Inkscape: Master the Free Vector Graphics Software in 2024

welcome to the 2024 comprehensive guide to inscape whether you're a graphic designer illustrator or hobbyist this guide will equip you with the skills you need to create stunning vector graphics using inkscape a powerful and free open-source software the purpose of this guide is to give you an overview of all of the most useful tools and features of inkscape starting from the most basic topics and moving on to more intermediate and advanced topics this will give you an idea just how powerful inkscape is and how you can use it to make amazing artwork quickly and efficiently so if you're ready let's fire up inkscape and get started when we first open inkscape we're normally greeted with the welcome dialogue if however yours immediately opens up a new document and you would like to display the welcome dialogue first this is pretty easy to fix to do so we need to open the preferences Dialogue on a Mac there should be an inkscape menu here here at the top left with a settings option inside the menu for those of us using Windows we can go to the edit menu and choose preferences we should now see the preferences dialogue at the top left we have a search box and if we search for welcome we'll see an option down here that says show Welcome dialogue if we check this we can then close the preferences dialogue and the inkscape document and the next time we open inkscape it should bring up the welcome dialogue okay so the purpose Pur of the welcome dialogue is to allow us to easily customize our document before we create it for example in the quick setup tab we can change the appearance of the canvas which is the drawing area changing this won't affect the actual drawings themselves it's just a personal preference and like with everything else in the welcome dialogue we can also change the canvas appearance from inside the document itself as we'll see in a bit next under keyboard we have some options for setting the keyboard shortcuts that inkscape uses for example if you're already familiar with the keyboard shortcuts in Adobe Illustrator or Corell draw you can make it so inkscape uses the same shortcuts for following along with this course however I recommend sticking with the inkscape defaults for now below keyboard we have appearance the options in here will change the appearance of the icons the inkscape uses we can see a preview of the icons here I'll stick with colorful finally we have the option to switch to dark mode and as I mentioned earlier we can actually do all of this from the document itself so I'll just stick with the defaults for now and this supported by utab we can learn how to contribute our time and money towards inkscape's development next in time to draw we have quite a few different templates to choose from this is useful if we need our drawings to have particular dimensions for example in print we can choose from various paper size formats like A4 us letter and business card under video we have different video sizes to choose from in case we wanted to create something like a slideshow for a video under social we have options for creating graphics for various social media platforms under screen we have options for different screen sizes shape Builder here has some templates that we can use for creating graphics with a shape Builder tool which we'll learn about later in the course other has some templates for icons and for creating seamless patterns finally we can create our own custom templates which will be listed in the custom category and with that we can choose whether or not to show the welcome dialogue every time we open escape and once we're ready to begin we can click new document when we start up a new inkscape document we get this big empty gray area in the center this is called the canvas and we can draw anywhere inside it we also have this white rectangular area in the center of the canvas this is called the page the default dimensions of the page are the A4 paper size and if we had chosen a different template from the Welcome dialogue the page will have the dimensions specified in that template as I mentioned previously the page is useful if we need to constrain our drawings to particular Dimensions like if we're creating something like a poster or a PDF document we can also change the dimensions of the page and its appearance from directly inside the document itself to do so we use the document properties dialogue by going to the file menu and choosing document properties and here we can change the format of the page which basically contains the same template options we saw in the welcome dialogue we can also give the page a custom width and height and switch between portra and Landscape orientation under display we can set the display units for the document this is what the document uses to display things like the sizes and positions of objects in our drawings the default is millimeters but we can change it to something else like pixels for example next we have some color swatches with the page option we can change the background color of the page with the Border option we could change the color of the border and Shadow around the page and with the desk option we can change the background color of the canvas we can also give the entire canvas a checkerboard background and we can hide the page border or we can just hide the Shadow and by the way the colors of the canvas and Page have no effect on the actual drawings whenever we go to print or export our drawings as far as inkscape is concerned the canvas and Page are completely transparent so they won't show up in the result this is all mainly for personal preference okay back in the interface to the left of the canvas we have the tool box this contains all of the tools we need to create and modify our drawings and we'll be talking about them quite a bit throughout the course we can resize the toolbx by hovering over the right edge of it until our cursor changes to a double-sided Arrow then clicking and dragging to the right of the canvas is the commands bar this gives us quick access to Common commands like starting new documents importing and exporting do and redo and copy and paste we also have some more options which we can see if we click the arrow icon down here we can also put the commands bar at the top of the interface to do this we go to the view menu and uncheck wide screen this gives us a bit of extra space for the canvas next above the canvas we have the controls bar the controls bar contains functions related to the currently active tool in the tool boox we'll learn about many of these functions as we discuss the individual tools below the canvas we have the color palette this provides us with some options for easily changing the colors of objects in our drawings finally we have the status bar this gives us some information about things like the colors of the object we're currently working with as well as about the layer that we're currently working inside layers allow us to organize our drawings and we'll learn all about them pretty soon on the right side of the status bar we have options for zooming in and out on the canvas and for rotating the canvas we can also zoom in and out by holding down the control key and scrolling the mouse wheel up and down and if we go to the view menu we have some Zoom options in here as well finally to move around inside the canvas we can press down the mouse well and move the mouse in inkscape we have three tools for creating basic shapes we have the rectangle tool the ellipse and Arc tool and the star and polygon tool first up with the rectangle tool we can of course create rectangles and after we create one with the rectangle tool still active we get these little handles that at the corners of the rectangle we can use these square ones to change the size we can also change the size more precisely by coming up here to the controls bar and entering values for both the width and the height at the top right corner of the rectangle we have a couple circular handles with these we can round the corners to remove the rounding we can come up here and click this make Corner sharp [Music] button if we start creating a new rectangle and we hold down the control key it will constrain the width to height ratio we can use this to create perfect squares similarly resizing it while holding control will also constrain the ratio and if we hold down shift as we create one it will start creating from the center we can also easily change the color of a shape by selecting it and clicking a color swatch inside the color palette the next shape tool is the ellipse and Arc tool this tool by default let us create ellipses and like with rectangles we get some Square handles for adjusting the width and height now the ellipse of course doesn't have corners so the circular handles work a bit bit differently than they do for rectangles if we drag one around the outside of the ellipse we can create a pacman or a slice of pie and if we drag inside the ellipse we can create arcs now if we look up here to the right of the controls bar we have these four buttons for changing the shape including slice Arc and cord with arcs and chords we can't tell the difference between them unless the shape has a stroke around it to put a stroke around a selected shape we can come down to the color palette hold shift and click a color a stroke is basically an outline around the outside of the shape to change the width of the stroke we can come down here to the status bar where it shows the fill color the stroke color and the stroke width if we right click the stroke width it will bring up some options for changing it okay so with chords the stroke also goes along the flat portion of the shape with arcs on the other hand the stroke doesn't appear at the flat portion we can see this even better if we turn off the main color of the object which is called its fill color by coming back down here and clicking the big red X all right now I'm going to set the fill color again and I'm going to turn off the stroke color by holding down shift this time before clicking the Red X finally back up here we have this button for making the ellipse whole again and like with rectangles we can hold control to constrain the width to high ratio which will let us create perfect circles and we can hold shift to draw from the center now let's check out the star and polygon tool by default this tool creates five cornered stars to change the number of Corners we just come up here and adjust the corners setting with stars we get these two Diamond handles with the inner handle we can adjust the base radius this will also skew the star unless we hold down the control key with the outer handle we can adjust the tip radius as well as rotate the star holding down control will stop it from rotating the spoke ratio setting up here is for adjusting the base to tip radius ratio we can also around the corners using the rounded setting or we can just come over to one of the handles and drag it while holding shift and finally we can randomize the Angles and Corners either with this setting or by dragging a handle while holding down the ALT key now you're probably thinking this is a lot of keyboard shortcuts to memorize but fortunately all we have to do is hover over over a handle and look down at the status bar and it would tell us what the handle does as well as what keys we can press to perform particular functions all right and to easily get back to the default five cornered star you can click this reset button up here now if we come back over to the left of the controls bar and click the polygon button it will change the shape to a five cornered polygon like with stars we can adjust the number of corners and we can round and randomize the corners finally if