InkDraw
Winning vector graphics or just another bit of budget pixel painting?
£7.99 Developer Zhang Guangjian, inkdraw.lofter.com
Requires OS X 10.10 or higher
Not everyone has the budget for Adobe Illustrator, so what cheaper options are out there? Well, there’s InkDraw, a fairly new kid on the block that its devs call “a powerful vector graphics editor”. We were intrigued – can you really get an Illustrator alternative for under a tenner?
After loading the app we were struck by how simple the interface looks. It appears, perhaps, a little spartan and is definitely an app for beginners, with the vector tools mainly situated on the left in a similar, simpler style to the big boys in the market. Not a promising start, by all accounts.
That said, everything seems fairly well laid out and easy to get to grips with. You get some basic shapes like stars, circles and squares, along with a pen tool; we were impressed you were able to stroke the vectors and even create dotted lines along the shapes or paths. You can also use these shapes to cut one away from the other or combine them.
Yet it soon becomes clear InkDraw is lacking the depth of other vector rivals. There do also seem to be bugs aplenty. At times it’s fiddly to use and has a knack of allowing you to zoom into a selected area, then fail to display anything. Rather more worryingly, the app can sometimes get overloaded and crash if dealing with more than just a handful of on-screen elements. Ultimately, this is a cheap product and it’s clear to see why. Adobe Illustrator has nothing to fear. James Robinson
Basic vector software not without bugs. It seems to struggle with anything too demanding.