Inkscape recently released Inkscape 1.1, its follow-up version to its
major Inkscape 1.0 release, and I have to say – this is a gamechanger. This
new release sees new features and bug fixes, but most importantly it refines Inkscape as a vector
graphics software with improvements that make the software more professional. In this tutorial,
I’ll be covering What’s New in Inkscape 1.1. But of course before I get into that, don’t forget
to check out my website at DaviesMediaDesign.com. I have tons of video tutorials on here,
as well as free software help articles so definitely check that out. You can get more
content by becoming a DMD Premium Member, and I’ll include a link to this as well as
all the relevant links from this tutorial in the description of the video. Alright lets
dive into what's found in this latest version. For starters, you’ll want to download and install
Inkscape 1.1 from the Inkscape website. After the program is installed, it now automatically pops
up with a fancy looking welcome window that has you set some of your own custom preferences. You
can now change the color and style of your canvas, change the shortcut keys – including matching
those of other programs you may be used to including Illustrator or Corel Draw, and change
the styling of the UI or your tool icons. There is also now a toggle that allows you
to turn on or off the dark mode for your UI. You’ll also notice here that the graphics at
the top of the welcome window contain artwork. This artwork was submitted during Inkscape’s
About Screen Contest, with the works displayed here being the runners-up from the contest.
The winner of the contest, Fauzan Syukri, has their artwork displayed on the main About
Screen as well as on the last tab of the welcome screen - which we'll get into here momentarily.
Once you click save, you’ll then be taken to the second tab of the welcome window (there are three
tabs total). Here, you’re given information about how you can contribute to Inkscape, either by
helping develop the program or by donating money. Clicking any of the links here will take
you to the respective pages on the Inkscape website to tell you more about contributing.
Moving on to the final page of the welcome screen, which is probably my favorite, Inkscape now allows
you to open a recent document or create a new document based on any of the templates listed
here. The template interface is nice and neat, allowing you to scroll through the various
documents – which are labeled with a descriptive title as well as their dimensions – and there
is also a series of tabs on the left side with different categories of templates. Inkscape’s
templates include commonly used dimensions for print, digital screens, video, social and
“other,” which appears to mostly contain templates for designing Inkscape assets. Some
useful templates you’ll find in here include templates for business cards, legal documents,
4K video, snapchat ads and social posts. When you’re ready to open a
template, double click on it and it’ll open into Inkscape as a new document.
One downside I’ll mention to this new “Templates” feature is that it only appears to be available
via the welcome screen when you first install Inkscape or when you open Inkscape for a new
session. In other words, when I go to File>New, it still simply creates a new document using
the default dimensions rather than popping up with this new template or new document window. I
personally think in future versions of Inkscape, going to File>New should take you to the
template window. However, when you close down Inkscape and reopen it, the new welcome
screen does appear. You can also disable this feature using the little checkbox in the bottom
left corner if you prefer the old startup method. The next new feature I want to highlight, which
is yet another feature I’m really excited about, is Inkscape’s new “Command palette” feature.
Similar to GIMP’s “Search Actions” feature, this feature allows you to search commands in
Inkscape rather than always having to go through the app’s menus to find what you’re looking for.
To access this feature, hit shift plus the forward slash key on your keyboard – or in other words
the question mark key - and the command dialogue, or “command palette” as Inkscape is referring
to it, will pop up. By default, this dialogue has a list of potential actions you can use
in the program, which I think is a nice touch. You can scroll through the actions with your mouse
to get some ideas of what to type, or simply type the action you’d like to use in the search bar.
A common action you can use, for example, is converting objects to paths.
You can exit this Command Palette using the escape key on your keyboard.
Next up is the new Dockable Dialogues functionality. This feature applies to
the dialogues that typically pop up on the righthand side of your canvas when activated,
and include dialogues like Align & Distribute, Text and Font, Fill and Stroke, Layers, and more.
