Switching from Illustrator? Learn Inkscape in 22 Minutes! 10 Things Beginners Need to Know

hello and welcome to yet another tutorial by davies media design my name is michael davies and in today's tutorial i'll be showing you 10 important things you need to know when switching from illustrator to inkscape this will by no means be covering all of the differences between these two programs as there are many differences however these are what i think are the most important differences that you need to know as a beginner switching over from illustrator to inkscape i'll be using inkscape 1.0 as well as illustrator cc 2020 for this tutorial both are the latest versions of their respective software [Music] but of course before i get into that i want to direct you guys over to my website at daviesmediadesign.com as always i have tons of inkscape and dark table tutorials on here as well as my book of layers and free software help articles so definitely check that out and you can get more with a premium membership to davies media design and i'll include a link to this as well as all the relevant links from this tutorial in the description of the video so the first important difference i want to note when you're switching from illustrator to inkscape is that whenever you draw something on your canvas by default in inkscape it's actually going to obstruct the document boundary or the canvas boundary so here i am inside of inkscape and you'll see i have my inkscape set up to dark mode i have a tutorial on how to set this up if you want to set it up for your inkscape but if i were to come over and grab something like the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle that covered up the entire size of my document you'll see the rectangle will actually obstruct the boundaries of my document or of my canvas and that can make it hard to tell if you're working inside of those boundaries on the other hand if i come over here to illustrator and let me just reset my colors here if i were to grab the rectangle tool and do the same thing so let's draw this over the entire size of the document here the document boundary is still going to display it will not be obstructed and that's going to make it easy to tell if you're inside of these boundaries while you're working well there is actually a quick fix or a quick adjustment inside of inkscape for this so let's come over to inkscape and let's go to file document properties and down here in the bottom right corner you'll see it says border and i'm going to check this option here border on top of drawing so that will fix our border being obstructed i'm also going to uncheck the show border shadow there and now if i exit out of here we've got this set up to the way most of you who are switching over from illustrator are used to the second item i want to bring up is the difference between how the fill and stroke colors are changed between the two programs so let's come back here to illustrator you guys are used to coming over here and clicking on this little icon or this little swatch and the first swatch is for phil the second is for stroke and depending on which one you're clicked on you can come over to the color picker here and change the color it's a little hard to see the stroke right now let's increase the size of it and if i were to come over here i can also double click on the fill color for example choose a new color and there it is and of course you have your color guide so you can choose from some swatches here you can change your color palette etc on the other hand if i come over to inkscape it's kind of hard to see where the fill and stroke colors are but by default they're going to be down here in the lower left corner below what's called the color palette as well as up top here in the top right so this is how you can tell what fill or stroke color you have selected you can also see the size of the stroke right here next to the stroke color and if you want to change the color of your fill or of your stroke you can come over here to the color palette and search through the colors you want to choose from so let's go with this blue color at first and so left clicking on the color will change the fill color if i were to shift click on the color that will change the stroke color some of you might be thinking that this color palette is going to restrict what colors you can use if you're used to being able to just freely use the color picker inside of illustrator for example it's actually not the case so here inside of inkscape i can actually go to object fill and stroke and now here i have a variety of options i can choose from for changing the color of my fill or of my stroke so here i'm working on the fill i can come over here to the stroke color and this is actually where i can also change the size of my stroke so right now this is in millimeters this document i'm going to go with pixels and let's go with something like 40 hit the tab key and also when it comes to the color palette you can change the palette itself so you can go with a totally different palette here if you wanted to and this just provides you with some more options for the color you want to use so let me come back here and go with the default palette which is the inkscape default important difference number three for this tutorial is going to be the differences between how shapes are drawn inside of the two programs so for illustrator let's come over here and let's just use the select tool and backspace key to get rid of that shape i'll come back to the rectangle tool when i click and draw a rectangle it's going to use whatever my fill and stroke colors are as well as my current setup for my stroke so each time that i draw a rectangle you'll see it's just going to have those same settings however if i were to change the corners of this for example so change the styling up a bit and let me just get rid of this color guide if i were to draw another rectangle it would not have those rounded corners again so it will take on the fill in stroke color and the stroke size but it's not going to have the rounded corners on the other hand if i go into inkscape and let me once again get rid of the shape grab my rectangle tool so just like in illustrator whatever my current fill and stroke colors are are what is going to show up here with my rectangle tool same with the width of my stroke so if i were to change this to 10 for example and draw a shape now it's 10 and each subsequent rectangle will have that same stroke width however if i were to round the corners of this rectangle here and then i were to draw another rectangle you'll see this will actually have the rounded corners as well so that styling is going to transfer over from shape to shape depending on whatever the style was of the last shape you drew so if i were to change the style of this and draw another rectangle now it has that style let me grab my select tool select all these shapes delete them the reason this is important inside of inkscape is that if i were to draw an ellipse shape or a circle shape here circle shapes can actually have this feature where they look like either pac-man shapes or like pie charts so if i were to draw this like so open up this side of the circle and then try to draw another circle you'll see that this is actually going to take on that same shape