we start creating a new star or polygon we can hold down control to snap the angle of rotation to 15° increments whenever we have overlapping objects there will likely be times when we want to change the order in which they appear on the canvas this is called the stacking or Z order for example I might want to put this rectangle on top of the ellipse or send the triangle here all the way to the bottom to do this if we have the selector tool here active in the controls bar we have these four buttons raise to top raise lower and lower to bottom if I grab the rectangle I can bring it to the top by clicking the raise to top button if I grab the ellipse I can make it so it's just above the triangle by clicking the raise button and if I click it again it will also be on top of the rectangle I can move it back down a step using the lower button finally if I grab the rectangle here at the top I can send it to the bottom of the stack using the lower to bottom button another way to manage the stacking order of objects is through the use of layers by default we start out with a single layer which as we can see in the status bar is called layer one all the objects we have so far are all inside layer one if we come up here to the layer menu we have a lot of options for working with layers however the easiest way to work with layers is by using the layers and objects dialogue which we can open by clicking layers and objects here this opens up what's called a docko dialogue here on the right we can change the width of a doo dialogue by clicking and dragging it from the left side and we can see other available dockable dialogues by clicking the arrow button here we'll cover some more of these dialogues throughout the course in the layers and objects dialogue we can see layer one in the list here and if we expand it we can see all the objects inside the layer and we can actually change the stacking order of the objects from here either by selecting one and clicking one of these Arrow buttons or by simply dragging them to different positions in the list another thing we can do is hide objects and lock objects if we lock an object we won't be able to select it or move it around we can hide and lock entire layers as well now to add a new layer we click this button with the plus sign this brings up a little add layer dialogue where we can give the layer a name and we can choose whether to put it above below or as a sub layer of the current layer if we go with above and click add we can see the new layer above layer one in the list and now it's the active layer so if we create a new object it will be added to the new layer and because the new layer is above layer one its objects will always stay above layer one's objects if you want to put them below layer one all we have to do is grab Layer Two in the list and drag it below layer one now if we drag the layer inside layer one and release it becomes a sub layer of layer one this basically means that hiding or locking layer one will hide or lock both layers another thing we can do is drag objects into different layers and if we want to remove an entire layer including all of this objects we can choose it in the list and click the trash button now sometimes we might want to keep certain objects together that are inside the same layer for this we use grouping to group objects we select them then right click and choose group we can also group from the object menu and with the group button in the commands bar the grouped objects are now treated as a single object as we can see by the single bounding box around them also in the layers and objects dialogue the objects have been combined into a single item in the list labeled with a G for group we can expand the group to show the objects which allows us to select the individual objects again if you want to add more objects to the group we first need to right click it and choose enter a group now any objects we create will be placed inside the group to get back out of the group we can either select an object that's outside of the group or we can use the selector tool to double click the canvas and an easier way to enter inside a group is to double click the group itself finally if we want to ungroup all the objects we can get back outside of the group then right click it and choose ungroup the selector tool as we've already seen allows us to select objects and move them around we can also select multiple objects by dragging a selection box all the way around them then we can move the objects together and if we click an empty area in the canvas it will deselect the objects another way to select multiple objects is to select the first one then hold down shift and select the others and if you want to easily select all objects we can use the shortcut control a something else we can do with the selector tool is scale selected objects by dragging around these scale handles at the sides and Corners if we hold down control as we do this it will maintain the width to height ratio and if we hold down shift it will scale in the opposite direction as well we can also rotate and skew selected objects to do this we click the selection which changes the handle types now the corner handles let us rotate it holding down alt snaps the angle to 15° increments and holding shift rotates around the opposite corner the side handles let us skew the selection and again holding alt snaps the angle and shift SKS from the opposite side now when we rotate or skew an object it does so around this little Crosshair which is called the rotation Center and is by default located at the center of the object however we can move the rotation Center somewhere else then rotate or skew around that point to put the rotation Center back at the center of the selection we can hold down shift and click the rotation Center and if we click the selection again it will switch us back to the scale handles we also have some buttons up here in the controls bar for transforming objects we can rotate at 90° counterclockwise rotate it 90° clockwise flip it horizontally and flip it vertically let's say we want to make copies of an object one way to do so is with copy and paste for this we can rightclick the object and choose copy then rightclick somewhere else and choose paste another way is by duplicating to duplicate we right click the object and choose duplicate which creates a new copy directly on top of the original object with both of these options the copies are not connected to the original object in any way this means changing the appearance of a copy won't affect the original object or vice versa but sometimes we might want to make it so that changing the original will also change the copies for this we use clones we can again do this from the rightclick menu by choosing clone now changing things like the color size and rotation of the original will also change the Clone and if we want to unink a clone from the original We select the Clone then go up to the edit menu then down to clone and choose unle clone this is now a standalone object so changing the original won't affect it in order to make our design layout look nice we might want to align and arrange the objects in certain ways to do this we use the Align and distribute dialogue which we can open by going to the object menu and choosing a line and distribute in this dialogue we have quite a few options for aligning objects but before we do this we need to select some objects and we need to define the anchor by using this relative two box basically the anchor will stay in place and the other objects will move relative to it among the possible anchors to choose from we have the last or first selected object the biggest or smallest selected object and the page for example with last selected as the anchor if I first select these two smaller circles then select the biggest one the biggest one will be the anchor so now if I click for example the aligned left edges button the big circle stays in place and the smaller circles move so that their left Edge is align with the big circle's left Edge similarly I can Center the smaller circles vertically in the big circle and horizontally if I choose page as the anchor I can align the circles to the page in various ways for the most part I like to keep the anchor on last selected we can also use the Align and distribute dialogue to distribute the amount of spacing between selected objects for example we can put equal horizontal spacing between them as well as equal vertical spacing now if we would rather be able to align objects directly on the canvas we can do so with snapping to enable snapping we can come up here to the top right of the canvas and toggle on this button now as we move objects around we get all of these lines that let us align things like the sides and centers of objects and we can also snap together particular points of objects like their corners or the quadrant points of ellipses if we come back up to the snap controls button and click the arrow next to it we get this popover that lets us enable or disable Bounty box snapping node snapping which includes the corner points of stars and the quadrant points of ellipses and we have an alignment option alignment is what brings up the red lines that let us align and distribute the objects on canvas I find this gets pretty annoying after a while so I like to keep mine turned off and if we click on advanced mode here we get full control control over the types of snapping we want to use for example we might want to snap together the rotation centers of objects we can also see in this list that we can snap to the borders of the page and finally if we click reset to simple snapping mode it brings us back to the simple popover the shape tools are great for quickly creating basic shapes but as our designs become more complex we need more control over the shapes that we use this is where paths come in and like with the shapes we have three main tools for creating paths the pin tool the pencil tool and the calligraphy tool first with the calligraphy tool we can easily draw calligraphic or brush Strokes in the controls bar we can change the width of the stroke with the cap setting we can add some rounding to the ends of the stroke we also have a lot of presets here that we can choose from which use different settings and give us different types of brush Strokes above the calligraphy tool we have the pencil tool with the pencil tool we can draw freehand pads and if we want we can turn off the fill color and give it a stroke by default the pets we draw with the pencil tool are pretty Jagged but we can fix that by coming up here to the controls bar and increasing the smoothing setting now the pths will be much smoother okay now let's check out the pin tool which is the most useful tool for creating paths with the pin tool if we click some points we can create connected line segments and to finish creating the path we can either click the first Point again to create a closed path or if you want to leave the path open we can either right click or press Center we can see that this is an open path because the stroke doesn't connect the two end points we can also give the path The Fill color now if we want to close the path all we have to do is Click one end point then click the other one if we start creating another path we can click and drag to create a curve segment we now get these two circular handles at the cursor which are called bezier handles and which let us adjust the curvature of the segment when we release the mouse it locks in the curvature at that segment then we can create more curved segments or we can go back to creating straight line segments while creating a curve segment if we hold down the control key it will snap the rotation angle of the handles to 15° increments and