I am willing to use drawing and outlining techniques to illustrate some behavioral activities of insects and also the habitat system etc. and I need your experience to help me to find suitable tool to do it.
PS: See an attached example from: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/MES/notes/entnote25.pdf
I think it depends really of the type of illustration you want. The best way is to learn a graphic software like GIMP (free and open source) or other proprietary software (Adobe photoshop, suite Corel Draw). It will need a little time for learning but after you could be really efficient for composed figures (usig layout ossbilities) and printable format (high resolution).
GIMP : http://www.gimp.org/
tutoriel for GIMP (French) : http://fr.openclassrooms.com/informatique/cours/apprenez-a-creer-avec-gimp-2-8
I hope it could help you...
I use adobe illustrator from the contours, this program works with vectors, and you can trace the image helped by photographs. By the color and texture effects (include gray scales if you prefer it) I importe the files to Photoshop, in these program the vectorial image change to jpg. file these two progams are compatible. (Its only a comic, but, I did the draw that you see below my profile using these two programs for a presentation about the behavior of hermit crabs).
Oh! That is a very sweet Crab! nice work. Thank you Dr. Martinez for sharing your experience, i have searched in your profile for your presentation but i couldn't find it. Sounds interesting.
Adobe illustrator is the best one but Inkscape is free and easy to use
There is an interesting alternative. Review this link:
http://ian.umces.edu/diagrammer/editor/svg-editor.php
They have a broad diagram and images library and a tool for create your ones. And is free
I've found that the simplest way is to draw free hand with a good 'draughtsperson' pen or pencil and scan in. Then open two windows on screen, one with the scan, the other with simple MS paint and free hand draw the image with the simple paint software. The individual sections can then be copied and pasted into MS Powerpoint, using the 'group' function. PPT is great for the labels. It's slow, but steady and pretty much free - enjoy!
When you have a white-and-black drawing (black pen is better than pencil, because it's easier to take good scan or photo and process it) you can process it with GIMP and Inkscape.
1. take a photo of your drawing
2. open it in GIMP and use "Threshold" tool w menu Colours. You move the arrow in the emerging window so that you get black outlines of your drawing on the white background.
3. save as *.jpg and import to Inkscape
4. convert a bitmap to path (menu Path). The default settings should be OK.
(5. you can enlarge the drawing as much as you wish now)
5. export the path as a bitmap
... and you get a nice *.png picture with smooth lines.
One thing to add - be aware of the requirements with regards to resolution that your target journal may have. Usually they want the highest possible; around 600 dpi.
Inkscape for 2D and Blender for 3D pictures.
Blender for animations
For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RasemoYzsFA
I´m using InkScape, better are Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. DrawPad is free and it seems to be user friendly - http://www.nchsoftware.com/drawpad/
Mr. Harnois has provided a very good info for your need.
inkscape as well as blender are great, free and light weight alternatives and available for both windows and linux.
Inscape is the best for the purpose (it creates pictures with vector graphics approach by default)
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Histology
- Staining