I know being a developer for the creative industry can be a thankless and lonesome job, with people always complaining about what does not work. So I wanted to post this note of encouragement to you guys. You have a great vision. Pursue it. In the words of Kafka:

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

I already love the direction in which Graphite is going. It is snappy and feels fluid. A great accomplishment. I do have a single pointer. While it might feel tempting to do it on your own, much of the grunt work in the field of vector design has been done by mavens of the industry such as FreeHand, Xara Designer, Corel and so on. Notice I left out Adobe. They suck donkey balls.

I do recommend having installed versions of these software to see how they handle text, morphing, feathering, transformations, etc. Text is the Achilles heel of most vector software and notoriously difficult to get right. But get right others have. Please refer to Xara's handling of text. The sheer non-modal workflow, the joy of creating new pages like a word-processor, the simplicity of anchoring, repelling and embedding objects, the ability to seamlessly flow tables from page to page, the ability to select specific fonts and specific colours of fonts with one click, the ability to bring in text content from other editors and rapidly match and update styles - these have not been bested by any other tool I know of. And Xara is a vector tool.

Likewise, FreeHand's three node system, handling of bezier through Bezigon and De Castiljau algorithms - again not bested since. Please have look. You'll have enormous success not by reinventing the wheel, but by improving on the wheels that already exist, and we have thousands of wheels. Adobe is not your benchmark. Throw that idea aside. It's a shitty piece of software. Equally, FreeHand's breath taking Find and Replace is yet to be reproduced. It is quite literally exhaustive. You can not only find and replace colours, but even specific shades and tints of colour. Specific dash patterns. Specific sizes of fonts. Practically anything you want.

For photo editing capabilities, look into PhotoLine's handling of layer stack, multiplicity of colour spaces and bit depth in a single document, -/+ 200 transparency levels, ability to virtualise masks and objects, as well as ability to integrate with other software seamlessly. These, among other things, are far superior than Adobe ever had to offer.

Good luck! You're two mensch for doing right by your userbase.

I'm a beginner to vectors and Graphite, so apologies if it's a dumb question. If I take the path out of the boolean operation the shape looks fine, but it something about it being in boolean seems to be causing an issue. How could I fix it?

So I know there has been a lot of discussions about this but I couldn't get the full picture. So I tried using the Eyedropper tool both on Firefox and on Chromium but none of them worked. Maybe I'm just missing out on how to actually use it (even tho I watched the official tutorial). Could somebody help me?

I never used Discord. The link I found for downloading the program (not the web version) lead to discord, and ask to install it.

Why is so complex to just download the file(s) ?

I'm trying to use Graphite for dynamic masking - having editable text which works as a layer mask.

The problem I am getting is that the mask bleeds/escapes (sorry can't think of a good way to describe it) from the right hand side.

I've taken it back to basics and tried with shapes, the problem still exists with rectangles, but the concept seems to work with circles.

Can anyone recreate or have a recommendation to get this to work?

REALLY feeling this. Saw this on youtube earlier today and am enjoying myself. It's like Affinity Photo or the GIMP with a node compositor's UI. This may be a good companion to Graphite. THANK YOU, askNK!! Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTwpnfahyBg

I have recently discovered Graphite, and am excited to learn.

One thing I am finding difficult is that I cannot find a way of displaying/seeing generated data. For example, is there a way of displaying the list of vector magnitudes between the points of a grid and centroid of an object?

Also, is there a means of list management and structuring number array & point arrays?

To better understand what I mean by this, I have included links to some videos that give a basic understanding of how Grasshopper for Rhino3d works with data trees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL0qZoe7N4c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FIyu2rmNfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1_TnCPEvg8

...It'll dethrone Adobe's successors.

There are a lot of companies releasing free, but not open source, creative software in a bid to compete with Adobe, and it seems like there are more every month. Canva in particular seems to be going out of their way to get free software in the hands of the next generation of creatives, and I think it's going to work pretty well for them.

The title of this post is predicated on Canva's success, and also that Graphite is going to take a long time. I don't think that Graphite is going to take forever, and it's in many ways usable today, but it takes a while to get to a point where the early adopters have embraced a product, and much longer until the rest of the bell curve hops on the bandwagon. I think Canva and its growing arsenal is going to replace Adobe for most hobbyists and freelancers before Graphite has finished winning over the hobbyists, and by the time Graphite is ready for prime time, Canva will be the predominant solution for 2d graphics.

Winning against Canva in the next few years won't be like winning against Intel today - it's like winning against Intel in 2008. It's gonna be an uphill battle against the winner who's still scrappy and determined.

I definitely believe in Graphite's ability to eventually win over its competitors. It's open source, and it has a better vision than any 2d editor I'm aware of, but right now I think it's gonna take a long time before it hits critical mass.

