5 Common Mistakes Inkscape Users Make

inkscape is a large application with lots of advanced tools and features as a new user you have a lot to learn and you're probably going to make some mistakes along the way in this video i'll be going over some of the more common mistakes new users make so you can avoid making them yourself [Music] this is nick with logosbynick.com and in this video i'll be going over five of the most common mistakes users make when they're new to inkscape and if you'd like to learn more about how inkscape works be sure to check out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 60 videos where i go over every tool and feature in inkscape and i explain what it is and demonstrate how it works i'll have a link in the description of the video if you want to check that out that being said let's get started one of the most common mistakes i see new users making is trying to perform path operations on objects that aren't paths in short path operations allow you to take multiple objects and turn them into new objects based on how they interact with each other you can unify them subtract them from each other use the intersecting area to create a new object and more however this only works on individual objects that are paths so if you're trying to unify groups of objects for example it's not going to work you'll have to ungroup the objects first same for text objects and rasterized images these objects are not paths therefore the path operations will have no effect on them another mistake you might make if you're new to inkscape and don't know any better is neglecting to respect the power of the edit paths by nodes tool the nodes tool allows you to transform all of the individual coordinate points of a vector object but it also has the power to freeze up the software and make it crash if you try to select objects with too many nodes this is more of a problem with inkscape than it is with the user so i can't really blame someone for walking into this problem but it is something you need to be aware of regardless when working with the nodes tool always be careful not to select objects that are really complex and may have lots of nodes if possible try to break your objects apart into separate objects first another mistake you might make as a new user to inkscape is forgetting to delegate whether or not you want the strokes on your object to scale with the object every vector object has two properties a fill color and a stroke that acts as an outline around your object and the stroke has its own size independent of the size of the object if you scale down your object you may notice that the thickness of the stroke scales down with it if you'd like to maintain the thickness of the stroke regardless of how you scale your object though you can find the setting for that in the tool settings menu for the select tool just look for the icon that says when scaling objects scale the stroke width by the same proportion when you hover your cursor over it if you'd like your strokes to scale alongside your objects leave it enabled if you'd like to maintain a fixed size for your strokes regardless of scaling simply turn it off next up on our list of common mistakes you might make as a new inkscape user is forgetting to disable snapping when you're working snapping is a really useful feature that allows you to draw with precision for example let's say you have two boxes and you want to place them flush against each other doing this freehands would prove difficult because it would be nearly impossible for you to know exactly where the edges are with snapping enabled though your objects will snap directly against each other once they're in close proximity as useful as this may be there will be some instances where you're trying to create something but the snaps keep getting in the way and drawing your cursor away from where you actually want it to be to disable snapping just click the enable snapping icon in the top left portion of your screen or what i like to do is just press shift and 5 on the keyboard as a shortcut the final common mistake new inkscape users make has to do with exporting png images exporting allows you to generate usable copies of your designs in the dot png format this is useful for exporting your logo for use on a website generating app icons graphics for a game so on and so forth one aspect of the export menu that many users overlook though is the export area section this is what allows you to dictate exactly what gets exported the page option will export everything inside of your page border the drawing option will export everything inside and outside of your page border the selection option will only export an object you have selected and the custom option allows you to manually define coordinate points on the x and y axis of your canvas that you'd like to export where a lot of users run into trouble is when they think they're exporting one thing but they're really exporting something else because the proper export area setting hasn't been selected this is why it's important to always pay close attention to the settings in the export menu and that should do it for today's video hopefully these pointers will make your learning experience a little easier if you have any questions or need clarification on anything i've gone over in this video just leave a comment below and as always thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 57,289

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

Id: A0lI6KVaPBE

Length: 5min 45sec (345 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020