About SVG

Those who work with graphics for internet use know the problems inherent to publishing images on the web. Traditionally, the only options for use in internet documents were bitmap images (such as JPG or GIF), with the disadvantage that these images are either too large for quick transfer or of poor quality due to high compression.

As a solution to this problem, Macromedia created the Flash image format. While Flash satisfactorily solved the main problems inherent to bitmap images, some users found it unacceptable that they depended solely on Macromedia to develop the file format and software for the internet-standard vector format. In order to address this discontent and provide an open option for vector graphics, the W3C created the SVG file format, making a freely usable vector format available to everyone.

For most image files, only the specific software that renders the actual image can read them. SVG, however, is described in XML and CSS, and its files can be opened and edited in any ASCII text editor. Though one could create SVG images in this manner, it is highly unproductive and unintuitive. SVG editors and renderers have the ability to easily open and manipulate SVG files without a special interpreter.

Objectives of the SVG Format

The advantages of SVG are the same as for any vector image. They offer smooth, crisp, high-quality images with the ability to resize to any dimensions without diminishing quality, all impossible with bitmap images. The SVG standard also defines animation, and with a little use of Javascript, one can make SVG interactive. Finally, since SVG is written in XML, a designer can create graphics based on data stored in other XML-based formats, such as graphs, charts and maps. Despite its benefits, SVG lacks a large choice in usable software that takes full advantage of its capabilities. For this reason, SVG is not as usable, at the moment, as Flash.

The Current State of SVG Software

Today, a number of software applications, both free and proprietary, can create SVG files: Inkscape, Sketch/Skencil, sK1, Karbon14, xfig, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Xara, and any ASCII text editor.

Although not well supported by most web browsers, Mozilla (Firefox, Netscape) and other browsers such as Safari and Konqueror currently support a basic subset of SVG, and Internet Explorer uses plugins (i.e. Renesis) which support most of the SVG standard.  Amaya has good support for SVG display, including animations, and can also perform basic editing tasks.

The Batik toolkit is a very useful tool for SVG display, and is often used as a reference for checking SVG implementations.

Inkscape Interface

The Inkscape interface is constituted of elements designed to make work simple, harmonious and contextual.  It is composed principally of a single window in which one creates and manipulates drawings.  Within the window, lie particular components which this chapter will identify, enabling readers to easily navigate the software.

 

We may divide the window into nine major areas:

1. the Menu (at the top of the window)
2. the Commands Bar 
3. the Snap Controls Bar
4. the Rulers, Guides and Grids
5. the Tool Controls Bar (also called just Controls Bar)
6. the Toolbox
7. the Canvas
8. the Color Palette
9. the Status Bar 

 

The many toolbars that are available in Inkscape can take up a lot of visual space on your screen. To reduce the toolbar size. Use File > Inkscape Preferences... then select the Interface option.  Here you can individually set the Commands Bar Icon Size, the Tool Controls Bar Icon Size and the Main toolbar Icon Size.

The Menu

As in most GTK applications, the Inkscape Menu contains the essential functions of any program, those which concern the application itself: New, Open, Save, Export, Quit, etc.  The Menu also consists of functions related to drawing. 

The Commands Bar

The Commands Bar is located at the top of the workspace directly underneath the Menu.  It contains icons which are shortcuts to commands otherwise accessible from the menus or shortcut keys. It also houses other controls for manipulating the document and drawing objects.  For example, from the Commands Bar one can open a new or existing document, print, import an image, undo previous commands, zoom, open the dialog to adjust document properties, etc.  Hovering the mouse cursor over each icon will display its functions through tooltips.

There may be an arrow on the right side of the Commands Bar pointing down. Clicking this will reveal any command shortcuts that unable to fit on the bar due to monitor size or resolution settings.

 

The Toolbox and Tool Controls Bar

The Toolbox, consisting of vertically aligned buttons located on the left of the window, is Inkscape's main editing control.  It contains the basic set of drawing utilities, particularly those for creating and editing shapes.  There are controls for geometric shapes as well as free-form shapes and lines, text, and fills (colors and gradients).

Located directly under the Commands Bar is the Tool Controls Bar.  

Selecting a tool in the Toolbox changes the Tool Controls Bar to show particular options associated with that tool.  Depending on context, some of these options affect a selected object while some take effect only when drawing a new object; others can affect either existing or new objects.

The Canvas

The Canvas is the main workspace. It is the most central and important part of the interface since a user creates and views drawings there. It occupies the middle of the window and is represented as a blank "page" surrounded by open space.  By default, rulers measuring pixels (the standard SVG unit) run above and to the left of the Canvas, but one can adjust these defaults (ruler visibility and unit) in Document Properties.

While the "page" defines the boundaries of a document intended for certain media (print, export, etc.), the page boundaries do not limit the actual SVG image.  In fact, users may make the page border and shadow invisible in the Document Properties.  Some artists prefer to use a particular page boundary and use the white space as "scratch paper"; others prefer not to be limited by page boundaries.

Rulers

The Rulers are graduated lines placed on top and left of the canvas. The first is called "horizontal" and the second "vertical". Graduations represent distances and are expressed in units that can be set in the Units option of the Page tab of the File > Document Properties menu command.

When the mouse is over the canvas, two triangles appear in the rulers to show its X and Y coordinates, relative to the page's bottom left corner. Those coordinates are also displayed in the Status Bar (at the bottom of the document window) on the right, near the Zoom Control.

Ctrl + R is a quick way to hide or display the Rulers. One can also do that with the View>Show/Hide>Rulers menu command.

Guides

Guides are user-defined 'magnetic' lines. Using Guides makes object alignment easy even with the mouse. To use Guides, click and drag from the Rulers to the point where the Guide is to be inserted and release. Clicking and dragging from the horizontal Ruler produces a horizontal Guide. Clicking and dragging from the vertical Ruler produces a vertical Guide.

When the Selector Tool F1 is active, passing the mouse over a Guide will change its color to red. Then, click and drag the Guide where you want.

To delete a guide, just drag it to the appropriate Ruler with the Selector Tool F1

Guide Visibility

To make Guides invisible, without deleting them, select View > Guides from the Menu Bar. The keyboard shortcut for toggling Guide visibility is Shift | (hold shift and press the pipe - | - key, which is usually paired with the backslash key.)

 


File > Document properties lets you define if Guides should be displayed by default, and the color of both the Guide itself and the highlight when the mouse is passing over.

Guides are also often used with snapping making it much easier to place objects on the canvas, especially for precise or technical drawings. In this case just check the Snap guides while dragging checkbox.

Grids

Instead of using lots of Guides, it can be useful to activate Grids. Do this with the View > Grid menu or press # (Shift + 3 ).

Grids are of 2 types : rectangular and axonometric. They can be defined in the window from the   File > Document properties menu. Most commonly used is the rectangular Grid which is made of vertical and horizontal lines.