if we hold down shift while creating a curve it gives us control over the positioning of the handle that's under the cursor this lets us create sharp corners one thing that distinguishes paths from shape objects in inkscape is that all of the segments of a path are connected by little points called nodes to see and access the nodes we have to use the node tool located here under the selector tool with the node tool active we can now see a selected paths nodes which are indicated by these square or diamond shaped handles we can select the node and move it around if we hold down the control key it will constrain the node's movement to either the horizontal axis or the vertical axis we can also select multiple nodes either by dragging a selection box over them or by holding shift and clicking them the diamond shaped handles denote corner or cusp nodes and the square shaped handles denote curved or smooth nodes if we select the smooth node we can see it's beer handles and we can use the handles to adjust the curvature there will likely also be times when we want to change a smooth node into a custom node or vice versa for this we have these four buttons up here with the first one if we have a smoo node selected we can turn it into a custom node we can now adjust each BDA handle individually a lot us to create sharp Corners with a custom node selected we can click the next button up here to turn it into a smooth node this forces the handles to rotate together keeping the segments curved the next two buttons are for creating symmetric nodes and auto smooth nodes these two types of nodes are basically just glorified smooth nodes with symmetric nodes not only do the beia handles rotate together but they also maintain the same distance from the node this is useful when we want to curve two segments of a path by the exact same amount and finally with an auto smooth node as we move the node around the handles will adjust automatically in order to keep the curves very smooth we can also add nodes to a path or delete nodes from a path one way to add a node is to First select two or more nodes then click this button in the controls bar which adds a node right at the midpoint between the selected nodes an easier way to add nodes however is to Simply double click a segment using the node tool and to delete selected nodes we can just press the delete key we can break apart a path at a selected node by clicking this button the path is now an open path and if we select two nodes we can click this button to join them together at the midpoint or if the nodes aren't connected we can click this button to add a line segment between them and we can click this one to delete the segment as I mentioned earlier in the lesson paths are made up of nodes but shape objects are not for example if we create a rectangle and grab the node tool we still just get the re rectangle scale handles and its Corner rounding handles however we can change a shape object into a path to do this we can either click this button in the controls bar for the no tool or we can go to the path menu and choose object to path we now get a custom node at each of the rectangle's four corners and we can now treat the rectangle like any other path so we can move the nodes around we can change the node types and we can add extra nodes one thing to keep in mind when changing shape objects into paths is that we lose the handles for adjusting certain aspects of the shape for example we no longer have the corner rounding handles fortunately however we can still easily round the corners of a path to do so in the controls bar for the no tool we have this add Corners LP button if we click it we now have these circular handles near each node and we can click and drag them to round the corner at that node we can also select multiple nodes and round them at the same time this function actually add a path effect to the path path effects are very powerful and we'll learn much more about them later in the course including other things we can do with this particular path effect but for now when we're finished using a path effect it's usually a good idea to lock in the path effect adjustments by turning the object back into a normal path we do this the same way that we turn shape objects into paths by going to path object to path the rounding handles are now gone and we get access to all of the paths nodes in the path menu here we have a bunch of operations that we can perform between selected paths and shapes for example if we have two or more paths or shapes selected and we perform the union operation it turns them all into a single path if any of the original objects were overlapping their nodes get combined together next if we have two overlapping objects we can use the difference operation to cut the top one out of the bottom one it also completely removes the top shape with the next operation intersection we can get just the overlapping parts of the selected objects the next operation exclusion is kind of like the opposite of intersection as it'll remove only the overlapping parts of the objects next up is division division is similar to difference and that it will cut the top object out of the bottom one however it also leaves the overlapping Parts as separate paths the next operation cut path does almost the same thing as division except it only cuts the bottom object stroke into pieces completely removing its fill color we now have two open paths here next is the combine operation like with Union we can use combine to turn multiple objects into a single object however unlike Union even if the objects are overlapping they will become subpaths we can see that they're subpaths because they have separate strokes and we can use the node tool to move them apart after combined we have break apart break apart is basically the opposite of combin as it will separate the subpaths that are inside an object for example if we take some shapes and combine them together into a single object and later decide we want to separate them again we can use break apart one Nuance with break apart though is that if we have a path with enclosed empty areas like this and we do break apart on it it will fill in the empty areas and we now have multiple paths one big filled in path and a separate path for each of the enclosed areas that were filled in the next operation split path is also for separating sub paths however if the sub paths are overlapping split path has no effect another difference between split path and break apart is that if we do split path on an object with enclosed empty areas it won't fill in those areas next up we have fracture if we use fracture on some overlapping objects it uses the overlapping parts to cut the objects into fragments the final Boolean path operation we have is flatten if we perform flatten on some overlapping objects it removes all of the overlapped parts this is similar to the difference operation except it can be used on more than two objects at a time and it doesn't delete the top objects often in our designs we need everything to have a certain layout and proportions especially if we're working on something like a poster or an ebook this is where guidelines and grids come in first to create guidelines we need the rulers at the top and left of the canvas to be visible if you don't see yours you can go up to the view menu then down to show hide and check rulers and now to create horizontal guidelines we can drag down from the top ruler to create vertical guidelines we can drag from the ruler on the left and to create diagonal guidelines we can drag from one of the corners being careful not to click directly on any of these buttons now if we turn on snapping and take a look at the advanced mode we by default have a guidelines option turned on this means that as we create and move around objects we can snap them to various points along the guidelines if we hover the mouse over a guideline the cursor will turn into a hand icon and if we click and hold on the guideline we can reposition it this also repositions the guideline's origin point which is indicated by this little circle this is one of the points on a guideline that we're able to snap [Music] to it's also the point around which we can rotate a guideline to rotate a guideline we hold down the shift key as we hover over it which turns the cursor into rotation arrows and if we click and drag now we can rotate it if you want to move the guideline's origin Point without moving the entire guideline we can hold down control before clicking and dragging now we can rotate around the new point if we double click on a guideline it brings up the guideline dialogue and here we can give the guideline a label we can change his color we can set the origin point and and the angle and we can lock the guideline if we now click the okay button it applies the new settings we can see the guideline is labeled near its origin point and the origin point is now an X instead of a circle this means the guideline is locked and we can no longer move it around if you want to lock all the guidelines we can come up to the edit menu and check lock all guides if we uncheck the option it will unlock all the guides we can also toggle guideline locking on and off by using this lock icon here between the rulers to remove a guideline we can either drag it back to a ruler or while hovering over it we can press the delete key and to remove all guidelines at once we can go to edit delete all gu sides next to add a grid to our document we can go up to the view menu and check page grid this creates a default one pixel by one pixel rectangular grid across the entire canvas and like with guidelines with snapping turned on we can by default snap to grids if you want to change the settings of the grid we have to to use the document properties dialogue which we can open by going to file document properties and here we choose the grids Tab and now we can do things like create a new rectangular or aetric grid and we can adjust the settings of the current grid if we disable the grid it no longer has any effect in our document as we can't see it and we also can't snap to it but if we enable it and turn off its visibility we can't see it but we can still snap to it at the moment we're only able to snap to visible grid lines the grid actually consists of both major grid lines and minor grid lines and when we're zoomed out like this we can only see the major grid lines which are by default located at every five grid units if we toggle off this option here we can also snap to the invisible minor grid lines to actually see the minor grid lines we have to zoom in quite a bit the minor grid lines are more transparent than the major ones over here we can adjust the spacing between the grid lines we can also change the origin of the grid with a default of 0 0 the grid is flush with the top and left sides of the page we can also align it to particular points on the page using these buttons now let's come up here and check out the axonometric grid option if we click the new button right now it will actually create the Grid on top of the existing grid we now have a tap here for each of the two grids in our document this can get pretty confusing so let's remove the first grid by selecting its tap here and clicking the remove button at the bottom now we just have an aetric grid with an aetric grid we can create isometric designs and for the settings we can set the origin we can change the spacing and we can adjust the angle on both the xaxis and the z-axis finally if you want to hide all the grids in our current document we can go back to the view menu and uncheck page grid so far in the course we have been using the color palette to change the colors of objects and if we use the arrows here on the right we actually have