<font color="#00FFFF">Hello, welcome to this tutorial on how to use Inkscape, a free and</font> <font color="#00FFFF">outstanding vector drawing software that works on Windows, MacOS, and</font> <font color="#00FFFF">Linux. Inkscape is able to manage Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) files which</font> <font color="#00FFFF">are made up of textual markup language and processed faster on the web than</font> <font color="#00FFFF">JPG and PNG images, with also a smaller file sizes without compromising on</font> <font color="#00FFFF">quality.</font> <font color="#00FFFF">In just 13 minutes we will cover all the main basics of Inkscape.</font> <font color="#00FFFF">Don't forget to check the video description to discover our complete Udemy</font> <font color="#00FFFF">course on InkScape with greater discounts!</font> When opening Inkscape its welcome screen will appear. You can set the canvas background to either light or dark, adding transparency represented by a checkerboard. Under Keyboard choose the shortcuts to use and on Appearance adjust the interface options, switching to any dark theme if you want. To start with a new document, switch to Time to Draw and select the ready document template size and orientation that suits your need. The new document opens on the main interface, with the canvas at the center, the Toolbox with its tools on the left, and several panels on the right we are going to see. On top the tool controls bar collects properties and options for the current tool or selected object, while at the bottom you get the color palette and Status bar. You can go to View, Show/Hide to show or close bars or rulers. To manage the document and the canvas properties, go to File, Document Properties... Under Display, set the document size, its orientation, the measurement unit and the canvas color and transparency. You can also enable the Page tool to adjust the page size directly on the preview. Let's start drawing vectors with InkScape. The first section of the Toolbox collects all the tools to draw regular shapes. Just enable any tool and click and drag on the preview to drop a rectangle, ellipse, polygon, star, 3D cube, or spiral. Make sure to check the Status bar at the bottom to get useful hints and tips. The second section of the Toolbox is used to draw vectors freehand by brushing on the canvas. With the Bezier or Pen tool you can drop consecutive segments by clicking on the canvas and also curves by clicking and dragging on it. You can close the shape or finish with the tool by double-clicking. On top you can change the drawing mode according to your needs. Enable the Freehand tool to draw freely by clicking and dragging. Switch to the Calligraphic tool to drop artistic paths, adjusting trace properties on top. To add text to your document, enable the Text tool. Click once to drop single-line annotations, or click and drag to drop a text paragraph. If part of the content is hidden, you can enlarge the box until its red contour turns back to blue. The tool controls bar on top allows you to set font family, style, size, distribution, spacing, and orientation over the selected box or part of the text. To change the text color and appearance you have to open the Fill and Stroke dialog that we are going to see in a while. To check your drawings, you can zoom in and out with your mouse wheel while holding down the CTRL (or the CTRL+CMD on Mac). Hold down the Spacebar key to pan around instead. Inkscape provides several graphic aids and snappings. Two rulers on top and on the left show the cursor position with the measurement unit fixed for the document. From the top right corner you can set all the snapping options. You can enable or disable all the snappings or turn specific snappings ON or OFF, for example Bounding boxes for object edges, corners and centers; Nodes for cusp and smooth nodes of paths and Alignment to align as you move the object. You can get more snapping options by switching to the Advanced mode. Enable the Select tool and click on any object to select it. This shows a dashed box around it, which you can drag to move. You can also use the black node to scale it, holding down the CTRL or CMD key to save its aspect ratio. Make sure to check the Status bar at the bottom to get useful tips on how to edit the object. Click once again within the box to rotate and skew the object. You can also cut, copy, and paste the selected object with CTRL (or CMD) and X, C, and V respectively. If you make any mistake, use CTRL (or CMD) and Z to undo. The tool controls bar on top shows the properties for the selected object. You can rotate the object by 90 degrees, flip it horizontally or vertically, adjust its visibility when overlapping other objects, and precisely set its position, width, and height. You can also enable the lock button to save the aspect ratio. These values are updated as you edit the object on the canvas. When you double-click on any object you enable the corresponding drawing tool for it. For example, double-click on a text box to enable the Text tool so that you can type in. Double-click on a rectangle to enable the Rectangle tool and drop another rectangle or adjust it shape. If you double-click on freehand paths you enable the Node tool. Select any node and show handles to edit curves, according to the node type. Diamonds are cusp nodes and squares are smooth nodes with tangent handles. You can also click on a node while holding down the CTRL key to change its type. Drag any node to move it or use its handles to shape its curve. Double-click on a path to add a new node and use the Backspace key to remove to selected node. You can use the same Node tool on shapes to adjust corners, straight lines, resize any object or adjust any star shape with some limitations. To completely customize these shapes you may convert these to paths by going to Path, Object to Path. If you convert text to a path, this is turned into a group of text letters that you can edit with the Node tool. To adjust any object appearance go to Object, Fill and Stroke... to open the Fill and Stroke dialog. Under Fill and Stroke paint you can apply solid colors, linear, radial or pattern gradients to either the object fill or its stroke. To manage any gradient enable the Gradient tool. Click and drag on the object to apply another gradient and move its nodes to adjust it. You can also select a node to edit its color or transparency and double-click on the gradient line to add more nodes. Click elsewhere to apply the gradient. On Stroke style you can add dashes, patterns, and markers to endpoints and midpoints. At the bottom of the dialog, you can apply Blur and Transparency to the entire object, including its fill or stroke. To select multiple objects you can click and drag on the canvas and pick all the objects within your rectangular selection area. This way you can move, scale, and edit the objects together. Press the Escape key to deselect all. You can also right-click and go to Group to group these objects and move and edit these always together. With Inkscape you can also work with Bitmap images. To import one go to File, Import and browse for the image. At this point you can move, scale, or edit the image just like any other object. You can also go to Path, Trace Bitmap to convert the image into a vector path, selecting between a single or a multicolor scan mode and then editing it as a vector object. To manage the objects and groups inside your document, go to Object, Layers and Objects... By default, all of these are collected within a single layer called Layer1, used to collect a large list of objects. You can click on any object or layer to select it, using the eye button to hide or show it, and the lock button to prevent modifications on it. You can also right-click to duplicate or delete and click and drag to change the order of visibility. To create a new layer, use the second button on top and drag any object onto it. To save your entire document, go to File and select Save As. You can save it as an InkScape or a Plain SVG file to be able to open and edit it again or use it on the web. To export your design, go to File and then to Export. On the Export dialog on the right you get a quick preview and four options you can choose. Select Document to export the entire document, Page to export a single page, Selection to export only what you have selected on the canvas, or Custom to export a specific region, taking as reference the top left corner of the page. At the bottom set the destination folder and the file format, such as SVG, PNG, or PDF. Make sure to select PNG, to preserve transparency. The background is rendered according to the canvas options, set from the Document Properties dialog as seen. <font color="#00FFFF">If you're interested in learning more about Inkscape, make sure to check out our</font> <font color="#00FFFF">complete Udemy course from the video description! Do not forget to visit our</font> <font color="#00FFFF">YouTube channel and our official website for more tips and tricks on graphic</font> <font color="#00FFFF">design!</font>
