ZeusDraw - drawing tool.
ZeusDraw's important controls are easily accessible without hunting. There are two dockable tool palettes, one for viewing and one for creation/editing. An additional palette holds the controls for the current tool. The primary controls are immediately available, and less frequently used ones are easily accessible in fold-up sections of the controls palette. Zeus has a large set of keyboard shortcuts, but it can also work conveniently using only a pressure sensitive pen and tablet.
ZeusDraw has a selection of vector brushes (Smooth Brush, Shaded Brush, Multi-Hair Brush), and it also has an object brush that allows you to paint with any piece of artwork - vector or bitmap.
ZeusDraw simplifies Bezier curves. With ZeusDraw's path tools you enter control points in order along the path (more logical and intuitive, since the shape of the polygon made by the control points is a rough indicator of the shape of the curve). While adding points to a curve you can go back at any time and move any of the points that you have already entered, making it easy to obtain the shape you want.
ZeusDraw lets you edit gradients in place, on the the objects they are filling. The live editing lets you change the position, orientation and type of the gradient as well as the number, color and spacing of the gradient colors and see the results as you work. You can also drag and drop colors directly to the gradient.
ZeusDraw comes with a version of the Shades Color Picker built in.
Using ZeusDraw you enter text directly where you want it, without any “text-box”. The text can then be transformed (moved, scaled, rotated, skewed) and the transformed text can be edited in place with the text tool. The text can be turned into paths for further graphic modification.