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Tutorial Tips

This document provides tips and tricks for using Inkscape, including how to create radial patterns using tiled clones, emulate non-linear gradients, create excentric radial gradients, slice images into multiple export areas, and more. It also demonstrates how to use the XML editor to access hidden Inkscape features, clean up documents, and place text on paths. Various keyboard shortcuts and tools are described to aid in drawing, selecting objects, and general workflow.

Uploaded by

Michael Fadjar
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
52 views

Tutorial Tips

This document provides tips and tricks for using Inkscape, including how to create radial patterns using tiled clones, emulate non-linear gradients, create excentric radial gradients, slice images into multiple export areas, and more. It also demonstrates how to use the XML editor to access hidden Inkscape features, clean up documents, and place text on paths. Various keyboard shortcuts and tools are described to aid in drawing, selecting objects, and general workflow.

Uploaded by

Michael Fadjar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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:: T I P S A N D T R I C K S

This tutorial will demonstrate various tips and tricks that users have
learned through the use of Inkscape and some “hidden” features that
can help you speed up production tasks.

Radial placement with Tiled Clones


It's easy to see how to use the Create Tiled Clones dialog for rectangular grids and
patterns. But what if you need radial placement, where objects share a common center of
rotation? It's possible too!

If your radial pattern only needs to have 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12 elements, then you can try the
P3, P31M, P3M1, P4, P4M, P6, or P6M symmetries. These will work nicely for
snowflakes and the like. A more general method, however, is as follows.

Choose the P1 symmetry (simple translation) and then compensate for that translation by
going to the Shift tab and setting Per row/Shift Y and Per column/Shift X both to
-100%. Now all clones will be stacked exactly on top of the original. All that remains to
do is to go to the Rotation tab and set some rotation angle per column, then create the
pattern with one row and multiple columns. For example, here's a pattern made out of a
horizontal line, with 30 columns, each column rotated 6 degrees:

To get a clock dial out of this, all you need to do is cut out or simply overlay the central
part by a white circle (to do boolean operations on clones, unlink them first).

More interesting effects can be created by using both rows and columns. Here's a pattern
with 10 columns and 8 rows, with rotation of 2 degrees per row and 18 degrees per
column. Each group of lines here is a “column”, so the groups are 18 degrees from each
other; within each column, individual lines are 2 degrees apart:

In the above examples, the line was rotated around its center. But what if you want the
center to be outside of your shape? Just click on the object twice with the Selector tool to
enter rotation mode. Now move the object's rotation center (represented by a small cross-
shaped handle) to the point you would like to be the center of the rotation for the Tiled
Clones operation. Then use Create Tiled Clones on the object. This is how you can
do nice “explosions” or “starbursts” by randomizing scale, rotation, and possibly
opacity:

How to do slicing (multiple rectangular export areas)?


Create a new layer, in that layer create invisible rectangles covering parts of your image.
Make sure your document uses the px unit (default), turn on grid and snap the rects to the
grid so that each one spans a whole number of px units. Assign meaningful ids to the
rects, and export each one to its own file (File > Export PNG Image (Shift+Ctrl
+E)). Then the rects will remember their export filenames. After that, it's very easy to re-
export some of the rects: switch to the export layer, use Tab to select the one you need (or
use Find by id), and click Export in the dialog. Or, you can write a shell script or batch
file to export all of your areas, with a command like:

inkscape -i area-id -t filename.svg

for each exported area. The -t switch tells it to use the remembered filename hint,
otherwise you can provide the export filename with the -e switch. Alternatively, you can
use the Extensions > Web > Slicer extensions, or Extensions > Export >
Guillotine for similar results.

Non-linear gradients
The version 1.1 of SVG does not support non-linear gradients (i.e. those which have a
non-linear translations between colors). You can, however, emulate them by multistop
gradients.

Start with a simple two-stop gradient (you can assign that in the Fill and Stroke dialog or
use the gradient tool). Now, with the gradient tool, add a new gradient stop in the middle;
either by double-clicking on the gradient line, or by selecting the square-shaped gradient
stop and clicking on the button Insert new stop in the gradient tool's tool bar at the
top. Drag the new stop a bit. Then add more stops before and after the middle stop and
drag them too, so that the gradient looks smooth. The more stops you add, the smoother
you can make the resulting gradient. Here's the initial black-white gradient with two
stops:

And here are various “non-linear” multi-stop gradients (examine them in the Gradient
Editor):

Excentric radial gradients


Radial gradients don't have to be symmetric. In Gradient tool, drag the central handle of
an elliptic gradient with Shift. This will move the x-shaped focus handle of the gradient
away from its center. When you don't need it, you can snap the focus back by dragging it
close to the center.

Aligning to the center of the page


To align something to the center or side of a page, select the object or group and then
choose Page from the Relative to: list in the Align and Distribute dialog (Shift+Ctrl
+A).

Cleaning up the document


Many of the no-longer-used gradients, patterns, and markers (more precisely, those which
you edited manually) remain in the corresponding palettes and can be reused for new
objects. However if you want to optimize your document, use the Clean up
Document command in File menu. It will remove any gradients, patterns, or markers
which are not used by anything in the document, making the file smaller.

