Sketch tool?

[mrgreen4242]

This is a little hard to describe, but I'm going to try... I would like a tool that takes a mouse drawn "line" and smooths it out, akin to what, I think, the Macromedia Flash studio program does.

Now, I don't want to draw a straight line, just a smoothly and slightly curved one. The idea is to be able to draw somthing similar to what you would sketch by hand, with a mouse. It's hard to describe, but my overall aim to be able to draw, roughly, with the mouse without using perfectly straight lines, or the crinkly little smudges that you get with a mouse when trying to draw.

Working with a path tool would achieve a similar result, but is rather tedious. Maybe that is a better way to ask the question... is there a tool to create bezier curved line from a roughly hand drawn line?

I'm using the GIMP primarily, but a seperate tool, Mac preferably, but Windows would do, to create the 'outlines' of what I am drawing will work just fine. Again, I THINK that Macromedia's Flash creation tool (whatever it is called) does this automatically...

Thanks!

EDIT: While posting this I thought to descibe the tool as a bezier based drawing tool, which started me searching for apps with that keyword, and it led me pretty quickly to Skencil (http://www.nongnu.org/skencil/) which looks like it might kinda sorta do what I am looking for, but I thought I might include it as an example...

EDIT2: After checking a few tutorials for Flash to Smooth Drawing in Macromedia Flash looks like what I want... but not in Flash, something I can plugin to the GIMP or I can export from to the GIMP. OSS is always, best, imo.

 

[iMeowbot]

xfig has an interpolated spline tool that may do what you want. You draw in a sort of connect-the-dots fashion, and then it smooths out the curves. OmniGraffle has the same thing.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have a free form pen tool that does exactly what you're describing. You just draw, no click-click-click. Corel Painter also has a very nice version of that tool.

 

[mrgreen4242]

xfig has an interpolated spline tool that may do what you want. You draw in a sort of connect-the-dots fashion, and then it smooths out the curves. OmniGraffle has the same thing.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have a free form pen tool that does exactly what you're describing. You just draw, no click-click-click. Corel Painter also has a very nice version of that tool.

Thanks! You have indirectly solved my problem. I googled for xfig and omnigraffe to check them out, and it pulled up some forums, which in turn led me to an application called InkScape. It does EXACTLY what I wanted, is opensource/GNU, and runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows.

Thanks a bunch!

 

[iMeowbot]

Hmm, an Illustrator workalike? Yay, a new toy! Thanks for pointing that one out!

 

[stevep]

Excellent - just downloaded Inkscape. It looks easier to use for beginners than Illustrator (similar to Xara X on the pc). Thanks MrGreen.