here so that can be annoying if you're not used to it but to reset the styling of your circle you would come up here to what's called the tool controls bar and for the circle you have this little button here that allows you to reset the circle shape and for the rectangle if i were to draw a rectangle and not want it to have rounded corners anymore i could come up top here and click to reset the corners to make them sharp again so important thing number four that i want to mention for this tutorial is that there's actually no shape builder inside of inkscape so the shape builder tool in illustrator is a super useful feature it's probably the best feature in illustrator in my opinion inkscape does not have this tool in particular but it does have some features that are similar to the shape builder tool so let's come over to illustrator and if i were to come over here and grab my selection tool and then shift click to select multiple shapes of course i can come over and grab the shape builder tool and i can combine these two shapes very easily or ctrl z alt and click on a shape and that will get rid of that shape there so the shape builder tool is super useful and also if i were to drag the shape over here and then shift click on two shapes we have the pathfinder feature here and i can also perform some actions with these shapes using the pathfinder menu so hit control z inkscape is going to operate a little bit differently so there isn't a shape builder tool inside of inkscape however there is a workaround that allows you to perform some actions that work the same way a shape builder tool would work however there is not a formal shape builder tool but you can select multiple shapes and come up here to the path menu and here you'll see a variety of actions here and these actions in my opinion are like a combination between the pathfinder tool and the shape builder tool so for example if i click intersection now it's going to keep just the intersection between those two shapes there so hit control z so the fifth important thing to know when switching from illustrator to inkscape is that the transform handles are going to act differently between the two programs when it comes to transforming shapes so let's come back over here to adobe illustrator and click on one of these shapes with the selection tool so you'll see here that there are no handles surrounding the border of this shape however if i were to hover my mouse cursor over any parts of this shape the mouse cursor would change based on the area of the shape that i'm hovered over so here i can change the width and the height and if i'm a little bit outside the corner i can rotate this so the handles are pretty much hidden there and you can also change the corners of this if you want to as i showed you before so now let's come over here to inkscape when i click on a shape with the select tool inside of inkscape the handles do appear here so they're not quite as hidden as they are inside of illustrator and here we can do the same thing so hovering over the corner we can change the width and the height of this if i hold ctrl it creates a modifier key and maintains the same aspect ratio or i can scale this up or down and left to right so there are no rotation handles by default but if i click on this again it actually does bring up rotation handles and i can also skew this using the skew handle there so hit control z to back up finally if you want to round the corners of this you have to double click on here and that's going to bring up this little handle that allows you to round the corners and once again you can change the width and height of this if you wanted to but if you wanted to bring the handles back up for transforming this come over here grab your select tool and now your shape is selected again the next important thing to know when you're switching from illustrator to inkscape is that the eyedropper tool is not going to behave the same way inside of inkscape as it would in illustrator so in other words when you're working in illustrator the eyedropper tool is going to copy over the entire style of whatever you click on but in inkscape it's a little different so let's come over to illustrator to demonstrate and i'm going to start with this shape that i already have selected let's say i add a gradient to this and then i change the stroke of this to something like 15 and then i click on this shape here grab my eyedropper tool and click on this rectangle shape you'll see it's going to copy over the style of this so the stroke is the same size the stroke color is the same and the fill color is the same coming over to inkscape if i were to try the same thing so let's decrease the size of this and let's add a gradient as the fill and let's change the gradient color there and then let me grab my select tool let's come over to the stroke style here inside of fill and stroke change this to 15 so i've made the stroke larger on this one if i were to come over here to my circle shape and i wanted to copy the styles from here i wouldn't use the eyedropper tool because this is just going to change either the fill color if i left click or the stroke color if i shift click and the color it's going to change that too depends on the color that i am hovered over so if i'm hovered over the stroke color and i click that's actually going to change the fill color here so let me click on this again to change the fill color back to the gradient if i were to shift click on that stroke color it would change the stroke color on this shape however it would not change the stroke style so the stroke did not become thicker on this shape so once again let me demonstrate if i shift click on this dark blue color now the stroke color of this shape is dark blue and if i simply click on the stroke color here so left click on this now the fill color changes to that light blue if i wanted to copy the style from one shape to another what i'd have to do is grab my select tool click on that shape ctrl c to copy it and then come over to this other shape ctrl shift v to paste and that's going to copy these style and the colors from this shape it doesn't always work perfectly as you can see here so the gradient didn't perfectly transfer over but the stroke size did change here and the color changed and actually if you come over here to fill you'll see the fill does have that same gradient although it didn't display quite properly there and this actually applies to text as well so whenever you're working with text inside of illustrator let's come over here and just type a random this is a test ctrl a let's go with something like 200 for the font size if i were to type a new line of text here this is a test ctrl a let's change this to century go century bold and maybe go 400 here and change the color so if i were to click on this text grab my eyedropper tool and click on this line of text it's going to take on the same styling here inside of illustrator however in inkscape it's going to work the same way i demonstrated earlier so if i click on here and type this is a test ctrl a let's change this to myriad actually let's just go with a different font i don't think we have myriad in here so maestro increase the size and then we grab the text tool and we'll type this is a test again if i were to simply come over and grab the