Axonometric Grids allow the user to define any kind of angled Grid which can be interesting for technical or architectural drawings.

Here is an example of a standard axonometric grid and a rectangular grid.

How to Use 

Use the drop down list in the "Document Properties" dialog to select which type of grid to use then click the "New" button. A new tab is created under "Defined grids" (several grids can be defined for a single document). Then define the units you would like to use and both the Origin point and the distance (Spacing) between two lines of the Grid.  When using Axonometric Grids there is also the option to define the angle of two grid lines.

Enabled 

Tick the box to use this grid in the current document. Can be left 'on' in invisible grids to maintain snap to grid controls.

Visible

Tick to display the grid on the canvas. Switch off to make the grid invisible.  This option sets the default value for each grid so that even if Visible is ticked here, it is still possible to toggle View Grid on and off via the menu or by hitting the # key. If the View > Grid menu is unchecked, the grid won't be visible on the canvas even if "Visible" is checked here.

Grid Units

Many commonly used units are available from mm, to feet and px. Choose the one that best suits your needs. If no special needs, keep the default px.

Origin X and Y

Defines the beginning point of the Grid.  Usually set to '0' (zero) it can be useful to change these if an offset is needed, especially to define margins from the edge of the Canvas.

Spacing X and Y

Defines the space between two lines of the Grid. These spaces can be different for horizontal and vertical lines so that the Grid pattern can be set to any kind of rectangle.

Angle X and Z

Only available for Axonometric Grids. Defines the the angles for the Grid Lines on the X and Z axes.

Grid line color

The default color for the Grid is blue, but this can be changed here. There are two kinds of line. The most often used is the Grid line, but when the grid spacing is short and many lines are displayed the Major Grid line helps to evaluate distances. In this case a different color can be defined for each type of line and the frequency of the Major Grid line can be set (usually 5 or 10).

Show dots instead of lines

Available on Rectangular Grid Only. Since lines can overload the screen, it can be uneasy working with Drawing Tools when the grid is visible. This option toggles between lines and dots for displaying the grid, creating a less overloaded screen.

Snap Controls Bar

 

The Snap Controls Bar gives easy access to object snapping enabling you to quickly turn snapping on when required and the off when finished.  It also allows customisation of the snapping feature letting you select what can be snapped and what objects can snap to.

Color Palette

The Color Palette is a quick way to apply color to shapes. It is displayed at the bottom of the Canvas, or can be opened in a window by selecting View > Swatches ( Shift + Ctrl + W )

How to Use 

To find the color you like, just scroll along the swatch line and choose. You can change the color palette with another preset by clicking the triangle at the right of the bar and choosing one.

To apply a color to a shapes "Fill color", just click on a color after selecting one or more shapes.

To apply color to the "Stroke", press Shift while clicking and it's done.

Status Bar

 

Status Bar is the bottom-most area of the Inkscape interface. It includes (from left to right) :

• Color indicator for the object
• Quick layer selector
• Help message area
• Mouse Coordinate indicator
• and finally a Zoom Factor in which one can write the exact zoom factor they want to use.
  

Working with files

Creating a New Document

Creating a new document is usually the first step to creating art in Inkscape.  While you can always begin with an existing document, it is likely that a blank document is more useful for a new drawing.

New documents, themselves, are created from an existing document (also known as a template) which exists in the user's profile.  A standard template file comes with a new installation, but a user can modify it, just like any Inkscape file, to suit his or her preferences.  In addition to the standard template, there is a selection of other templates representing various media types; this list can be extended with additional templates created by the user.

When Inkscape starts, a new document is automatically created from the standard template.  If a new document is created from an existing instance of Inkscape, a new Inkscape window is opened.

How to Use

One can create a new file in several ways:

• Select File > New from the menu bar (opens a list of all available templates with Default at the top)

• Press Ctrl + N (creates a new document from the default template)

• Click the New Document icon on the Commands Bar (also creates a new document from the default template)

To modify document properties (such as page size, default units, etc.), select File > Document Properties from the menu or press Ctrl + Shift + D.

Opening a Document

• Import... - Imports a file into the currently active document you are working on. The imported file becomes an object in the already open document.
• • Select File > Import...
  • Press Ctrl + I
  • Click the Import icon on the Commands Bar

It is possible to exchange objects from one document to another by copy/paste, but only if the newly opened document was opened from within the original application instance.  For example, if a file was opened by double clicking its icon from the computer's file browser, a second instance of Inkscape would be opened and objects could not be exchanged between documents.

Saving a Document

Select Tool

The Select Tool is used to select, position and transform objects on the Canvas with the mouse or other input device.

How to Use

Start the Select Tool one of three ways:

• Click on the Select Tool button in the Toolbox;
• Press s;
• Press F1.

Select a Single Object

Click an object with the Select Tool to select it.  The object will be framed with a bounding box (a black, dashed line) and scale handles will appear. Click again on the same object and the scale handles will change to rotation and skew handles.

If the object clicked is part of a group, the group will be selected, and any actions performed will affect the entire group as if it were one object.  Double-clicking a group will allow you to subsequently select individual objects within the group.

Add Objects to and Remove Objects from Selection

Shift+Click objects to add them to the current selection or to remove them from the selection.

Select Objects Under other Objects

Alt+click selects the object under the cursor which is below (in z-order) the currently selected object under the cursor; if the bottom object is reached, Alt+click again selects the top object. Thus, several Alt+clicks will cycle selection through the z-order stack at the click point.

Combining Alt with Ctrl ("select in groups") and Shift ("add to selection") works, too. (Note that on Linux, many window managers steal Alt+click by default; reconfigure your WM so you can use Alt+click in Inkscape.)

Rubberband Selection

Select multiple objects by clicking on empty canvas space (or over objects which are unselectable) and dragging the rectangular "rubber band" over several objects (i.e. click at one place and keep the button pressed while moving the mouse).

Shift+Click+Drag will start the Rubberband Selection over any object.

Touch Selection

Alt+Click+Drag will allow you to select objects by drawing a freehand path (indicated by a red line); anything which the path touches will become part of the selection when you release the mouse button.  This mode is convenient in situations where you need to select objects so intermingled that selecting them by the other methods is too difficult or tedious.

(Note that your selection must be empty, otherwise Alt dragging will move the selected objects instead.)

 

To start a touch selection from a point over an object, or to add to existing selection by touching, press Shift+Alt and then start to drag.

Invert Selection

Use ! to invert the selection to all unselected objects within the current layer; use Alt+! to invert the selection to all unselected objects within all unlocked layers.

Move

To move a selection with the mouse, click an object and hold the mouse button while dragging to the new location.

(Dragging an object or several objects while holding Ctrl enables you to keep them aligned on an axis using the snap options.)