Hidden features and the XML editor


The XML editor (Shift+Ctrl+X) allows you to change almost all aspects of the document
without using an external text editor. Also, Inkscape usually supports more SVG features
than are accessible from the GUI. The XML editor is one way to get access to these
features (if you know SVG).

Changing the rulers' unit of measure


In the default template, the unit of measure used by the rulers is mm. This is also the unit
used in displaying coordinates at the lower-left corner and preselected in all units menus.
(You can always hover your mouse over a ruler to see the tooltip with the units it uses.)
To change this, open Document Properties (Shift+Ctrl+D) and change the Display
units on the Page tab.

Stamping
To quickly create many copies of an object, use stamping. Just drag an object (or scale or
rotate it), and while holding the mouse button down, press Space. This leaves a “stamp”
of the current object shape. You can repeat it as many times as you wish.

Pen tool tricks


In the Pen (Bezier) tool, you have the following options to finish the current line:

Press Enter

Double click with the left mouse button

Click with the right mouse button

Select another tool

Note that while the path is unfinished (i.e. is shown green, with the current segment red)
it does not yet exist as an object in the document. Therefore, to cancel it, use either Esc
(cancel the whole path) or Backspace (remove the last segment of the unfinished path)
instead of Undo.

To add a new subpath to an existing path, select that path and start drawing with Shift
from an arbitrary point. If, however, what you want is to simply continue an existing
path, Shift is not necessary; just start drawing from one of the end anchors of the selected
path.

Entering Unicode values


While in the Text tool, pressing Ctrl+U toggles between Unicode and normal mode. In
Unicode mode, each group of 4 hexadecimal digits you type becomes a single Unicode
character, thus allowing you to enter arbitrary symbols (as long as you know their
Unicode codepoints and the font supports them). To finish the Unicode input, press
Enter. For example, Ctrl+U 2 0 1 4 Enter inserts an em-dash (—). To quit the Unicode
mode without inserting anything press Esc.

You can also use the Text > Glyphs dialog to search for and insert glyphs into your
document.

Using the grid for drawing icons


Suppose you want to create a 24x24 pixel icon. Create a 24x24 px canvas (use the
Document Preferences) and set the grid to 0.5 px (48x48 gridlines). Now, if you
align filled objects to even gridlines, and stroked objects to odd gridlines with the stroke
width in px being an even number, and export it at the default 96dpi (so that 1 px
becomes 1 bitmap pixel), you get a crisp bitmap image without unneeded antialiasing.

Object rotation
When in the Selector tool, click on an object to see the scaling arrows, then click again
on the object to see the rotation and skew arrows. If the arrows at the corners are clicked
and dragged, the object will rotate around the center (shown as a cross mark). If you hold
down the Shift key while doing this, the rotation will occur around the opposite corner.
You can also drag the rotation center to any place.

Or, you can rotate from keyboard by pressing [ and ] (by 15 degrees) or Ctrl+[ and Ctrl
+] (by 90 degrees). The same [] keys with Alt perform slow pixel-size rotation.

Drop shadows
To quickly create drop shadows for objects, use the Filters > Shadows and Glows
> Drop Shadow... feature.

You can also easily create blurred drop shadows for objects manually with blur in the Fill
and Stroke dialog. Select an object, duplicate it by Ctrl+D, press PgDown to put it
beneath original object, place it a little to the right and lower than original object. Now
open Fill And Stroke dialog and change Blur value to, say, 5.0. That's it!

Placing text on a path


To place text along a curve, select the text and the curve together and choose Put on
Path from the Text menu. The text will start at the beginning of the path. In general it is
best to create an explicit path that you want the text to be fitted to, rather than fitting it to
some other drawing element — this will give you more control without screwing over
your drawing.

Selecting the original


When you have a text on path, a linked offset, or a clone, their source object/path may be
difficult to select because it may be directly underneath, or made invisible and/or locked.
The magic key Shift+D will help you; select the text, linked offset, or clone, and press
Shift+D to move selection to the corresponding path, offset source, or clone original.

Window off-screen recovery


When moving documents between systems with different resolutions or number of
displays, you may find Inkscape has saved a window position that places the window out
of reach on your screen. Simply maximise the window (which will bring it back into
view, use the task bar), save and reload. You can avoid this altogether by unchecking the
global option to save window geometry (Inkscape Preferences, Interface >
Windows section).

Transparency, gradients, and PostScript export


PostScript or EPS formats do not support transparency, so you should never use it if you
are going to export to PS/EPS. In the case of flat transparency which overlays flat color,
it's easy to fix it: Select one of the transparent objects; switch to the Dropper tool (F7 or
d); make sure that the Opacity: Pick button in the dropper tool's tool bar is
deactivated; click on that same object. That will pick the visible color and assign it back
to the object, but this time without transparency. Repeat for all transparent objects. If your
transparent object overlays several flat color areas, you will need to break it
correspondingly into pieces and apply this procedure to each piece. Note that the dropper
tool does not change the opacity value of the object, but only the alpha value of its fill or
stroke color, so make sure that every object's opacity value is set to 100% before you
start out.

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