quite a few colors to choose from we can also use this hamburger icon to choose from lots of different palettes we can configure the color palette as well by clicking configure here with this we can change the size of the color tiles we can change their aspect ratio we can stretch them so that they fill up the entire bar we can change the width of the border between them and we can change the number of rows of tiles in the pallet we also have this enlarged pin colors option which is on by default pin colors appear all the way at the left of the palette and by default we have the remove color button and we have black 50% gray and white if you want to add a different color to the pin colors we just have to rightclick the Swatch and choose pin color and now it has moved over to the pin colors to remove a pin color we right click it and choose unpin color okay so we can obviously do quite a lot with colors just by using the color palette but if we want much more control over colors we need to use the Fillin stroke dialogue to open the fill and stroke dialogue we go to object fill and stroke and here we have a fill tab a stroke paint Tab and a stroke style tab with the fill tab you can adjust the fill color of selected objects by default we're using the hsl color mode with this mode we can adjust the Hue which is basically another word for the actual color we can adjust the saturation which is the purity of the color the lightness which is how dark or bright the color is and we're can adjust the alpha which is another word for opacity we also have the option of using a color wheel to adjust the color the bar along the circle is for changing the CU and the small circle inside the triangle is for changing both the saturation and the lightness some other color mode options we have are RGB which stands for red green and blue and cmk which stands for cyan magenta yellow and black and is useful for printing the default fi color type is flat color which means a single fi color across the entire object we can also turn off the fill cutter by clicking the X here and we can apply gradients and patterns to the fill which we'll take a look at in upcoming lessons the stroke paint tab is basically the same as the fill tab except we can use it to adjust the stroke color with the stroke style tab we can adjust other features of the stroke for example we can change the stroke width with the dashes we can apply various Dash or dot patterns to the stroke we can adjust the offset of the pattern using this box and we can even apply apply our own custom pattern each pair of numbers we put in here is the length of a dash followed by the length of a gap and the pattern then repeats itself along the stroke with markers we can apply different icons like arrows along the nodes of an object stroke we can even adjust things like the size of a marker its orientation and is offset on the stroke and if we click this edit on canvas button we get handles on the canvas for adjusting the markers properties under markers we have join which lets us change the appearance at the corners of an object stroke we can see this better if we turn off the markers and the dashes the default is miter join which givs the stroke sharp Corners we can also choose bevel join and round join with cap we can change the appearance at the end points of the stroke the default is butt cap which squares off the stroke at the node we can round off the stroke using round cap and square cap is like butt cap but it extends a bit beyond the node finally we can change the order in which the fill the stroke and the markers are drawn by default The Fill is drawn first then the stroke on top of it then finally the markers we can change the order using the other buttons but I almost always keep mind on the default as changing it can lead to some unexpected results if we go back to either the field tab or the stroke paint tab we have this eyedropper button here at the very bottom with this we can change an object's color to any color we choose from the canvas the ey dropper button actually temporarily switches us to The Dropper tool here in the toolbox if we hold down shift and choose a color it will set the selected object stroke color to the new color we can also click and drag over some colors to choose an average of all the colors holding shift as we do this will do the same for the stroke finally at the the bottom of the fill and stroke dialogue we have blend mode a blur slider and an opacity slider blend mode affects how the colors of selected objects blend with any colors underneath it for example we can darken the underlying colors or we can lighten them with the blur slider we can blur the object this by default blurs the object in all directions by the same amount however if we now go to the Noe tool we can see these two circular handles at the top and right side of the object with these we can adjust the horizontal and vertical blurring separately and finally with the opacity slider we can change the object's opacity unlike with using an alpha slide which only affects the opacity of either the fill or the stroke the opacity slider affects the entire object as we saw in the previous lesson in both the fill Tab and the stroke paint tab of the fill and stroke dialogue we have a number of buttons for changing an object's fill or stroke type with flat color being the default two other options we have are linear gradient and Radial gradient let's start with linear gradient if we have an object selected and we click the linear gradient button inside the FI tab the object gets a gradient going from fully opaque on the left side to fully transparent on the right side back over here we now see a gradient line and on the line we have two sliders which are called stops and which represent the colors of the gradient the one on the left is the opaque stop and the one on the right is the transparent stop we can click and drag the stops to move them around and it would change the appearance of the gradient on the object we can also switch between the stops using the list here and we can change the color at the chosen stop and if we want we can bring up the opacity of the transparent stop if we hover over the gradient line the cursor turns into a plus sign and if we double click we can add a new stop we can move it around and we can change the color to remove a stop we can select it and press delete we can also reverse the direction of the gradient by clicking this button here and using the repeat option we can change how the gradient gets repeated along the object however we can't see the difference between these unless we make it so the gradient line doesn't cover the entire object and to do so we use the gradient tool here in the toolbox with the gradient tool active we now see the GR line and the stops on the object itself and we can do the same things we can do in the fill and stroke dialogue like move the stops around and change their colors however using the gradient tool we can also now rotate the gradient line and we can make it so the line is completely inside the object and with this we can now see how changing the repeat option will affect the appearance of the gradient we actually also have both the repeat option and the reverse option in the controls bar for the gradient tool now let's learn about radial gradients to apply a radial gradient to a selected object we can either click the radial gradient button in the Fillin stroke dialogue or with the gradient tool active we can come up here next to New and choose the create radial gradient option then double click the object radial gradients by default start at the center of the object and have both a horizontal gradient line and a vertical one and the lines are kind of like mirrored versions of each other this means they always have the same number of stops and if we change the color of a stop on one line the color of the corresponding stop on the other line will change as well this also goes for moving the mid stops around if we click and drag one of the ending stops we can adjust the length of the line and we can rotate the entire gradient if you want to adjust the length of both lines together we can hold down control and shift using the center stop we can move around the gradient as a whole we can also change the color at the stop another thing we can do is if we hold down shift before clicking and dragging the center stop we can change What's called the focus of the gradient the focus is now indicated by this x here if you want to put the focus back at the center we just have to drag it to the center stop into snaps into place all right and as I mentioned before we can also apply gradients to an object stroke we can do this either by using the buttons in the stroke paint tab of the fill and stroke dialogue or again we can come up to the controls bar and next to New we have a stroke gradient option and we can choose either radial gradient or linear gradient then double click the object the object now has another gradient line which we can use to edit the stroke gradient next to the gradient options in the fill and stroke dialogue we have a pattern button if we click the one in the fill tab it will apply a pattern to a selected object's fill to change the pattern we can use this drop- down here to choose a particular category of patterns or we can just choose all patterns to view them all and now we can pick from all of the available patterns below the list of patterns we have a lot of settings for changing the appearance of the current pattern for example we can change the scale with orientation we can change the angle of the pattern we can also use the slider here to change it by 15° increments the offset setting lets us change the positioning of the pattern on the object and with The Gap settings we can add gaps between the repetitions of the pattern for most of the patterns we can also change the color by clicking the color swatch here and adjusting the sliders finally if we click the edit on canvas button here we get some new handles inside the object which we can use to adjust the pattern with the top left hand we can change the offset with the bottom right one we can change the scale holding down control will change the scale proportionately on both axes and with the circular handle at the top right we can rotate the pattern holding down control will snap the angle to 15° increments we can also actually see what objects were used to create a particular pattern to do this we give an object whichever pattern we want to check out then we go to object pattern pattern to objects this turns the selected object into the pattern objects and it might move it to a weird location for some reason we can now see that this simple path was used to create the pattern also although the path appears to be black if we take a look in the fill and stroke dialogue it says paint is undefined and this question mark button is turned on this button unsets an object's color we can also see here in the status bar that the path's fill color is unset this is important to know because if we want to create our own patterns and be able to change the patterns color later through the fill and stroke dialogue we'll need to First unset the colors of any objects that we use to create the pattern let's go ahead and see how we can do so first we can create one or more objects that we'll use for the pattern if if we want the pattern to always be a particular color or colors we can apply some colors to the objects however if we would like to be able to change the color of the pattern later we'll need to select the objects and click the question mark button here in the filling stroke dialogue and we can also lower the opacity if we want this will still work just fine now to turn the selected objects into