Move a selection precisely with the Select Tool either of two ways:

• Press the keyboard's cursor arrows to move selection 2 pixels in the direction of the arrow; Shift+Cursor will move by steps of 20 pixels; Alt+Cursor will move it by steps of one screen pixel, which will vary the actual movement based on zoom factor.  (The default step can be changed in Inkscape Preferences.)
• Change the coordinates in the Tool Controls Bar X and Y coordinate boxes.

Transform

There are two modes within the Select Tool which are used to transform objects: scale and shear/rotate modes.

You can switch between modes by clicking the current selection or pressing Shift+S.

Scale

Scaling an object resizes it vertically, horizontally or both.

To resize a selection in scale mode, drag the handles at the corners or press < or > (the factor for key scaling can be set in Inkscape Preferences).

You may also scale a selection by adjusting the parameters of the widthand height boxes on the Tool Controls bar

To constrain the proportion of the selection while resizing, select the lock toggle on the Tool Controls Bar or hold Ctrl while dragging.

To use the center point of the object as the center of the transformation, hold Shift.

Dragging the scale handles with Alt scales the selection by an integer factor, i.e. up to 2, 3, 4, etc. times the original size or down to 1/2. 1/3, 1/4, etc. of the original size either horizontally or vertically (or both).  (In some Linux distributions, you may need to adjust your meta-key settings to make this work.)

Rotate

To rotate a selection, switch to shear/rotate mode and drag the arrow handles which are found at the corners or press [ or ].

Constrain rotations to 15 degree increments by holding Ctrl while rotating.

To rotate the selection around the opposite bounding box corner location, hold Shift while rotating.

Rotation Center

The Rotation Center of the selection specifies the point around which it rotates.  The Rotation Center is marked with a crosshairs and may be placed anywhere on the canvas (not just within the bounding box of the object).

When several objects are selected, they use the Rotation Center of the first selected object. If the first object does not have center set (i.e. if it is in a default central position), then several objects will rotate around the geometric center of their common bounding box

To move the rotation center of an object, click and drag it to the desired spot.  It will snap to the bounding box of the object as well as other snap points as set in the Preferences.

Compare rotation around center which is in it default position

 

with rotation around center which is moved to upper right corner of a shape:

Shift+click on the rotation center resets it back to the center of the object's box.

Skew or Shear

To shift the parallel bounding edges of the selection in opposite directions so that the selection is warped diagonally, drag on the shearing handles at the top, bottom or sides of the selection while in shear/rotate mode.

Flip

Flip a selection either vertically or horizontally by

• clicking the Flip buttons on the Tool Controls Bar
• selecting Object->Flip Vertical or Object->Flip Horizontal
• pressing v or h
  

Flipping a selection while in scale mode makes it flip within its bounding box, so that the bounding box remains fixed:

 

However, in rotate/shear mode flipping happens over an axis through the rotation center:

 

Scale Stroke Width, Rectangle Corners and Fills

There are four preferences that control whether to transform stroke widths, rectangle corners, gradient fills, and pattern fills when a selection is transformed.

They are represented by four toggle buttons in the Tool Controls Bar.  Be sure to select the appropriate toggles before transforming any selection.

Tips

1. Double-clicking an object with the Select Tool and the tool will activate the appropriate tool to edit the object (i.e., if you double-click an ellipse, the Ellipse Tool will be activated, etc.).

2. The Transform Window (Object->Transform or Shift+Ctrl+M) can be used for precise transformations.
3. Press Esc to cancel selection or cancel an incomplete move or transformation.
   
4. Ctrl+Click or Shift+Ctrl+Click will select objects within groups from outside that group.
5. Drag Selected: in Select, Alt+Drag moves the currently selected object(s) no matter where you start the drag, unlike regular drag that first selects the object under cursor. This is convenient for dragging objects that are behind other objects in z-order. (On Linux, you may need to disable dragging the window with Alt in your window manager's settings if you want to use this "drag selected" method.)

Node Tool 

The Node tool is used to select and manipulate nodes so as to be able to precisely modify the shape of paths or curves.  These paths can be stand alone objects or they can be attached to another object as a  mask or clipping path.   In addition to allowing manipulating of node position, node handles extend from the node when it is selected which define the direction of the path segments originating from that node.

How to Use

To activate the Node Tool click on the Node Button in the Toolbox or press the F2 Key.  The Tool Controls Bar will change to display the following buttons.

Hotkeys

Tips

1. When an object is selected handles appear making it possible to handle the shape of the object in an intuitive and precise way.
2. You can switch the not-yet-finalized (red) segment of the path being drawn from curve to line (Shift L) or back to curve  (Shift U).
3. Esc deselects, cancels selection, and cancels drag or transformation of any kind (so far only in selector and node edit). Arrows, Ctrl+a, and Tab / Shift+Tab act on nodes in node editor exactly as they do on objects in Selector.  The first Escape or empty-space click deselects any selected nodes, the second one deselects the selected object removing the node display.
4. The Node Tool selects objects regardless of grouping. This means you don't need to switch to selector for a Ctrl+click if you want to edit a grouped path.
5. You can reverse the direction of selected path(s) either via Path > Reverse or by pressing 'r' in node tool (useful for markers and combining paths).
6. Ctrl+click on a node handle retracts that handle back to its node. 
7. If a node does not show one or both handles (i.e. they are retracted), you can drag a handle out by dragging away from the node with Shift.
8. Pressing Ctrl+A with some nodes selected will select not all nodes in the path but all nodes in the subpath(s) containing the selected node(s). To select all nodes in the path unconditionally, either deselect any nodes before pressing Ctrl+A, or use Select all in all subpaths (Ctrl+Alt+A) in Node tool.
9. Edit the selected path by dragging directly on the path.
10. if you press Shift before starting to drag, you always get a node selection rubberband rectangle
11. When you switch the type of the selected node to Smooth or Symmetric by pressing Shift+S / Shift+Y, you can now preserve the position of one of the two handles by hovering your mouse over it, so that only the other handle is rotated/scaled to match. 
12. You can grow or shrink node selection by hovering the mouse pointer over a node and using mousewheel (up = grow, down = shrink) or the keys PageUp (grow) and PageDown (shrink). Growing adds the closest unselected node to the selection; shrinking deselects the farthest selected node. There are two modes that differ by how the closest/farthest nodes are chosen:

    • Spatial selection (mousewheel, PageUp / PageDown): distances to nodes are measured directly, regardless of which subpath a node belongs to.

    • Linear selection (Ctrl+mousewheel, Ctrl+PageUp/Ctrl+PageDown): node distances are measured along the path, and only the nodes belonging to the same subpath as the hovered node are considered (i.e. other subpaths are never selected).

