How to Create SVG/PNGs in Inkscape / Inkscape Tutorial

hi welcome back to my channel so today's video was requested and I'm going to show you how to create an SVG or a design in Inkscape the first step you need to do is download Inkscape and I'll show you a shot of it here it is completely free to download you just need to select your operating system and install it onto your computer and then you are ready to get started so Inkscape is a design software and there are so many things you can do with it so many functions you can use but today I'm just going to show you some of the basic functions to get you started creating your own SVG's and I'll show you how I create mine so after you open Inkscape you will see some different icons on the left of the screen the first arrow icon is the selection mode you click this to go into selection mode when you want to select an object and I also use it as a sort of home icon the second icon here is your nodes tool which I won't get into in this video it allows you to manipulate the shapes of images then there is this wave icon it allows you to sculpt or paint objects but we won't be using that today either then you have the zoom icon and also the measurement tool then you have this square icon and it allows you to create rectangles or squares so all you have to do is click this icon go to your canvas click and drag out a square or rectangle and if you want a symmetrical square all you have to do is hold the control key while you are dragging the image this icon is for 3d objects 3d squares and cylinders which we won't be using that today either this icon lets you draw circles or ellipses again hold control for a perfect symmetrical circle this icon is for polygons and triangles once you click that at the top you can select polygon or star and then from there you can select the number of corners to create triangles or even octagons you can change the spoke ratio to change the size and look of your object or change around to create rounded edges you can also create spirals using this icon draw freehand lines or hold ctrl for straight lines you can draw calligraphy or brushstrokes then you can create text which is what we will be doing today there's also a spray can icon and eraser tool a paint can some gradient tools to create color gradients and an eyedropper tool to select colors so these are all the main icons we will be using today to get started on a new document first go to file and then document properties here you can change the display units what I like to work in is inches but you can also work in pixels and other units you can leave the page view on or off then you can select the page size to be eight-and-a-half by eleven or another size you can also create custom sizes and you can also select to turn on or off your background here and create a checkerboard pattern if you're using white objects some other things you might use and things that I use definitely when I'm creating a design is go to object and then fill in stroke and that brings up a box to the right of your screen where you can also turn on your fill colors and Stroke colors and the stroke is just the line around whatever shape you create go to object align and distribute and that brings up a box that allows you to align objects or to Center objects or distribute objects evenly then you go to text text and font to bring up a box where you can view your fonts change your font sizes or change your fonts so that is a basic setup of how I get started and now we can begin to create simple SVG's so now that we have everything set up the first thing I like to do is create a background the size of the design I am creating I'm going to show you how to recreate this design on the left and we're going to do it right here on the right of the screen first I use the square icon and I just hold control to create a symmetrical square then up at the top of the screen you have some boxes you can change the size you also have this little lock icon if you leave that locked when you change the size of your width your height will stay in proportion if you unlock that icon then your proportions will not stay locked together go over to your fill and stroke on the right to change the color or turn off your stroke or line around the object you can also use the bottom of your screen to change the colors now I create the text you'll want to have an idea of what you want your design to look like so I'm going to type the words in one text box and just hit enter between each words to create a long large text box and I can change the position of these later as I'll show you so I go to the text icon and type the words you want in this case snowflakes that dance on my nose now I can change the font either over here in the text in font on the right or I like to just double click on the text and use the drop down menu up here at the top and I'm selecting a font called guy Bella you can also highlight words within this text box and change certain words so I'm gonna select this word and then go up to the drop-down box and select font chickadee and this changes this word so now we have the text that we want so I select the text then from there I go to path at the top of the screen and select object to path and what that does it just changes the text into an object or image and that way I can ungroup it as I'm doing here right click ungroup and then the text is changed to individual letters that way I can move and change them however I need to be sure not to ungroup any words or change it to a path before you have all of your different fonts that you want because you cannot change a font after you do that so I hold the shift key if I want to select my multiple letters of words and then I can move those at the same time or change them together so let's make these words and letters to fit in the background we've created so I worked this a little like a puzzle I just move and resize everything to fit I just like to keep everything either centered or equally weighted on either side of the center at least for this SVG that just gives it a very pleasant look and it makes everything look even so this is your preference and just be creative on how you do this it's according to whatever you like and whatever you want your image to look like whatever looks good to you [Music] so now I have the text finished and I have it positioned in the way that I want it to be so now I like to add an image sometimes you want to do this and sometimes you want but for this one I'm going to add an image so I've already saved a snowflake to my desktop and I want to pull that into Inkscape and you can pull SVG's other Inkscape SVG's or PNG s in to Inkscape so this snowflake that I've selected here is a PNG so I'm just going to select this file or PNG and I can just drag it over onto my Inkscape Inkscape screen and then this box is going to come up I leave everything as it is as it comes up and I just hit OK so now my image is on the canvas and I and right now it is still in PNG form but I want to change it to SVG form so that I can change it and change the color of it so to do that I have to trace the image to trace the image you just go to the top of your screen to path and make sure that your image is already selected and then you'd hit and then you select trace bitmap this box up here will appear and I always select the color option you can play around with this and change it or do there's many things you can do with this but I always select the color option and depending on how many colors are in your image you can select a number of colors here for this image I'm just going to select two since my image is simple and only has one color there's some other things you can change here you can select stack images always select that and then I always select remove background that removes any background behind the image then you can also select this for a live preview of how your image is going to look after its traced so then you hit OK and it only takes just a second to change it and once your box is back to normal then you can click on the top image and drag that away the top image you just drug away is the you will want to keep the underlined image on the bottom is the PNG you imported and I always just delete this because we're not going to be using it anymore and it slows down your system so now you can select the SVG you just created now I can resize this image and change the color I can also duplicate it by going to right click and duplicate or you can just hit ctrl D and not also duplicate your image and now once you have design completed I always select all of my objects by clicking and dragging a box completely over the image if you leave out even a small corner it will not select that part of the image so make sure you draw a big enough box to select everything and then you can right click and group or control G also groups now I'm just going to duplicate this image by hitting ctrl + D and then I'm going to change the color of the second one black before I export it because I don't want to export a white image because it's gonna be very hard to see so I'm just going to change the color to black before I export and now that my image is done and my design is done I can save this either as a SVG which you just go to file save as and then on the drop-down box I always select plain SVG that then you can save that to your computer or you can export it as a PNG and to do that go to file export PNG and it'll bring up this box on the box I always hit the selection button and make sure that the image that you've just created or the design that you just created is selected hit selection and then I always change my pixel quality to 300 dpi that's pretty standard for a really good quality image and then you will go down here and select the folder you want to save it to and you'll name your file and then down here I'll also click this little boxes head's hide all except selected that makes sure that everything in the box exports as a PNG and nothing outside-of-the-box will export as a PNG so if you have other images on your screen they will not be included in your PNG and then you just hit export and that will export it as a PNG to your computer so that is how I create my SVG's and my designs I use in Cricut design space I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you found it helpful and I will see you guys in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Christy Cain - The Appalachian Home

Views: 20,150

Keywords: Inkscape, inkscape tutorial, how to create an svg, how to create an svg in inkscape, how to create svgs for cricut maker, svgs for cricut, png, svg, design, tutorial, christmas svgs, make my own designs, how to, free design software

Id: eUAlFQdi87Q

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019