a pattern we go back to object pattern but this time we choose objects to pattern this turns the objects into into a pattern then it creates a rectangle and applies the pattern to it as we can now see in the fill and stroke dialogue we should now be able to edit the pattern settings but if it doesn't work we can first apply a random pattern to the object then choose our custom pattern again from up here and now the settings should work and because we unset the colors of the pattern objects we can change the color here we can also create a new object and if we click the pattern fill button it should automatically apply our new pattern to it using Strokes isn't always ideal when creating Vector designs particularly when working with Boolean path operations for example I have a circle with a stroke here and let's say I want to use this rectangle to cut out just the part of the circle stroke that is overlapping if I select them both and go to path difference it doesn't give me the result I'm looking for this is because a stroke is basically just a style for an object and not part of the actual object but path operations work on the objects themselves and if I go to the node tool I can modify the nodes of the underlying shape but I can't change anything about the stroke if I wanted to modify the stroke I would first need to turn it into a path to do this I can either click this button in the controls bar for the no tool or I can go to path stroke to path we can now see in the status bar that the object has just a fill and no stroke and I have access to all of the nodes surrounding what used to be the stroke I can also now cut things out of it one more thing to note is that if we do stroke to path on an object that has both a fill and a stroke it gives us a group of two paths if we ungroup it we have a path consisting of just the fill and a path for what used to be the stroke if we want to add some text to our design we use the text tool here in the toolbox to create text all we have to do is click in the canvas and start typing to change the font we can come up here to the controls bar and choose from all the font families installed on our computer or if we already know which font family we want we can just start typing it here and it should pop up we can also change the font style as well as the size we can actually also change the font attributes of just certain parts of the text by selecting them first and this whole piece of text is actually an object so if we go to the selector tool we can resize it using the scale handle however if we want to stop the text from getting distorted we have to hold down the control key we can also rotate it and skew it and of course we can change the fill color of the text and we can even add a stroke to it if we go back to the text tool we can still edit the text like normal back up in the controls bar we can adjust the spacing between the Bas lines of the text with this drop down you can change the text alignment if we select one or more characters we can use this button to make them superscript or this one to make them subscript if we click the spacing button here it brings up some different options for changing the spacing of the text and these actually work differently depending on whether or not we have any text selected for example with the first box we can either adjust the spacing between only the selected characters or with nothing selected we can adjust the spacing between all the characters using this box we can adjust the spacing between entire words we can also select parts of some words and only adjust the spacing between those words with these two boxes here we can adjust the King which refers to the spacing between individual pairs of characters if we have nothing selected and we change for example the horizontal King it moves all the characters that are to the right of the cursor the vertical curing box works in a similar way finally with this box we can rotate the selected characters by a specified number of degrees or with nothing selected it would just rotate the character that's to the right of the cursor next we can use these three dropdowns to change the direction of the text in different ways back over at the left of the controls bar we have a font collections button font collections let us group certain font families together document fonts and recently used fonts are the default collections provided to us by inkscape if we check the box next to one the font family drop down will now only show the fonts in that collection to go back to showing all the available fonts we can click this reset button to edit an existing font collection or create a new one we need to click this button to open up the collections editor and here we can see all the available font families and all the font collections including the fonts inside them to create a new collection we click the plus button down here type in a name and press enter we can then simply drag and drop fonts into the collection now we can use our new font collection here we also have a text and font dialogue that we can work with to open it we can go to text text and font in the font tab of the text and font dialogue we can change a text objects font attributes like we can in the controls bar for the text tool but with the added benefit of seeing a preview of how the changes will look also in order to actually apply the changes to the selected text object we have to click the apply button here we're also able to set the chosen attributes as the defaults that will be used whenever we create new text objects in the features tab we have some advanced settings we can work with like checking out the different lature types in the font and using different types of capitalization finally using the text tab we can edit the actual text and this also provides us with a spell checker because a text object is not a path if we go to the node tool we don't have access to the nodes of the text however just like with shapes we can turn a text object into a path by going to path object to path this combines all the characters into one big path now we can modify the nodes one thing to be aware of though is that because this is no longer a text object we can't use the text tool to change the text or the font attributes after turning the text into a path if we want to separate the letters we can use either the break apart or the split path operation as we learned earlier in the course if we use break apart it will separate the subpaths but it will also fill in any enclosed empty areas if that's not what we want we can instead use split path and we can now apply different colors to the individual characters however break apart and split path only separate letters that aren't touching if we have a text object that uses a script font and we turn it into a path then use either break apart or split path it doesn't separate any of the overlapping characters to fix this if we undo until it's a text object again we can first go up to the text menu and choose text to glyphs this converts all the characters into separate text objects and now if we want we can turn them all into pads one more thing to know about changing text objects into paths is that if the text object has multiple lines using object to path turns each line into a single path then groups all the paths together if we ungroup it we now have access to each of the paths if we have a text object and a path we can make it so the text follows along the curvature of the path to do this we select both objects then go to the text menu and choose put on path and the text object is now connected to the path so if we move the path the text object moves with it and if we modify the path using the node tool the text will adjust in order to continue following along the curvature we can also still modify the text using the text tool if you want to remove the text object from the path and make it go back to being a normal text object with the object selected we can go to text remove from path however if we undo all of that and instead we want to keep the text like it is but be able to remove the path we have to turn the text object into a path first this means we can't modify the text using the text tool anymore but now we can delete the path the put on path function works with shapes as well for example I can select a text object and a circle and use put on path to wrap the text around the circle at the moment however however it's hard to get the text perfectly centered on the circle to fix this I can remove the text from the circle and before putting it back on the circle I'll set the text alignment to centered if I now wrap the text around the circle I can get it perfectly centered at the top by rotating the circle while holding down the ALT key to snap the angle it's also possible to wrap the text along the bottom of the circle to do this I just have to flip the circle vertically however this also puts the text inside the circle squeezing the letters together so I'll likely need to make some spacing adjustments and again I can turn the text object into a path then get rid of the circle if we have a text object selected and we have the text tool active we can see this diamond shaped handle at the bottom right of the text if we click and drag this it will create a box around the text and will force the text to stay within the bounds of the Box this is called flow text another way to create flow text is you click and drag in the canvas when creating a text object if we deselect the text object and select it again we again have the diamond handle at the bottom right for adjusting the size of the Box however we now also have a square handle at the top right with this we can add some padding between the text and the Box the Box around float text is called a frame and we can actually use custom shapes for the frame to do this we first need a text object and a shape and the text object by the way has to be a normal text object not a float one now we can select both objects and go to text float into frame and like with put on path the text is connected to the frame so moving the frame will also move the text and changing the shape of the frame will cause the text to readjust automatically if we want to turn floats text back into a normal text object we can select it and go to text UNF flow or like with put on path we can undo that and instead turn the text object into a path which will keep it the way it is and allow us to delete the frame if we have some flow text and a separate shape we can select both the text object and the shape and go to text set subtraction frames this will cause the text to flow around the shape as we can see if we move the shape onto the text and we can even do this with multiple shapes at a time however we first have to select the text object and all of the shapes that we want to use then do set subtraction frames one way to import an image into our doc is to go to the file menu and choose import we can also copy and paste images into the document and we can even drag and drop them into the document regardless of how we import an image we get a dialogue where we can choose how we want to add the image to our document the two import types we can choose from are embed and Link with embed the image will be embedded into the document this means that if we later delete the image file from our computer or changes location it won't affect the document it also means that if we save the document and send it to someone else the image will also be included in the document file a disadvantage of this however is that if we use a lot of large images the document file size can get pretty big with the link option on the other hand the image in the document will be linked to the image file on our computer and inkscape will