The old behavior of these dialogues was that when you had multiple dialogues open they would
stack vertically, with the topmost dialogue being the active dialogue. So, when you clicked
on a new dialogue tab somewhere in the stack, that dialogue would then get moved to the top
of the stack and would display all its options. Now, the dockable dialogues stack horizontally
as tabs, and you can click on any of the tabs to make that dialogue active. The active tab will
display its options in the dockable dialogue area, while the inactive tabs simply display the
icon for that dialogue in their respective tab. Plus, you can drag dialogues so that they now
stack in separate rows, with the active dialogue from each row displaying its options. This is more
similar to how dialogues display in other design software, including GIMP, so I think users will
find this setup more intuitive and user friendly. Additionally, the dialogues can now be moved to
new locations around the canvas. They no longer simply reside on the right side – they can also
be moved over to the left side of the canvas by clicking and dragging them to the highlighted
areas, releasing your mouse when you’re ready to place them. This allows you to have the dialogues
on either side of the canvas, or to move all the dialogues to the left side. The main downside
to this setup is that you can’t really shrink the dialogue sizes down too much, so when you
have dialogues on both sides of the canvas, the canvas window itself can become quite cramped
or small. Additionally, the actual area where you have to drag your mouse in order to get the little
highlight line to show up to release the dialogue is pretty small, so sometimes it can be tricky
locating the exact area before you release. All that being said, I do like the new tab setup
much better than the previous vertical stacking arrangement, and I do think this new layout
has a lot of potential for future iterations of Inkscape. I’ll also note that the F12 key
hides all the dialogues, and also brings them back, which is a handy shortcut.
Moving on to the next new feature, the “Preferences” dialogue now has a search bar
that allows you to quickly find any preference you’re looking for. For example, if I wanted to
change the style of my icons, I can type “icons” here and it’ll only display the preferences that
have the keyword “icons” listed in the options. Also, all the areas that contain this search
term will be highlighted, allowing you to quickly find the settings you’re looking for.
A new “Outline Overlay” mode makes its way into Inkscape 1.1, allowing you to preview your
work with outlines of your paths and shapes along with a slightly transparent preview of your
full-colored artwork below. You can access this new mode by going to View>Display Mode>Outline
Overlay. To go back to the default display mode, simply go to View>Display Mode>Normal.
Several updates have been made to various painting, drawing, and node tools in
Inkscape 1.1, including improvements to the Calligraphy tool to make it more precise.
I’ll admit this is not a tool I use that often, but essentially the tool now supports units
for the width of the line drawn, and also has measurement precision up to 3 decimal places.
So, the strokes created by this tool should now be versatile based on width, and the size of the
strokes should be more precise to your settings. The connector tool, which is used to connect
objects on your composition using lines and is most useful or most commonly used in
technical diagrams, received an update where the lines drawn between objects now update in real
time as you move objects they are connected to. Additionally, an update was made to
the tool based on a bug report that allows objects to be connected even when
objects are stacked on top of one another. Martin Owens, who is essentially
the lead contributor to Inkscape, introduced in Inkscape 1.1 the ability to copy
nodes from a section of a path using the Node Tool and paste them as a new shape. To use this
new feature, draw a shape, for example, convert the object to a path, then use the
Node Tool to select the nodes you want to copy. Deselect the original shape
by double-clicking off it, then paste the nodes on your composition. A
new shape will be created from the nodes you’ve selected. Keep in mind that if you don’t deselect
the original shape before pasting your nodes, the new shape will automatically be tied
to the original shape – so any movements, transformations, or restyling of the original
shape will also occur to the new shape. Next up, there have been some new and exciting
additions made to the Live Path Effects in Inkscape 1.1. The first is the introduction of
the Slice Live Path Effect. This new feature allows you to slice any shape into two pieces
while still maintaining the original shape. To use this effect, draw any shape. Then, with
the shape active, go to Path>Path Effects. Click the little “+” icon to add
a new effect, and select “Slice.” By default, your shape will now be sliced down the
middle. However, you can grab the Nodes Tool and click on the middle node of the line where the
slicing is occurring. When you drag the node, the location of the slice will change in real
time. Releasing your mouse sets the new location of the slice, and you can now drag the two shapes
on either side of the slide using the Select tool. You can add another instance of the
Slice effect to the newly sliced shapes to slice the shape again. Plus, you can
rotate the top or bottom node of the slice line using the Nodes tool to change the direction of
the slice. Again, when you release your mouse, the slice will be applied and you can
move either shape using the Select tool. If you click on the shape that has the slice
effect and remove the effect from the Live Path Effects dialogue, the original shape will
be restored. So, this is a great non-destructive way to create slices from your shapes.