13. This technique is convenient for quickly selecting an area in a complex path starting from a center - for example, for node sculpting.
14. If any of the nodes in the currently selected path is mouseovered, then horizontal/vertical flipping ('H' and 'V' keys), stepwise rotation ('[' and ']' keys) and scaling ('<' and '>' keys) now all use this specific node as center/axis. If there is no mouseovered node, the center of the bounding box is used instead (as is currently the case unconditionally). Nodes that are covered by one of their handles are also detected as mouseovered.
15. Two entry fields are available on the Tool Controls bar which allow precise editing of the coordinates of selected nodes.
16. The message, "To join, you must have two endnodes selected" warns that the command only works on endnodes.  To see if a line segment ends in an endnode, drag the middle of the line.  If a closed loop forms, with two paths between two nodes, then the nodes are not endnodes.  To convert a node into an endnode, select the line connected to the node by clicking once on the line, click a second time to select one of the overlapping line segments, and click on the split path tool to remove one of the line segments.
    

Tweak Tool

The Tweak Tool is an exciting way to edit drawings which largely blurs the distinction between vector and raster editing. Instead of meticulously selecting some objects and then performing an action on the selection, you can select all objects (or all objects you are interested in) and apply the Tweak Tool's brush to smoothly and naturally change the shape or style of only those objects (or parts thereof) that the brush touches.

 

The editing modes of the Tweak tool fall into 3 different categories: Path Editing Modes where the shape of individual paths is modified; Colour Modes where the colour of individual objects is modified and Object Editing Modes where whole objects are moved, scaled or rotated but their shapes are kept intact.

The area of the tool's action - its brush - is marked by an orange-colored circular outline that moves with your mouse cursor. However, that area actually has no sharp boundaries; the power of the tool's action falls off gradually, following a smooth bell-shaped profile. This makes the tool act softly and smoothly.

The tool will work on any number of selected objects; for example, you can select all Ctrl + A and "smear" your entire drawing by Push mode or paint it by Color Paint mode. You can also apply it to groups of objects; it will go into groups and act on individual objects inside groups. If you're trying to use it without anything selected, it will remind you by a statusbar message to select some objects.

How to Use

Width

The width of the tool's brush, in the range from 1 to 100, can be changed by the Width control in the tool's controls bar above the canvas. You can also change width by Left and Right arrow keys (same as in the Calligraphy Tool) at any time (including during action) as well as Home and End. Also, as in Calligraphy Tool, the visible width of the brush is independent of zoom; simply zooming in or out is often easier than adjusting the width if you want to cover a smaller or larger area of the drawing.

Force

The next control is Force which adjusts the power of the action, also in the range from 1 to 100. You can also change width by Up and Down arrow keys at any time (including during action).

If you have a pressure-sensitive tablet and your "Use pressure" button on the right-hand end of the controls bar is on, then the force will also depend on how hard you actually press your pen into your tablet, changing in the range from zero to whatever you set in the Force control. If all you have is a mouse, then the force will be constant but still settable by the Force control.

Path editing modes

The Tweak tool has a number of modes, selectable by toggle buttons in the tool's Controls bar and by keyboard shortcuts. Some of these modes change the shapes of paths, others affect the whole object leaving the path shape intact, while still others affect the colors of objects. All these modes share the Width and Force controls but otherwise are quite different. Let's look at the path editing modes first.

Unlike the Node tool, to edit paths with the Tweak tool you don't need to worry about where the nodes of a path are and how to manipulate them. You just apply the tool's brush to any point, and the selected paths at that point will reshape smoothly and naturally - as if made of soft jelly - regardless of where its nodes lie. If applied to a shape or text object, the tool converts them to paths automatically.

While not very useful for technical drawings, tweaking paths will be indispensable for artistic uses of Inkscape - cartoons, drawings, sketches, anime, etc. This new functionality is somewhat similar to the tools such as "Pucker" and "Bloat" in the latest versions of Adobe Illustrator.

There are currently six path editing modes in the Tweak Tool: Push, Shrink/ Grow, Attract/ Repel, and Roughen.

Push

This default mode of the tool, Push, Shift + P simply displaces the part of the path under the cursor in the direction of the drag. The path behaves like soft jelly, bending and bulging smoothly and naturally. It's an easy way to produce various irregular, lifelike, handmade-looking shapes starting from something as simple as an ellipse or a calligraphic stroke. For parallel-stroke hatching (engraving) done in the Calligraphy tool, pushing is an easy way to bend, pinch, or curve the entire hatching uniformly.

Shrink and Grow

Shrink ( Shift + S ) and Grow ( Hold Shift when using the Tweak Tool) are two opposite modes that move each point of a path in a direction perpendicular to the path's surface at the point, either inwards (Shrink) or outwards (Grow). This is similar to the Inset and Outset commands, except that the Tweak Tool can act on a part of a path instead of the whole path.

For example, the visible lightness/darkness of an engraving hatching may not exactly correspond to your artistic intention. Also, the ends of Calligraphy pen strokes are often far from ideal - they may be too blunt or have unsightly bends or blobs. This is where the Tweak Tool may help. Select all the strokes in a hatching pattern and apply a light Shrink action where you want the lines to become thinner (and the hatching to become lighter), up until total disappearance. If you press hard, shrinking works as an eraser, so you can easily clean the strokes' ends to make them thin, sharp, and uniform. Conversely, applying Grow makes strokes wider (i.e. the hatching becomes darker).

Of course, shrinking and growing are useful not only for calligraphic strokes. Same as with Push, with Shrink and Grow you can sculpt any path, spawning smooth treacle-like appendages with Grow and carving holes with Shrink. Unlike the "node sculpting" mode in the Node tool, however, this does not require adding new nodes to the shape.

Attract and Repel

Attract ( Shift+ A )and Repel ( Hold Shift when applying tool) mode works by moving each affected point on a path towards (Attract) or from (Repel) the cursor point. In some cases this may look similar to Shrink and Grow, but the difference is that shrinking/growing moves paths perpendicularly to the path in each point, whereas attracting/repelling moves them to or from the cursor regardless of the path shape. These modes are similar to the Pinch effect in AI; you can use them for various central-symmetric distortions in parts of your paths.

Roughen

The Roughen (Shift +R ) mode does exactly this: roughens the edge of the path without changing its overall shape. Slight roughening simply makes the edge crooked and uneven; strong roughening tears and explodes the edge into random blobs and splotches.

NOTE: This operation, especially when applied with high Fidelity, adds a lot of nodes, increasing the size of your SVG document and may slow down Inkscape considerably. In particular, pushing, shrinking, or growing of a roughened path becomes much slower and more difficult. It's recommended to finalise the overall shape of a path first and roughen it, if necessary, only as the final step.

Fidelity

Any tweaking of a path slightly distorts the entire path, including even those parts that you didn't touch. These distortions are similar to those that a Simplify command produces. The Fidelity value (also in the range from 1 to 100, default is 50) allows you to control the amount of these distortions. With a higher fidelity, the distortions are less noticeable, but the path may end up having a lot of nodes which inflates up the SVG size and slows down Inkscape.