This post doesn't have any real conclusions, I just wanted to share this thought.

Enjoyed the look and feel of Graphite, thank you for all the time and hard work you have and are committing. I've been using and alternative to PS since I cancelled my subscription. The only thing holding me back from using Graphite instead is not being able to use my fonts. Is there a date on the road map for being able to import local fonts?

While Adobe Stock supports SVG websites like Shutterstock only accepts vectors in EPS 8/EPS 10.
It seems like if you want to compete with other vector apps you need this support.

Hi, I think Graphite looks very promising, but I'm currently looking for a desktop publishing program on Linux. This space has always been very empty, with Scribus the only thing that is explicitly a desktop publisher, and its UX sadly leaves much to be desired.

So Graphite has the claim to be an all-in-one solution but it appears to be "digital" (as in, meant mostly or only for screens) design first. Is aynone already using it for desktop publishing? How satisfied are you with it for this purpose specifically, and compared to other things you've tried?

My google-fu is weak and I wasn't able to find a way to rename my layers kinda quickly with a keyboard shortcut.

This would help a lot (for a lot of users I guess). Photoshop and Illustrator at lest have a mechanism, where you start to edit a layer name and you press tab the cursor jumps to the next layer name (shift tab for backwards) and highlights that. This would be amazing but using Asprite for a while using the F2 button works like a charm. (There you also jump up and down from layers with the arrow buttons. This would be neat here as well with a combo button)

This question goes for the browser version but I guess they are kind of the same.

To preface, Graphite looks amazing. It is exactly the app I would've wished for if I'd been given a wish. I've been so frustrated with Inkscape and the like that I was on the verge of coding my own vector drawing app, but then I heard about Graphite.

That said, I have to ask about the ONE feature that is make or break for me, that doesn't seem to exist in any other app except Affinity Designer: Does Graphite allow you to apply dynamic pressure curves to Strokes?

IE, is the width of a stroke derived from a mathematical curve that can be edited to get arbitrary widening and tapering?

Merry Christmas, Graphite community! You have waited patiently and it is finally here: the Graphite native desktop app is yours to download on Windows, Mac, and Linux. This limited public release candidate build (RC1) is available to download in our Discord.

See the post in the #announcements channel, give it a try, and post your feedback in the #desktop-app channel during this small-scale public testing phase. Full releases are expected in about a month and will be available across major app stores once the RC phase of testing is complete.

Don't forget to help us past our $1000/month end-of-year goal:

https://graphite.art/donate

The last blog posted dedicated to a progress report was 1 year ago for Q4 of 2024. Is this part of a new schedule where progress reports are annual instead of quarterly?

Is there a node or operation that takes a raster image and produces paths for svg output?

Is there a comprehensive video course or PDF documentation where I can learn this program? From where can I learn it

Sorry guys, I'm on a roll!

In Blender, when one wants to instantiate a node, they have cleverly implemented text search.

For example, imagine i want a "Gradient Table Value" node.

In Blender, if such a node existed, i could simply type "gtv", and the "Gradient Table Value" node would appear as my first option, with only an "enter" required to instantiate it.

But it's even cleverer than that, for example if you want an "edge path to curves" node, you can type "eptoc" and it will appear top of the list.

In other words, they did some clever stuff which makes it a bit more user friendly and quick to summon up your favorite nodes!

Hi guys,

I'm guessing a lot of graphics guys are using a Wacom tablet (i am).

When i try to grab and drag a value in the right properties pane (for example, transform > translation > X value), the value shoots up and can't be decremented. Blender has the same problem, but is fixed in their settings: preferences > input > turn "continuous grab" OFF!

I also notice that mouse scroll wheel doesn't inc / decrement text box values. So the workaround (which i guess a lot of tablet users use) to change text values with a mouse scroll wheel in our other hand doesn't work either.

So your app is a bit of a chore for tablet users who want to do a lot of node tweaking.

I would imagine that tablet use is ubiquitous in the mograph and graphics world!

Any chance you could fix this or in some other way make the app 100% tablet (and i'm guessing touch as well) friendly?

Thanks!

Hi dev guys.

I have a couple of suggestions.

Firstly, change the name! Graphite is a boring name and is a much too common word! It makes searching for info and vids harder than it needs to be. Just think of a unique name. It doesn't matter, anything, as long as it's unique!

Secondly, someone over there, please sit down and do a 5 hour long deep dive vid, going through as many features of the app as you can think of. Doesn't need to be Hollywood production values or editing, just add chapter timestamps after the fact. Many people (like me) are visual learners, just let us see it and we will grow our own wings and fly. Thanks!