load up the image file whenever we open the document this means that we can add a lot of images to our document without increasing the file size too much but we have to be careful not to delete or move the image files or else inkscape won't be able to find them for the most part I tend to stick with the embed option all right and after we import an image into our document we will sometimes want to trace a part of it so that will'll have a vectorized version that we can use in our designs to do this we can first lower the opacity of the image then we can grab the pin tool and start tracing and we could just manually create bzier curves like this but with a complicated image this can get pretty tedious so instead if we look up here in the controls bar we have several modes that we can choose from the default is the be mode which we've been using so far and which lets us create curves by clicking and dragging but we also have B spline mode here with this one we just have to click points and it will automatically create curves for us it's not quite as accurate as beer mode but in most cases I find it works well enough when we're done with the tracing let's make sure to go back to beer mode and now we can raise up the opacity of the path and make it whatever color we want we can also delete the image if we no longer need it if we only want a particular part of an image to be visible we can use clipping and masking to do so we first draw a path or a shape over the part of the image that we want to keep then select both objects and for clipping we can either go to the object menu then down to clip and choose set clip or we can right click the selection and choose set clip and this is treated as a single object so we can transform it like a normal object to release the clip we can either select the clipped object and go to object clip release clip or we can just right click it and choose release clip masking is very similar to clipping except it takes the color of the Mask into account a black mask will make the result fully transparent a white mask will make it fully opaque a 50% mask will make it 50% opaque and so on for example if I wanted to use the shape to clip the image again but I also wanted to make the image go from transparent on the left to opaque on the right I could first make the shape black then give it a linear gradient and make the stop on the right fully opaque and white now I can select both objects and I can either go to object mask set mask or right click the selection and choose set mask and to release the mask we could again either use the object menu or right click and choose release mask clipping and masking work on other types of objects as well for example I can use the same shape to clip or mask another shape one menu we have in inkscape is the filters menu filters allow us to add various effects to any object and they tend to work particularly well with images for example in the bevel's category we can make the object look like a button or we can add some diffused lighting to it I useful filter in the blurs category is feather which lets us blur just the edges of an object the color category lets us affect an objects colors in different ways such as by using Color rise to completely change the colors or using lightness contrast to affect how bright or contrasting the colors are with the image effects filters we can apply a film grain to an object and if we have an image that is kind of blurry we can use sharpen or sharpen more to bring out the details a bit in the morphology category we can add an outline to an object with many options for changing the appearance of the outline with overlays we can add effects on top of an object for example we can add clouds or Frost and we can use noise fill to add a noise overlay to an object giving it a grainy appearance under shadows and glows the filter I use more than any other is drop shadow with this we can add a drop shadow either to the outside of an object or to the inside we can also apply multiple filters to an object for example we might want to give it an outline and also give it a drop shadow and if we want to remove all of an objects filters at once we can go to filters remove filters here at the bottom one of the tools we have available to us is a shape Builder tool here this tool as its name implies allows us to build shapes and to use it we first need to have some shapes or paths selected if we Now activate the shape Builder tool it hides everything on the canvas that isn't selected and it turns all of the selected objects gray and puts an outline around each one if we move our cursor over the objects whichever segment we hover over turns a light shade of blue and if we click the segment it turns a darker shade of blue this means that the segment will be included in the shapes that we're building we can also click and drag over segments and they will be combined into a single segment with the outlines between them disappearing if we take a look in the controls bar we have two modes to choose from add mode and delete mode add mode is the default which let us add segments and with delete mode we can delete segments however we don't actually have to enable delete mode from here instead with ADD Mode still enabled we can hold down the shift key to temporarily switch to delete mode we can tell that we're on delete mode because the cursor has a minus sign next to it whereas with ADD mode it has a plus sign next to it and with delete mode active the segments we hover over turn pink and if we click one it disappears also similar to add mode we can click and drag over segments to delete them all at once however we don't actually need to delete segments because any segments that aren't blue when we apply the results will automatically get deleted and to apply the result we can either click the check mark button here here next to finished or we can press the enter key and now we have all of the different shapes that we built now if we undo all of that until we have the original objects back and we select them all activate the shape Builder tool and start building we can undo a previous action by pressing contrl Z also if you want to cancel the building all together we can either click the x button up here or we can press Escape in the lesson for the welcome dialogue we briefly solve that one category of templates that we have is shape Builder we can use these templates along with the shape Builder tool to build a variety of shapes and instead of closing out of inkscape and opening it back up to get to the welcome dialogue we can actually access all the templates by going to the file menu and choosing new from template now we can go to the shape Builder tab choose a template and click create from template and it will start up a new document using the selected template now we can select everything grab the shape Builder tool and get to work one very useful feature of inkscape is path effects which are special effects that we can apply to paths and shapes and which can speed up our designs quite a bit to use path effects we need to open up the path effects dialogue which which we can do by going to the path menu and choosing path effects and now with a path or shape selected if we click this Arrow here we can see all the available path effects there are quite a lot of them so in this lesson we'll just go over some of the ones that I find to be the most useful first we have corners this is actually the path effect that gets applied to an object when we go to the node tool and use the add Corners LP button here if we click it we can see in the path effects dialogue that the object now has the cornner path effect applied to it as we've seen before with the cornner path effect we have circular handles near each of the objects nodes which we can use to adjust the rounding at the corner near that node but with the path effects dialogue open we also have some other settings that we can play around with for example using this radius box we can adjust the rounding radius of all the corners at the same time or if we select some nodes and check this change only selected nodes option we can adjust the rounding at just the selected Corners also instead of holding control and clicking a handle to cycle between the different Corner types we have these buttons for changing the corner types for example we have fillet which is the default we have inverse fillet which inverts the rounding we have chamfer which squares off the corners and we can use this chamfer step setting to change the appearance of it and finally we have inverse chamfer which is the opposite of chamfer and which is also affected by the step setting if we apply the offset path effect to a shape or path and we go to the no tool we get this orange circular handle that we can use to either outset or inset the object we can also change the join type which affects the appearance at the corners miter is the default and it keeps the corner sharp we can also Square Off the corners using bevel and we can use rounded to round the corners offset is particularly useful for creating a border around one or more objects for example I'll first duplicate these two objects then I'll Union the duplicates together make it a different color and send it below the original two objects now I'll apply offset to it and use the node tool to outset it creating a border for the objects the power stroke path effect is useful for paths that only have a stroke if I apply it to this path the ends of the path by default become tapered and if I go to the node tool I now have these pink diamond handles at different points along the path these are called control points and I can move them around and use them to adjust the width of the path near that point if I hold control and click a control point it adds a new one holding control and alts and clicking one deletes it using the width multiplier setting I can adjust the width of the entire path changing the smoothing type will affect the appearance of the path in different ways using the two cap settings I can change the appearance at each end point of the path if we apply the bin path effect to a shape or path and we click this edit on canvas button we get a green horizontal line going across the center of the object if we click and drag the line we can bend the object we can also move around the nodes at the two ends of the line and use the be handles to adjust the curvature and if we double click the line we can add a new node to it it we can adjust the width of the object using this handle here which we can also do from the pth effects dialogue pattern along path lets us stretch or repeat a shape or path along another path to use it we first need to copy the object that we want to use as the pattern next we select the path we want to put the pattern on and add pattern along path to it and in here we need to click one of these two buttons the main difference is that link to path and clipboard will allow us to modify the original pattern object and have it also affect the pattern whereas with paste path modifying the original object won't affect the pattern so let's go with link to path and clipboard the default pattern type is single stretched which takes a single copy of the pattern object and stretches it along the path if we can change the color of want another pattern type is single which just puts a single copy of the object at the start of the path and we also have repeated and repeated stretched repeated will repeat the object along the path as many times as possible and repeated stretched will stretch the copies so that they fill up the entire path some other things we can change are the width of the copies the spacing between them and their offsets on the path the perspective envelope path operation allows us to either