The best value of Fidelity depends on the nature of your artwork. If you're sculpting an amorphous blob, you can do with low fidelity of about 20. If, however, you are pushing or inflating a text string (as a single path) and want the letters outside the distorted area to remain crisp and clean, you will need to raise fidelity to 80 or more.

Object editing modes

The Object editing modes, unlike the path editing modes, change the position, size, rotation, etc of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share enough common features with the path editing modes to be part of the same tool: These modes also use a circular soft-edged brush controlled by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls bar and affected by the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet).

Push Mode

 

Attract/Repel Objects Mode

Jitter Mode

 

Scale Mode

 

Rotate Mode

 

Duplicate/Delete Mode

 

Blur Mode

Color editing modes

 The Color Paint ( Shift + C ) and Color Jitter ( Shift  + J ) modes, unlike the path editing modes, change the colors of objects instead of their shapes. Yet they share enough common features with the path editing modes to be part of the same tool: These modes also use a circular soft-edged brush controlled by the Width and Force parameters on the Controls bar and affected by the pen pressure (if you have a pressure-sensitive tablet).

• Color Paint applies the style of the tool to the selected objects under the brush. The style of the tool is visible in the style swatch at the rightmost end of the tool's control bar; it can be changed by clicking on the color palette or by any other style assignment command, such as Fill and Stroke dialog. (Note: unlike all other tools, in Tweak tool in Color Paint mode you cannot assign style directly to selected objects; any style-setting command changes the tool's style instead.)

The fill from the tool's style applies to the fills of the painted objects, and the stroke applies to the strokes. If the tool's style has no fill or no stroke, it won't affect fills or strokes, correspondingly. For example, if you want to color the fills of objects blue but leave their strokes untouched, assign blue fill to the tool's style (just click blue on the palette) but set its stroke to None (middle-click the Stroke swatch in the statusbar). Similarly, master opacity in the tool's style affects master opacities of the touched objects (if the O channel is on, see below).

This mode allows you to literally paint over objects, shifting their colors towards the target style of the tool. For example, if you paint with yellow fill over a blue-filled object, the object will become greenish blue, then green, then yellowish green, and end up being exactly the yellow color you're painting with. This speed of this gradual transition depends on both Force parameter and pen pressure; also, objects touched by the periphery of the brush are less affected than those hit by the brush centre. Overall, using this tool is very similar to a soft brush in a raster editor such as Gimp or Photoshop.

• Color Jitter mode does not apply any color, but instead jitters (randomises) the colors of the objects it touches. The force of the action determines how strong is the randomisation, i.e. how far the colors deviate from the original values. This mode does not use the tool's style.

Both modes work on flat fills and gradients; for gradients, the tool takes into account not only the position of the entire object with gradient, but also the position of each gradient stop relative to the brush. This means that, for example, you can change the blue color only in an object filled with blue-red gradient simply by painting over its blue end with a brush small enough to not touch the red. (Note that color tweaking does not create gradients on objects that used flat color before, but only adjusts existing gradients in the drawing.)

Channels

Color Paint and Color Jitter honor the Channels control. This control comprises the four buttons: H, S, L, and O, which allow you to turn on and off the tool's action on the object's hue, saturation, lightness, and opacity, correspondingly. For example, if you want to raise the saturation of some part of your drawing without changing the hue, select some maximum-saturation color (e.g. pure red) and turn off all Channels buttons except S. Similarly, you can replace the hues without affecting saturation or lightness (only H pressed), or lighten/darken all colors without changing their hues and saturation (only L pressed). Pressing O allows you to apply the master opacity from the tool's style to the master opacity of objects (but not fill or stroke opacity).

Usage notes

Color painting with Tweak tool is similar, but not exactly analogous to bitmap painting. Even though the tool itself works as a soft brush, it still applies its color to vector objects, which behave as vector objects usually do. For example, if you want to change the tint of the face in your drawing, and if a hand in the drawing is part of the same object as the face, that hand will change its tint too even if it's located far from the point you are painting. (We foresee a "fracture" command in one of the next versions of Inkscape which will help you turn a monolithic object into a mosaic of small fragments that will be then easy to paint with Tweak tool.) Still, even with this limitation, color painting is a novel way of dealing with vector drawings which allows you to quickly and intuitively make adjustments which would be awkward and slow with traditional approach.

Drawings containing patterns or scatterings of small independent objects are best suited for color painting with Tweak tool. Examples include:

• freehand drawings with Calligraphy pen, consisting of many separate strokes;

• gradient meshes imported from Adobe Illustrator files (Inkscape renders these meshes as lattices of small polygons; while there's no direct support for gradient meshes in Inkscape yet, color painting on such lattices is almost as good);

• text converted to paths and with Break Apart command applied so that each letter is a separate path;

• patterns made with the Tile Clones command; note that you need to unset the fill and/or stroke on the original object and use the Color tab to assign some initial color to the clones - this will make them paintable with the Tweak tool without unlinking.

Moreover, color tweaking can be useful for compositions with a few objects or even for single objects. Unlike all other color selection methods, painting with the Tweak tool implements the color mixing metaphor which is much more familiar to traditional artists than RGB sliders or even the color wheel. For example, start with a rectangle of pure blue color; then, pick different colors by Color Paint and apply light touches with minimum Force and minimum pen pressure: add a little green, a little brown, a little yellow, etc. until you have the exact hue you need. Similarly, you can whiten or blacken any hue by admixing white or black.

You can also use color tweaking to add a tint, darken/lighten, saturate/desaturate, or color jitter your entire drawing. Just select all in all layers, zoom out, choose a large brush width so it covers all of the drawing, and apply a little color tweaking (with minimum Force) that will therefore affect all visible objects.

Hotkeys

• W, Shift + F2: switch to the Tweak Tool

• Shift +P: switch to the Push mode

• Shift+S: switch to the Shrink mode

• Shift+G: switch to the Grow mode

• Shift+A: switch to the Attract mode

• Shift+E: switch to the Repel mode

• Shift+R: switch to the Roughen mode

• Shift+C: switch to the Color Paint mode

• Shift+J: switch to the Color Jitter mode

• Left, Right, Home, End: change width

• Up, Down: change force

• mouse drag: act on selected path in the current mode

• Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Shrink (while Ctrl is down)

• Shift+Ctrl+mouse drag: temporarily switch to Grow (while Shift+Ctrl is down)

Zoom Tool

The Zoom Tool magnifies or "zooms in" on part of the canvas and, conversely, "zooms out".

Because of its utility, zooming can be accomplished from the Tool Commands Bar, the keyboard or the mouse (or a combination thereof), and often does not require the Zoom Tool to be activated.

How to use

The Zoom Tool can be activated in the following ways:

• by clicking on the Zoom Tool in the Tool Box:

 

• by pressing F3

Zooming 

Zooming in sets the zoom factor to a higher lever so that one can see more detail and work more precisely.

