Inkscape 0.45 - A Pretty Blurry Release

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. See the Release Notes for full details, and then go try it out yourself.