change the perspective of an object or deform its shape the default type is perspective and if we now go to the node tool we have these four nodes at the corners of the object's bounding box and we can use use them to change the object's perspective we can make it so the movements get mirrored horizontally and or vertically if we change the type to envelope deformation instead of changing the object's perspective the nodes now let us deform its shape and again we can mirror the movements in order to use interpretate subpaths we first need to have an object that consists of multiple subpaths to do this we can select two or more objects and go to path combine if we now add interpolate subpaths to it it interpolates between the subpaths by default giving us a total of five subpaths that have an equal amount of spacing between them we can change the number of sub paths using the step setting also if we use the node tool to modify one of the original subpaths all the interpolated subpaths will get modified accordingly if we click this edit on canvas button here it gives us a green horizontal line across the object this is the line along which the interpolated paths are created we can click and drag the line to bend it we can also move the nodes at the ends of the line and we can even add new nodes to it if we add the mirror symmetry path effect to a path or shape it will mirror the object along a mirror line and we can use the node tool to change the position and angle of the mirror line using these nodes also if we change the shape of the original object the mirrored version will change accordingly changing the colors will also by default affect the mirrored version however if we check split elements here change ching The Originals colors won't affect the mirrored version and we can now also select the mirrored version and change its colors separately if we add the splice path effect to a shape or path it will slice the object along a slice line which by default goes vertically along the center of the object and like with mirror symmetry we can use the node tool to reposition and rotate the line and what's cool is we can also use Slice on a group of objects with a tiling path effect we can repeat a path or shape in a ton of different ways we can change the way that the tiles are mirrored we can change the number of rows and columns we can adjust the gaps between the tiles we can offset alternating rows or columns by certain percentage we can change the scale of the tiles in different ways and we can rotate the tiles in different ways also if we split the elements we're able to select the individual tiles and give them different colors we can actually also add multiple path effects to a single shape or path for example I might add the bend path effect to this object and bend it then decide I also want to add the offset path effect to it when an object has multiple path effects attached to it we can click and drag on these little dots here to change the order of the path effects which can change the appearance of the final result we can also use this ey icon to toggle a path effect on or off and we can use the trash icon to remove it one more thing to know about path effects is that it's pretty easy to accidentally change their settings especially if we start making Transformations on an object that has them or we start grouping them together with other objects because of this when we're finished adjusting an object's path effect settings we'll often want to finalize the settings to do this we just have to do object to path on the object any path effects that the object had disappear from the path effects dialogue but the results remain on the object the object is also now a normal path so we get access to all of its nodes because path effects only work on paths and shapes if we try to add one to a text object it doesn't let us in order to use path effects on a text object one thing we can do is first turn the text object into a path we can of course do this by going to path object to path like normal but if we have the path text dialogue open we also conveniently have a convert text to paths button if we click it the text object becomes a path and now we can add path effects to it of course once we turn a text object into a path we can no longer change its text or its font attributes but we have a way around this which is to First create a clone of the text object then apply path effects to the Clone and if we select the normal text object we again conveniently have a clone button in the path effects dialogue if we click it it creates a clone of the object directly on top of it and we can now add path effects to the Clone but what's cool about this is that if we change the text or font attributes of the original text object the Clone will change as well however there's a bug that causes the final character to not show up in the Clone to fix this all we have to do is add some extra character like a space to the very end of the text object which fixes the Clone and now we can remove the extra character now if we select the Clone again you can see in the pets dialogue that the Clone also has the Clone original path effect attached to it this was added automatically by inkscape Under the Clone original settings we can actually change what aspects of the original object that the Clone copies by default the Clone copies the original object shape along with it lpes which are its path effects and it also copies some of its attributes including its style its clip path and its mask now because the Clone copies the style if we change the original object's colors the clone's colors will change as well however if we remove the word style in here along with the comma after it and press enter now changing the original object's colors doesn't affect the Clone and we can freely change the clone's colors we can also create multiple clones of a text object to do this we can either clone the text object itself again or we can simply duplicate the Clone this also duplicates the path effects I can now change the color of this clone move it below the other one add the offset path effect and outset it creating a border for the other clone and modifying the original text object will modify both clones and again we might have to add and remove an extra character in order to update the Clones another very useful feature of inkscape is extensions which are located in the extensions menu and like with path effects we have a lot of them so we'll only cover some of the most useful ones first up in the color category we have randomize if we check live preview down here we can use this extension to randomize the colors of selected shapes or paths in different ways for example we can randomize the hue the saturation the lightness and the opacity to cancel the extension results we can click the close button or we can click the apply button to permanently apply the results the generate from path category has quite a few useful extensions and the first one we'll look at is distribute along path this extension Works similarly to the pattern along path path effect except instead of copying the pattern object into the clipboard we need the pattern object to have a higher Z order than the path that we'll Place copies onto and we need to have both objects selected for check live preview the default behavior is to place multiple copies of the pattern object along the patter path with no space between them we can also see by looking at the gradient that each copy rotates in order to follow the orientation of the path to stop this from happening we can uncheck follow path orientation here now the copies maintain the same rotation as the original pattern object if we check the next option it will add just enough space between the copies to fill up the entire path or we can instead use the space between copy setting to manually adjust the spacing this also works with negative numbers with the normal offset setting we can adjust the vertical offset of the copies on the path and with tangential offset we can slide the copies back and forth along the path with the extrude between two paths extension we can connect the nodes between two selected shapes or paths using either l or polygons if we apply the extension the polygons or lines are placed inside a group we can change the colors of the group as a whole or we can ungroup it and work on the individual objects the next extension we'll look at interpolate between paths requires that we have two or more path selected so if we want to use it on shapes we have to turn them into paths first now if we open up the interpolate between paths dialogue and check live preview it interpolates between the paths by creating new paths between them we can use the interpolation step setting to tell it how many paths you create between each pair of selected paths we can change the method it uses to interpolate between the paths and we can tell it whether or not to interpolate between the Styles or colors of the paths with the long Shadow extension we can easily apply a long Shadow effect to a selected path or shape we can adjust the length of the Shadow as well as the angle and if the object has a stroke we can use the stroke color as the color for the Shadow we can also use this on text but we have to turn the text into a path first also to easily get back to the previous extension we can either choose previous extension settings to bring up the dialogue again or we can choose previous extension to apply the same extension using the previous settings and by the way applying the long Shadow extension gives us a group of two objects if we ungroup it we now have both the original object and a group of Shadow objects the pattern along path extension does basically the same thing as the pattern along path path effect except with the extension we can use a group of objects as the pattern object and like with the distribute along path extension the pattern object needs to have a higher Z order and we need to have both objects selected like with the path effect we can choose how to place the pattern object onto the path we also have a deformation type setting snake makes the copies rotate along with the path Direction whereas ribbon keeps the copies upright creating more of a ribbon appearance we can also adjust the spacing between the copies as well as the offsets a useful extension in the text category is lauram ipsum which lets us easily create placeholder text if we have nothing selected it flows the text inside the page borders we can adjust the number of paragraphs as well as the number of sentences in each paragraph with the fluctuation setting here we can randomly add or subtract up to a specified number of sentences from each paragraph so that they don't all have the exact same number of sentences if we apply the extension we can see that it creates a text object and we can change this font attributes also if we run the extension with a shape or path selected it will use the object as a frame for the text we touched briefly on clipping and masking earlier in the course but there are actually a few more cool things we can do with them for example if we go into the object menu for both clipping and masking we have inverse options with inverse clipping we can cut the top object out of the bottom one this is similar to using the difference path operation except like with normal clipping we can always release the clip to get the original objects back with inverse masking the color of the top object affects the transparency of the part of the bottom object that it covers like with normal masking the closer to Black the higher the transparency another difference with inverse clipping and masking is that they actually both use path effects this means we're not able to use them