You can zoom in by:

• Left Clicking on the canvas with the Zoom Tool active
  
• Left Click + Drag to select the area of the image you want to zoom into
  
• Press + (Shift + =)
  
• Hold Ctrl + Roll Mouse Wheel up
  
• Press Middle Mouse Button

Unzoom 

Unzooming (or Zooming out) can be used to have a larger view of the drawing or area.

You can unzoom by:

• Right Clicking on the canvas with the Zoom Tool active
• Press - (minus)
  
• Hold Ctrl + Roll Mouse Wheel down
• Press Shift + Middle Click
  

Zoom to 1:1 

Displays the drawing at real pixel size. This way a banner drawing (for example) which is 468 pixels wide, will be 468 pixels on screen.  This zoom level can also be activated by pressing 1.

NOTE: If the Inkscape window is smaller than the image, some part of the drawing may be invisible, drag with the Middle Mouse Button to pan around the image.

Zoom to 1:2 

Displays the drawing at half the real pixel size. This way a Banner drawing  which is 468 pixels wide, will be 234 pixels on screen.  The keyboard shortcut for this zoom level is 2.

Zoom to 2:1 

 

Just displays the drawing at twice the real pixel size. This way a Banner drawing which is 468 pixels wide, will be 936 pixels on screen.

Zoom to fit selection in window

The selected area will fill the entire Inkscape window.  This can also be achieved by pressing 3.

Zoom to fit drawing in window 

The zoom level will be adjusted to fit all existing drawing elements in the window.  Click on the icon or press 4.

Zoom to fit page in window 

Best to have a complete overview of the page and work on a layout, makes the whole page fit the window size depending on the orientation. Pressing 5 does the same action.

Zoom to fit page width in window 

This is similar to zooming to fit page in window, however if the orientation is portrait Inkscape will go in closer to fill the window with the page width. Gives a better result than previous with landscape drawing. Press 6 to activate it with keyboard.

Previous zoom 

Move back to the previous zoom factor, as saved in the zoom history. Inkscape now preserves the history of zoom settings for each document. The ` key restores previous zoom; pressing ` repeatedly will guide you through all the zoom settings you've used in this session.

Next zoom 

Goes back to the next zoom factor, as saved in the zoom history, especially when previous zoom has just be used.  Shift + ` also moves forward in the zoom history.

Hotkeys

Tips

1. Zooming with the Mouse Wheel performs a precision zoom directly under the cursor.  The other incremental zoom methods zoom at the middle of the canvas.
   
2. By default, rotating the mouse wheel scrolls the canvas vertically and Ctrl+wheel zooms in and out. Selecting the Mouse wheel zooms by default checkbox in the Scrolling tab of the Inkscape Preferences Dialog, this behavior is reversed: the mouse wheel zooms without Ctrl and scrolls with Ctrl. This new mode should be familiar for users of AutoCAD and CorelDraw.
3. You can use Shift+middle button drag, in any tool, to zoom into a specific area. This works the same as simple drag in Zoom tool, but is faster because it does not require switching away from your current tool. Together with middle button drag (panning), middle button click (zoom in) and Shift+middle button click (zoom out), this completes the set of canvas navigation shortcuts available in any tool or context.
4. In the Zoom Tool, the Right Mouse Button usually zooms out instead of calling the context menu if it is clicked on empty canvas.
   

Rectangle Tool

The Rectangle Tool draws boxes (squares and rectangles) which are live shapes.  Rectangle live shapes can be given rounded corners as well.

How to Use

A new rectangle is drawn by pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse.

Rectangles have two square resize handles in opposite corners (top left and bottom right when the rectangle is at its original orientation). Dragging the resize handles resizes the rectangle's width and height simultaneously.

Rectangles also have round corner radius handles at the top right to set the radius of the corners.  There are two radius dimensions which can be set either together or independently; these separate dimensions affect the horizontal or vertical "sides" of each corner.  "Rx" affects the top and bottom side radii, while "Ry" affects the left and right side radii.  (The best way to understand this is to play with the controls and settings and watch their effects.)

A box with rounded corners can be set back to sharp corners with the last button on the Tool Commands Bar, "Make corners sharp".

Hotkeys

Ctrl+Drag on handles constrains the width and height of the rectangle while resizing so that they retain their current ratios when resizing, or will constrain the rectangle to be resized only in the direction of cursor travel if the cursor strays considerably from the degree of the diagonal through the two opposing corners; when drawing a new rectangle, this method can create a perfect square.

Shift+Drag on handles resizes the rectangle from its center and not from the opposite corner of the grabbed handle; when drawing a new rectangle, the rectangle will be drawn with its center at the starting point rather than one of its corners.

SHIFT+Click on a rounding handle removes rounding.

CTRL+Click on a rounding handle makes rounding radii equal.

3D Box Tool

Inkscape is a two-dimensional drawing tool. However, very often it is used to create drawings or objects that appear three-dimensional. The 3D box tool helps you create such drawings by automating the most common operation: creating a box in a given 3D perspective. The tool automatically ensures that all sides of the box lie on the corresponding perspective lines.

Basic Usage

In order to represent an object in 3D (it's emulated 3D, so it's rather 2.5D), the 3D box tool deals with axes (XYZ), planes (XY, XZ, YZ), parallel lines (PL), converging lines and vanishing points (VP).

Each dimension can lie on either parallel or converging lines. These lines are drawn in different colors, so that users could distinguish one line from another:

• red lines stand for X direction (width);
• blue lines stand for Y direction (height);
• yellow lines stand for Z direction (depth).

If lines are converging, they have a vanishing point — a point where they cross. Here is a sample to illustrate how it works:

X is the vanishing point for X plane

Z is the vanishing point for Z plane

Y are parallel lines for Y plane

Here is what happens when you keep moving borders of X and Z planes closer to vanishing points:

X and Z planes nearly converged, but Y is more or less the same.

By default Inkscape makes X and Z lines converging, because it represents usual perspective.

Drawing a 3D box

Press X or Shift+F4 to switch to the 3D Box Tool. Start dragging cursor on canvas. You can use Shift+drag without releasing the mouse button to extrude in Z direction.

 

If you need to draw another 3D box with same vanishing point, just keep the previous box selected and start drawing a new one:

Editing a 3D box

Adjust any of its 3 dimensions by handles. The 4 handles on the front X/Y side resize it, the four ones on the back X/Y side expand/contract the box in Z direction. With Shift, the functions of handles on front and back sides are reversed. With Ctrl, the side-resizing handles snap to the coordinate axes or diagonals. 

Moving a 3D box

You can move a 3D box in perspective by dragging its center marked as an "X" character; without modifiers, movement occurs within the XY-plane (press Ctrl to constrain the movement to the directions of the coordinate axes or diagonals), with Shift the box moves parallel to the Z-axis.

 

Handling vanishing points

Adjust the vanishing points of a perspective by dragging them on the canvas (see below) or toggling their states; all boxes sharing this perspective are affected by a vanishing point move.

