored by Google's Summer of Code program, Gaussian Blur
allows you to softly and naturally blur any Inkscape objects, including
shapes, text, and images.  This enables a wide range of photorealistic
effects: arbitrarily shaped shades and lights, depth of field, drop
shadows, glows, etc. Also, blurred objects can be used as masks for
other objects to achieve the "feathered mask" effect. 

Numerous other new features, enhancements to existing features, and bug
fixes have been included. A history dialog allows you to browse your
change history.  Many new extension effects are added including Pattern
along Path and Color Effects.  There have been performance improvements
to rendering speed, on the order of 2-3% in general, and up to 5-10% for
drawings using heavy transparency and/or radial gradients.  Compositing
quality is also improved through the removal of banding seen in
gradients.

Download Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X packages:

     http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93438

For many more details, see the complete Release Notes for 0.45:
 
     http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_Notes045

Community submitted screenshots:
 
     http://www.inkscape.org/screenshots/

About Inkscape
==============
Inkscape is an open source drawing tool that uses the World Wide Web
Consortium's (W3C) scalable vector graphics format (SVG). Some supported
SVG features include basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha
blending, transforms, gradients, and grouping. In addition, Inkscape
supports Creative Commons' metadata, node-editing, layers, complex path
operations, text-on-path, text-in-shape, and SVG XML editing. It can
also import EPS, PostScript, and most bitmap formats, and exports PNG,
PS, PDF and various vector formats.

Inkscape's main motivation is to provide the Open Source community with
a fully W3C compliant XML, SVG, and CSS2 drawing tool. Additional work
includes conversion of the codebase from C/Gtk to C++/Gtkmm, emphasizing
a lightweight core with powerful features added through an extension
mechanism, and maintaining a friendly, open, community-oriented
development process.