on images like we can with normal clipping and masking if we open up the path effects dialogue we can see that inverse masking uses the power mask path effect and in here we can invert the mask we can hide the mask and we can remove the background another feature we have is clip groups to create a clip group we right click an object and choose set clip group what this does is it Clips the object with itself then puts it inside a group and what this means is that if we enter into the group any objects that we create will also be clipped and if we resize the original object it will also resize the clip if we would like to vectorize a RoR or bit map image and use it in our designs we can use the trace bitmap dialogue to open it we can either go to path trace bitmap or we can write click the image and choose trace bitmap and here we have three tabs single scan and multicolor for vectorizing normal images and pixel art for vectorizing pixel art images the main difference between single scan and multicolor is that single scan will give us a single path and multicolor will give us a group of multiple paths we can also see in the preview box here that the multicolor result will be much more detailed than the single scan result and for each tab we have a variety of detection modes to choose from which will give us different results for single scan the parts that are black in the preview will be included in the results and the white parts will be removed we can invert this by checking invert image here we can also use the thresold setting to increase or decrease the amount of detail in the result and when we like what we see in the preview we can apply the result by clicking the apply button here this creates A New Path on on top of the image and like with all paths we can do things like change its color and perform path operations on it as I mentioned before the multicolor tab will give us a group of paths and the number of paths it gives us is determined by the scan setting a default of eight gives us eight paths and we can change this to add or remove detail from the result result applying the result also takes a bit longer than single scan because it has to scan the image multiple times we now have a group of pads and we can enter into the group to edit the individual paths we previously went over linear gradients and Radial gradients but we actually have another type of gradient that we can use called mesh gradients and we can apply one to a selected object by clicking the mesh gradient button in the filling stroke dialogue mesh gradients go from White at the top left and bottom right Corners to the original color at the bottom left and top right Corners if we grab the mesh tool over here we can select one or more Corner nodes and change the colors we can also move the nodes around as well as use these handles to adjust the curvature of the mesh to add more notes to the mesh we can double click a vertical segment to add rows or a horizontal segment to add columns we we actually have another type of mesh gradient called a conical gradient to access it we have to create another object then go back to the mesh tool choose the conical gradient button in the controls bar and doubleclick the object like with radial gradients conical gradients start from the center and move out and we can double click segments to add rows and columns with the paint bucket tool located here in the toolbox we can fill in what are called bounded areas a bounded area is an area that is completely surrounded by pixels that are different from itself for example the red rectangle here is completely surrounded by the white pixels of the page and if I click the rectangle with the paint bucket tool it creates A New Path on top of the rectangle and fills it in with the color of the paint bucket tool that's not particularly useful but if we have overlapping objects all the overlapping parts that have the same color as the pixel I click will get filled in we can also use it to fill in empty areas that are completely surrounded by objects and we can easily change change the color of the New Path either using the color palette or the fill and stroke dialogue this also changes the color of the paint bucket tool so any New Paths we create with it we'll use the new color and because this works on pixels and because inkscape uses anti-aliasing to smooth out the pixels on the edges of objects in the display if we zoom in a bit we can see that the tool doesn't perfectly fill in the areas and actually being zoomed in will give us a better result as it gives the tool more pixels to work with we also have this grow shrink by setting if we use a positive value for this it will expand the path and if we use a negative value it will shrink the path the threshold setting determines how closely the neighboring pixels must match the first pixel for example with these two overlapping objects that are different shades of red if we use a load threshold and click one of the bounded areas it will only fill in that particular area but if we increase the threshold we're able to make it fill in both areas we can also use the fill by setting here to tell the paint bucket tool to only consider a particular color channel of the pixels for example with Alpha as long as all the overlapping objects have the same alpha or transparency value they will all get filled in with the tweak tool here we're able to sculpt and Scatter selected shapes and paths in various ways for example with the default move mode if we click and drag over the objects they will move in the same direction as the cursor we can also use the width setting to control how large of an area to affect and we can use the for setting to control how much force to apply to the objects with the next mode clicking and dragging will move the objects toward the cursor and with most of the modes we have the option of using the shift key to perform the opposite action for example with this mode holding down shift as we click and drag will push the objects away from the cursor we can use the next mode to scatter the objects in random directions with the next one we can either make the object shrink or hold down shift to make them grow next we can either rotate the objects clockwise or hold shift to rotate them counterclockwise the next mode will duplicate the objects holding down shift with a duplicate mode mode will delete the objects with the next mode we can push parts of the objects in different [Music] directions we can use the next one to either shrink parts of the objects or hold shift to enlarge them the next mode will either pull parts of the objects toward the cursor or push them if we hold shift next we can roughen up the edges of the objects with the next mode we can make the colors of the objects get closer and closer to the color of the tool using the next mode we can apply random colors to the objects finally we can use this mode to either increase the blur of the objects or hold shift to decrease it using the spray tool here we can either spray duplicates or clones of selected objects or spray them as a single path the width setting allows us to change the size of the spray area and the amount setting let's just change how many copies to spray rotation which goes from 0 to 100% lets us apply a random rotation to the copies similarly scale lets us apply random scaling to the copies with a high scatter setting the copies are scattered all around the spray area with a low scatter and a low Focus Focus the copies will stay near the center and with a high focus they will stay near the border when both of the eye buttons here are turned on we're able to spray over both transparent areas and non-transparent areas if we turn on just the Open Eye button we're only able to spray over non-transparent areas and if we turn on just the closed die button we can only spray over transparent areas we can use this button to prevent copies of the same color from [Music] overlapping and we can use this one to prevent all copies from overlapping turning on this button gives us some options for affecting the colors of the copies for example with this one we can apply the background color to the fill color of the copies and with this one we can apply it to the stroke color of the copies we can also invert the color using this button if we activate the Eraser tool here we can either delete objects that we click and drag over or using the cut mode we can cut through parts of the objects we can use the width setting to adjust the width of the tool if we use a positive value for thinning dragging fast will make the width smaller using a negative value will have the opposite effect with caps we we can round the ends of the tool trimmer will roughen up the edges of the tool and with a high mass the tool will lag behind the cursor allowing us to get a smoother result because cut mode actually cuts through the objects we can only use it on shape and paths we can't use it on images but if we turn on clip mode here instead of actually cutting through the objects it uses clipping so now we can use it on images it can sometimes be useful to work with multiple pages in our document especially if we want to create something like a PDF file to create and manage multiple Pages we use the pages tool located here in the toolbox if we activate the pages tool we can create another page with the exact same dimensions as our current one by simply coming up to the controls bar and clicking the new page button we can also choose a specified format for the selected page or just resize it manually using the handles at the corners we can use the circular handles to adjust the margins for the page we can do this from the controls bar as well and we can also snap objects to the page margins if we click and drag a page using the pages tool we can reposition it on the canvas and if we have this option up here turned on moving a page will also move any objects that are touching the page turning off the option will keep the objects where they are if we would like to save our document we can go to file save or save as this will save the document as an inkscape SVG and we'll include all the information we need to continue working on our document and inkscape at a later time we can also use the SVG file on something like a website for the most part however in order to use our designs outside of inkscape we'll need to export them to a different format like a PNG or jpg image file to do this we use the export dialogue which we can open by going to file export in the export dialogue we have the options of exporting everything inside the page everything inside the document everything inside the current selection or we can define a custom area to export down here we have a checkbox that says export selected only when this is unchecked everything inside the selection box will be exported even objects that aren't actually currently selected if we check the box only the actual selected objects will be exported we also have the option of adding a background color to the export to export we can click the folder icon here give it a name and choose the ort location choose the format to export to and click save you should now know enough about inkscape to put it to use in your own designs but if you would like to go even deeper as well as get plenty of practice with inkscape's tools and features I have a number of full inkscape courses on my website I'll leave a link to them in the description box below also be sure to check out the other videos on my channel which are dedicated to helping you master inkscape thanks for watching

Channel: Sweater Cat Designs

Views: 28,621

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Id: AAhVqLyKk4U

Length: 126min 57sec (7617 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024