The next new Live Path Effect added in Inkscape 1.1 is the new Boolean Operation LPE, which was
available as an experimental LPE in Inkscape 1.0, but has now been moved to the main “Live Path
Effects” dialogue with all the other stable Live Path Effects. This feature allows you to
essentially build shapes using two paths or objects. To use the effect, draw two shapes, for
example. Then click on one of the shapes and copy it to your clipboard by hitting ctrl+c. Click
on the other shape and add the Boolean Operation LPE by clicking the “+” icon in the Live Path
Effects dialogue and choosing “Boolean Operation.” Choose an operation from the settings, then click
the little clipboard icon to perform the operation using the shape you copied earlier. This is
another great way to perform non-destructive effects on your shapes and paths in Inkscape.
Additional updates or improvements have been made to the Fill Between Many, Offset, and
Taper Stroke Live Path Effects in Inkscape 1.1. Moving on, Inkscape 1.1 now comes with a
much improved Export dialogue. For starters, exporting now occurs when you click
“Save” after renaming your document, which is a much needed change from the previous
set up where you had to rename your document, click save, then click “Export” again.
Anyone who’s experienced this process knows just how redundant and frustrating
it could be – so I’m glad to see it fixed. Plus, Inkscape now lets you export to other
formats besides PNG, including JPEG, TIFF, and WebP files. Exporting to JPEG is huge in my
opinion as it can help people exporting their works for the web, for example, without needing
to import PNG files into another program like GIMP for conversion to a JPEG. I have no idea what
took Inkscape so long to implement this feature, but it’s here now, so that’s exciting. When you
do export to JPEG, you’ll get a message letting you know that you’ve made a terrible mistake and
should consider another file format like PNG or WebP instead to preserve your masterpieces. The
dialogue even provides a link to a diatribe on the Inkscape website that delves more into why JPEG
is the devil. Though it is true that you’ll lose quality when exporting to JPEG, sometimes you just
need that option. But, regardless, I do appreciate the educational information on why certain formats
are better for vector artwork. It should be noted that there are actually two tabs for the JPEG
dialogue, with the second tab allowing you to choose the quality of your JPEG and check
or uncheck the “Progressive” format option, which has to do with how your image will
load on the web. Click OK to export the JPEG, and somewhere in the universe an Inkscape
developer will wince like Voldemort after one of his horcruxes was destroyed.
Each of the other export filetypes have their own dialogue as well, including the PNG dialogue
which now allows you to optimize your PNG. Finally, the last thing I want to note about
Inkscape 1.1 is that a beta version of a new Extensions Manager feature has been rolled out.
This feature, which is also currently being tested for GIMP, will allow users to quickly access
and install Inkscape-approved python extensions and plugins from within the Inkscape program.
This will help extend Inkscape’s capabilities while also making solid plugins developed by the
Inkscape community more accessible to everyone. You can access this feature by going to
Extensions>Manage Extensions. You’ll see three tabs here – the first being “Active Extensions”
for extensions that are currently installed on your app, followed by “Install Packages” for
a library of extensions you can download, and finally “Create Package” which provides a link on
how to create your own extensions. Under “Install Packages,” you’ll notice there are already some
extensions available to try out, though keep in mind this is a beta version so they may be buggy
– as may be the extensions manager window itself. But that’s it for this tutorial!
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You can check out any of the relevant links for this video in the description. But thanks
for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
