Garden Planner Review

Faced with the daunting task of transforming a vacant fenced block of land, I was about to boot up Microsoft Visio (which I'd used before for house plans) before I thought to myself - "there must be a better way".

Well I found that way, and it is an affordable piece of shareware called Garden Planner.  However it takes a bit of patience.  On first use I was amazed by the sheer number of pre-loaded symbols for common landcaping including trees, fences, paths, vegetable gardens and the like. 

On the whole this software seems quite powerful and intuitive, although I found that initially I could not create a border or fence.  I worked out that you could double click to complete a border, but sometimes it just wouldn't allow you to delete and create a new one.  After several frustrating attempts of closing the software and reloading, I finally worked the quirks of the system and managed to - with several saves - get the hang of it.. Other than that, my only other griefs were that the software tended to crash and the scale and grid options are initially a little tricky to find.

But overall, Garden Planner is a neat and complete little piece of software that allows you to save, export and print a garden design.

Check it out at:
www.smallblueprinter.com/garden/

Inkscape - free Adobe Illustrator alternative an Illustrator killer ?

Had my first experiment with Inkscape 0.46, this week.

I searched for and found this vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator because I can't afford the exorbitant licencing for Adobe Illustrator and CS2, CS4 or whatever the latest is. I'm not a designer, but I occasionally do however need to work with vector art.

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based upon mathematical equations, to represent images. With applications like Illustrator, you don't need to know the science behind it, but you typically do require some sort of knowledge.

Anyway, I must say, I'm very impressed with this application. I actually found it to be simpler, self explanatory and more intuitive than Illustrator. Most people take Adobe Illustrator courses to do the sort of stuff I was doing within minutes of picking up Inkscape. It is certainly quicker, snappier and less bloated for machines with a lower spec and it is very easy to pick up and run with.

While I don't use the top end features of Illustrator (I'm certain some design gurus would tell me that this freeware application doesn't quite have the grunt or power of Adobe's product), Inkscape is great for the occassional vector designer.

As a Windows user and novice designer, I'd have to say in terms of Inkscape vs Illustrator, Inkscape is much better for me.