10 Hidden Secrets In Inkscape That Will Improve Your Workflow

Inkscape is a capable open-source alternative to commercial vector graphics applications like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw it has a lot of features that make it shine but many of ink escapes most useful features are nestled and obscure areas in this video I'll be sharing ten of those hidden features and how they can improve your workflow once you're aware of them and if you'd like to learn more about how Inkscape works be sure to check out my Inkscape masterclass which is a collection of over 50 videos where I explain every single tool and feature in Inkscape and I demonstrate how it works as well I'll put a link in the description in the video if you want to check that out in Inkscape you can align and distribute individual nodes the same way you would align a selection of objects to do so use the edit pads by nodes tool to select multiple nodes and then navigate to the alignment distribute menu you'll see a dedicated panel titled nodes that allows you to align your nodes the same way you would align objects this can come in handy if you're trying to alter your objects so that they have some degree of symmetry to them we all know that you can select multiple objects in Inkscape by shift-clicking them or by clicking and dragging a selection around them but a lesser-known technique for selecting multiple objects is to hold alt on your keyboard and click and drag a red line going through them this is very useful because it allows you to select multiple objects with more precision than if you were to simply create a bounding box around them with the bounding box you have no choice but to select every object within the boundaries even if their objects you don't want to select alt clicking allows you to exclude those objects as we already know the Select tool allows you to select objects scale them rotate them and shear them what you may not know however is that you can do the same with individual nodes by activating a setting within the tool features of the edit paths by nodes tool within the tool settings at the top right side of your screen you should see an icon labeled show transformation handles for selected nodes it's depicted as a series of four arrows activating this setting will allow you to edit the individual nodes of an object the same way you would edit an object itself with the Select tool this is particularly useful for creating custom shapes with symmetry and edit your objects on a more granular level there's various different ways to select multiple objects in Inkscape but a lesser-known method that has proven to be very useful in my own workflow is to select individual objects by fill color stroke color or filling stroke color this can be accomplished by selecting an object and navigating to edit select same fill and stroke Inkscape will then select every other object on the canvas with the same filling stroke color you can also select objects by just the fill color just the stroke color stroke style and object type this can be very useful when working with complex designs with many objects I've personally found this to be useful when designing and editing patterns within Inkscape there's a handy feature that allows you to open a new document based on a specific template if you navigate to file new from template you'll have the option of opening a new document that has already sized to fit a specific branding asset like a business card a DVD color a desktop wallpaper or any other number of items what you may not know though is that you can manually create your own templates in SVG format and add them to this list by navigating to C Program Files Inkscape share templates and pasting them in that folder and the next time you restart Inkscape your custom templates will populate in that list I've personally found this to be useful for creating templates for certain types of designs that I create quite often like YouTube thumbnails and cover graphics for social media Inkscape has a setting in its export menu that allows you to export multiple objects as individual PNG files but it's easy to miss it if you're not looking for it simply tick the box labeled batch export all selected objects before exporting your work and once you do export your work every single object that you have selected will be exported as its own individual PNG file this is particularly useful for designing something like an app icon or you need to generate the same design in multiple different sizes one of the biggest downsides of using open-source software as a graphic designer is some of the cross-platform compatibility issues you'll run into when a client or another designer wants to send you an adobe specific file to work with like illustrators dot ai format however you can easily open illustrator files with Inkscape by simply changing the files name from dot ai to dot PDF Inkscape will then treat the illustrator file like it's a PDF file when you go to open it this also works in Reverse if someone requests an illustrator file specifically just save your work as a PDF document and change the name from dot PDF today I there's many different ways to create patterns from objects in Inkscape but one of the easiest ways is to simply select the object and go to object pattern objects to pattern you'll then be able to activate the notes tool and maneuver the handles to adjust the pattern to your liking Inkscape allows you to quickly convert your vector designs into raster bitmaps if you so desire you can do this by selecting your work and navigating to edit make a bitmap copy not only will Inkscape generate a raster copy of your selected object but it will save a copy of it in whatever folder you currently have your work saved in this is useful because vector graphics tend to retain more data than raster graphics do and they take up more disk space because of it this means that if you're working on a large complex design with lots of vector objects you may run into some performance issues with your computer converting your designs to bitmap can help mitigate that by freeing up system resources as you may already know you can generate guides in Inkscape by clicking and dragging on the rulers on the top and left edges of your document by default you'll be able to create both horizontal and vertical guides as well as guides at 45-degree angles what you may not know though is that you can manually adjust the angle of the guide by double clicking it which will bring up the settings menu this will allow you to adjust some of the properties of that guide like its color its position on the canvas and its angle this can prove useful when designing geometric shapes that need to be drawn at specific angles that should do it for today's video about hidden choose in Inkscape leave a comment below to let me know what you think did you already know about any of these features and more importantly now that you do know about them will you be using them in your workflow as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 89,415

Rating: 4.9888005 out of 5

Keywords: inkscape tutorial, inkscape secrets, logos by nick, logosbynick, nick saporito

Id: Hwilw97pR6k

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dthubb]

This guy is a great teacher. I just purchased his courses today. He is very easy to understand.

[u/deaf_fish]

I'm a little confused about his statement of vector graphics take more memory than raster graphics. It has been my experience that vector graphics take less.

[u/chavie]

Super useful! I didn't know most of these.

[u/retakeamerica]

Nick is a great teacher. He gets to the point and is easy to listen to. Best of all, he knows Inkscape from inside out.

[u/tarsiospettro]

It was short and interesting, I think I will use some of this tricks

[u/[deleted]]

The batch export "secret" is rather pointless with the given example. If all scaled icons are the same, there's no point creating multiple objects. One would rather export via cli or use external tools like IM to generate a whole variety of desired sizes and variations.