eyedropper tool and click on this nothing's going to happen because the eyedropper tool is only copying the colors here it's not actually copying the styling if i come over here ctrl c click on this ctrl shift v now it's going to copy both the styling and the color of our text so the seventh important difference on this list is a quick one and that has to do with whenever you are selecting something between the two programs so if you're coming from illustrator you are used to the select tool or the selection tool working a certain way so let's come over here to illustrator grab the selection tool if i were to click and drag my mouse and just partially hover over a shape it's going to still select that shape and let's do that again but with the text as well so it selected the text there this is actually not the same behavior inside of inkscape so let's come over to inkscape grab my select tool if i click and drag this partially over an object it's actually not going to select that object you have to be totally hovered over the entire object for it to be selected so this can come in handy when you are trying to select something but you don't want to accidentally select the object next door however if you are coming over from illustrator it can be annoying because you're used to illustrator just selecting things even when those things are only partially selected you can also select items simply by clicking on them and if you wanted to select multiple items you can shift-click so that allows you to easily select multiple items here item number eight on my list is that locking objects inside of inkscape is going to work differently than inside of illustrator so let's come back to illustrator if i were to click on an object and hit control 2 that object now becomes locked and if i wanted to unlock this object i could go to object unlock all which is going to be alt control 2 or i could come over to the layers panel the layers dialog here and expand the layer and here you'll see this little lock icon so i can toggle that and now this is unlocked so this is going to work differently inside of inkscape so for example let me click on this object here if i were to hit ctrl 2 nothing's going to happen it's not going to lock i have to right click on here and go to lock selected objects and at first it's not going to appear locked but if i try to drag this somewhere else it's not going to actually move and now those handles will disappear and if i wanted to unlock this i could go to object unlock all or if i hover my mouse over here right click i can go to unlock objects below and that will unlock that object also i can come over here to object objects and here you'll see a list of all of the objects found in a layer and the active object will always be highlighted in blue so i can come over here and click the lock icon now this is locked and if i come back over here and click to unlock it now the object is unlocked so item number nine on this list on important things to note when you're switching from illustrator to inkscape is that inkscape is a little bit quirky when it comes to exporting your documents especially when it comes to exporting to a png file for example i have my composition here and if i wanted to save this as an svg file i would go to file save and svg stands for scalable vector graphic it's going to be what inkscape uses as its default file type much like adobe illustrators.ai file inkscape composition save it as the svg file and click save now if i wanted to export this as a png and i went to file export png image it's not simply just going to bring up a dialog box that allows me to then choose the name of my file and then export it it's actually going to bring up this little dialog here over on the right side of inkscape and by default it's actually not going to export the entire document so everything inside of the document boundaries i have to come over here under export area and choose page then if i wanted to change the file name and location i would come over here and click export as so here i could change the name and the type i want to export this to i can only choose png so you would think once i hit save it would now be exported but there's actually one more step you have to come over here and hit the export button and now that will be exported so the reason this is kind of confusing is that inkscape by default is not going to export the entire document or the page it usually goes with something like drawing or selection as you saw when we first pulled up the export window so you usually have to manually choose page and then go through with the exporting process and i'll show you what happens if we go with drawing here and let's export this as inkscape composition drawing so you can see what this looks like when we exported this as a page it cut off based on the document boundaries now if we export this as a drawing and of course i do have to come here and hit export for this to actually export let's come back to the export as window and you'll see what happened it exported everything that was inside of our composition regardless of whether or not it was inside or outside of the boundaries here so that's what happens when you choose the drawing option so keep that in mind when you're working in inkscape you're probably going to have to manually select page as the export area so the last important thing to note item number 10 on this list when you're switching from illustrator to inkscape is that inkscape actually does not export to jpeg files and i know for some of you it's like how does it not export to a jpeg file it just doesn't so what you have to do if you want to create a jpeg file from your inkscape composition is use another program so for example i can use which is a free photo editor once i have open i can navigate to where my document is located so here is that document we exported so i can drag this png file here into and i could have added a background behind this by drawing a rectangle behind it inside of inkscape but since we're already in i'll just add a new layer fill it with white and click ok and drag this below the inkscape composition layer and then i can go to file export as and just make sure this ends in jpeg hit export and i've already saved this one so i'll just hit replace and we can choose our quality hit export again and there you can see now we have our jpeg so to wrap all this up inkscape is a great vector graphics program but it does have its quirks and it helps to know the main differences between how illustrator works and how inkscape works that way the transition for those of you switching from illustrator is much easier alright so that's it for this tutorial hopefully you liked it if you did you could check out my youtube channel at youtube.com daviesmediadesign don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified each time i have a brand new tutorial you can also check out any of the links to my resources in the description of the video but thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Davies Media Design

Views: 8,582

Keywords: Illustrator vs Inkscape, Illustrator Alternative, Free Vector Software, Vector Design, Vector Art, Inkscape Basics, Inkscape 1.0, Illustrator CC 2020, Inkscape 2020

Id: iP8ZIASbB0w

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020