Why+I+like+Inkscape

The name of the program I like to make figures in is called Inkscape and it is free. I think it has a lot of really great features (nice aligning and distribution of object features, ability to make an object out of editable points, "trace" of an image to convert an image into simpler blocks of colors, etc.) and I think it is easy to use. Another feature I really like about Inkscape is that by default it saves the images in svg (standard vector graphic) format. A file in this format can be opened in a text editor and the xml markup of the svg format can be viewed and edited in a human readable form. For example, you may see that the size of a circle is 5, you could change this number in the text file, save, and then you could open that svg file in a web browser or in Inkscape and see that the circle had changed sizes. This could also have some use if you wanted a computer program to edit the svg code of a figure if you had some complex precise diagram or graph or something.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Inkscape. I also like Gimp too, which is a free alternative to Photoshop.