When several boxes are selected, all vanishing points of their associated perspectives are shown on the canvas. If vanishing points of different perspectives coincide, they are combined in a single "dragger". Moving this dragger moves all the vanishing points simultaneously and transforms the associated boxes accordingly. Note that some non-selected boxes may also be reshaped if their perspectives share the same vanishing point. Pressing Shift while moving the dragger can be used to only transform the selected boxes, separating their perspectives from the non-selected ones'. On the other hand, when a vanishing point being dragged comes close enough to another one, both snap together and are combined in a single dragger.

 

Rotating perspective lines

The various kinds of parentheses, namely [ ], ( ), { }, can be used to rotate infinite (i.e., parallel) perspective lines in X-, Y-, and Z-direction, respectively. Closing parentheses rotate clockwise and opening parentheses rotate counterclockwise. The angle of rotation is taken from the preferences. Pressing Alt reduces the amount of rotation to 1 screen pixel. 

Changing mode of perspective lines

When the 3D box tool is active, Shift+X, Shift+Y, and Shift+Z toggle perspective lines in the corresponding direction between "converging" and "parallel".

Tips

Inside 3D Box tool

In SVG, a 3D box is represented as a group (svg:g) with a special extension attribute (in Inkscape's namespace); this group contains the 6 quadrilateral paths representing the sides of the box. Only the 3D box tool treats this object as a box; for all other tools it is just a group, so you can select any of the paths by Ctrl+click, apply any style to it, delete it, etc. You can of course transform the entire box or any face in it using Selector or Node tools.

Ellipse

With the Ellipse tool, the Inkscape artist can draw an ellipse, circle, or arc. As a Live Shape, an ellipse can be converted to any elliptical shape (circle or oval); it can also be converted from an ellipse to a pie segment or arc.

How to Use

When an ellipse is drawn there are three edit handles: top (square), left (square) and right (circle).

The top and left handles control the horizontal and vertical dimensions, respectively.

Tips

1. Hold Ctrl while dragging the arc control to enable snapping at angles as specified in the Inkscape Preferences window.
2. Hold Shift while drawing to draw the shape with its centre at the cursor's point of origin in order to keep position static during the drawing.

Star Tool

Stars and polygons are special shapes, difficult to draw by hand while maintaining a regular shape. The Star Tool enables stars and regular polygons to be drawn easily in the document. This tool is very convenient even though it may be less often used than the Rectangle Tool and Ellipse Tool.

Inkscape stars are Live Shapes, and can thus be infinitely modified after creation, with handles or tool control parameters.  By modifying some of the following parameters, this tool can be used to draw triangles and other regular polygons with any number of sides. The included deformation methods allow for some amazing shapes, all while keeping the powerful aspects of easy editability of an SVG Primitive.

How to Use

To switch to the Star Tool, you can either

• click the Toolbox icon

• or press * ( Shift+8 )

Options

The tool options can be accessed in the Tool Controls bar

Drawing a Regular Polygon or Star

The left icons allow respectively to use the Regular Polygon Mode or the Star Mode .

The next polygon/star will be created in the Selected Mode.  An object's mode and shape will be changed if it is selected while one of these icon is clicked.

In Regular Polygon Mode, the shape has no spokes. Only one handle is available, allowing modification of the size and orientation of the polygon.

In Star Mode, spokes start from regular polygon corners. There are two handles - the red handle is the same as for polygons, allowing modification of size and orientation of the object; the white handle at an interior spoke angle allows simultaneous modification of all the spokes' shapes and sizes.

Corners

You can define the number of corners and spokes of the shape by adjusting the corners parameter - it can either be specified before drawing a polygon or dynamically modified after selecting an existing polygon. Corner counts are limited from 3 to 1024.

Spoke Ratio

Only accessible in Star Mode, it allows you to define the ratio of spoke length between the star core and its spoke tips. This parameter range is from 0.0 to 1.0.

Rounded

This setting allows you to round the corners of the shape in both Polygon Mode and Star Modes of this tool. The range value is from -10.0 to 10.0.  Press Shift and drag either handle to modify the rounding of the shape on-canvas.

Note that dragging each handle gives different results because the degree of rounding is proportional to the angle of displacement from the center of the shape - thus a drag of the middle handle will create a greater degree of rounding than a same-length drag of the outer handle.

The following image shows some rounding examples, with regular polygons on the first line and stars at the second. There are infinitely more possibilities than shown here. 

There is a Spirograph Tool ( Effects > Render > Spirograph ) which can produce similar effects and much more.

Randomised

The Randomised option of Star Tool displaces the inner and outer points of the spokes to random coordinates around the center of the star. The range value runs from -10.0 to 10.0. Near 0.0, the randomness of the displacement ratio low, and it increases as the parameter approaches -10.0 or 10.0.

You can also change the power of the randomised effect on-screen by pressing Alt and dragging the handle.

Default

Reset shape parameters to defaults.

Additional information

Polygons are always drawn with their geometric centers at the cursor origin - this cannot be changed

Ctrl - Constrain the star shape to follow some angles. The cursor move allow to modify angle by regular increment. The increment value can be defined in the general preferences window: File > Inkscape Preferences... > Steps tab.

Spiral

The Spiral Tool is one of the special class of tools that create Live Shapes.  With the Spiral tool, shapes of spiral arcs can be drawn.

How to use

Call the Spiral Tool with its icon on the Toolbox or by pressing F9 or I.

The spiral drawn with the tool has two handles, one on either end of the shape's path. Clicking and dragging the inner-most handle with the spiral tool will change the interior radius of the arc, and the handle on the outter-most end of the path edits the number of turns of the spiral.

There are four options in the Tool Controls bar which can be used to further manipulate the spiral:

• Turns adjusts the number of rotations the spiral takes around its center.  Increasing the turns will decrease the width between successive spiral paths, since this option does not increase the dimensions of the spiral.

• Divergence tightens the spiral either toward its center (as if it were being wound tighter) or toward the exterior.  When the divergence is increased above 1, it makes the outer part of the spiral looser, or widens the gap between its outermost paths.  The reverse is true for values below 1.

• Inner Radius does the same as dragging the inner handle.  The inner radius parameter is a relation or fraction representing the distance from the exact center of the spiral to the beginning of the inner spiral path relative to the whole spiral radius.  When the inner handle has been moved from its position at the center of the spiral, the radius becomes more than 0.  When this is true, growing the spiral path by dragging the outer handle will decrease the inner radius, showing its relative nature.

• The Broom icon will clear all parameters to the defaults set at the spiral's creation.

Key Commands

• Ctrl drag constrains the rotation angle to 15 degree increments

Outer handle:

Inner handle:

Pencil Tool

Pen Tool

The Pen Tool is used to draw paths made of bezier curves; beziers can form unclosed paths or closed shapes.  The pen tool is useful for drawing figures with smooth curves, and can be particularly efficient for tracing images (e.g. for rotoscoping).

How to use the Pen Tool

Start the Pen Tool one of three ways:

• Click on the Pen Tool button in the Toolbox;
• Press b;
• Press Shift  + F6.

Left-click on the canvas to create the first node. 

Draw a Straight Segment

To draw a straight segment, click again where you want the segment to end; a straight segment will be drawn between these two points. 

Draw a Curved Segment

To draw a curved segment, click to add a new node and hold down the mouse button, then drag to adjust the curve of the segment (this also makes curve control handles appear).

End a Path

To end a path, either click the first node of the path (if you want it to be a closed shape), or press Enter or double-click (if you want the path to remain open); right-clicking will add a new node and end pat editing at the same time.

Continue a Path

To continue a path that has been previously drawn, select the path and start the Pen Tool; then click either the beginning or end node and add segments as normal.

Delete a Segment

To remove the most recently added segment/node, press Delete.

Tips

• A Pen Tool-made path can be continued with the Pencil Tool.
• Any path can be edited with the Pen Tool to add more segments.
  

Calligraphy Tool

The Calligraphy Tool uses dynamic drawing techniques that apply simple filters to the cursor place and motion. The SVG "stylus" transforms as if it were a physical stylus or brush, depending on its mass, speed, orientation and friction.  (Some of these parameters are affected only by use of an input device such as a drawing tablet.)  By changing these parameters, various types of "strokes" can be made. This makes the Calligraphy tool excellent for drawing more natural, smooth and consistent strokes, particularly when using a pen tablet or similar input device.

The Calligraphy Tool does not draw a single path line like the freehand tool, but a whole filled shape. This is not a live shape, like rectangles and stars, but an arbitrary shape consisting of node paths. Being comprised of multiple nodes, calligraphy strokes can be modified by other path tools, for example the Node and Tweak tools. Also, like all arbitrary SVG shapes, calligraphy paths have strokes at their edges, so they are affected by the usual Fill and Stroke settings.

How to Use

The Calligraphy Tool can be called by clicking its icon in the Toolbox or by pressing C or Ctrl+F6.

Calligraphy shapes are drawn in the same manner as any other shape - just click on the canvas and drag.

Options

The Calligraphy Tool has many options available in the Tool Controls bar which allow the artist to create very specific types of strokes.

Width

Used to set the basic width of the line. This basic width is then automatically modified depending on the other values (such as pressure of the tablet pen) and settings (such as the toggle setting of Input Device Pressure).

Warning: Calligraphy stroke width is relative to the current view and zoom factor.

Input Device Pressure

When on, Calligraphy uses pen tablet pressure to affect such values as stroke width.

Trace Lightness to Width

Trace Lightness to Width adjusts the width of the stroke to the lightness of objects behind it.  In the background objects, white translates into the minimum stoke width (1) and black translates to the maximum (which is set by the Width parameter).  This works with both bitmap and vector images and allows the artist to not only hatch over an imported bitmap image or any drawing, but to do so automatically reproducing the highlights and shades of the background with your strokes becoming lighter and heavier as needed.  This can work alone or in combination with pressure sensitivity, depending on whether the "Use pressure" button is also toggled.

Thinning

Thinning is a way to modify the width of the calligraphy stroke dynamically according to the speed at which the stroke is made.  This value enables the calligraphy tool to emulate true ink flow from a pen or brush.  For instance, dragging a stroke at a uniform speed will create a mostly uniform stroke width, while increasing speed will decrease width, and decreasing speed will increase width (to a degree).  The higher the thinning value is, the more the stroke will be thinned.

Some examples are shown below. Notice that a negative thinning results in a thicking. When set to 0.0, the line keeps its width with uniformity.

Angle

The Angle setting is used to emulate a stylus type of writing instrument.  Angle will affect the direction at which the stroke creates its thinnest part, just like a calligraphy pen.  Values can be set from -90° to 90°. When set to 0, the hair line is horizontal; to 90, vertical.

Tilt to angle

When activated, Angle is modified relatively to tilt of the tablet pen.

Fixation

Fixation changes the way the Angle width follows the calligraphic path. When set to 0.0, Angle is set always perpendicularly to the path so that the width looks nearly the same all along the path (as if the stylus were rotated constantly in the direction of the stroke). When set to 1.0, Angle is set to adjust to stroke direction most strictly (as if the stylus were kept exactly in the same direction at all times as a machine might be able to do).  A setting of a little less than 1.0 (such as 0.9) will most closely follow natural hand movement, like using a real stylus.

Caps

Caps determines how the line ends.  At 0, the end caps will be drawn flat.  Increasing the value will create elliptical end caps, and the higher the value the longer the ellipses will be. The max value is 5.00.

Tremor

Tremor affects jitteriness of the stroke.  It can be set from 0.0 to 1.0.  When set to 0, the line is the most regular.

Wiggle

Wiggle is a kind of randomization on drawn curves, making a sort of "bumpy" stroke. It generates these curves or "bumps" regularly, and can help to draw some nice typographic shapes, though the result is hardly predictable.

Mass

Mass affects how quickly the stroke follows the cursor.  A heavier mass makes the stroke slower and increases smoothness or regularity of the stroke.  Values can be set from 0.0 to 1.0. When set to 0.0 the path just follows the mouse as normal. When set to 1.0, the drawing of the stroke is very slow.

Default

Default resets all Calligraphy Tool Controls settings to defaults as defined in Preferences.

Drawing

Adding a New Stroke to a Calligraphy Object

Press Shift to add a new calligraphic line to those that are selected, keeping all strokes together as a single object.

Engraving

Tracking a Shape

One of the most common operations in line engraving is hatching (or sometimes cross-hatching when several hatching grids cross): filling a space with many parallel straight or variously curved lines (usually of varying width to represent a gradual shading). You could try to achieve a similar effect with e.g. path interpolation (blending), but it is rather cumbersome and limited; manual drawing of hatch lines, on the other hand, is tedious and nearly impossible to do uniformly. Now Inkscape provides "assisted hatching" by tracking a guide path, allowing you to hatch quickly and uniformly and at the same time giving you sufficient manual control over the process.

First, select the guide path that you will track. It may be another calligraphic stroke, any path or shape, or even a letter of a text object. Then switch to Calligraphic pen, select the desired parameters (line width, angle, fixation etc.) and, before starting to draw, press Ctrl. You will see a gray track circle centered at your mouse pointer and touching the closest point on the selected guide path. (If you have no guide path selected, a statusbar message will tell you to select it.)

The Now move your mouse close to the guide path, so that the track circle radius is equal to the desired spacing of your hatch pattern, and start drawing along the guide path. At that moment, the radius of the circle gets locked; now the circle slides along the guide path - and the actual stroke is drawn by the center of the tracking circle, not by your mouse point. As a result, you are getting a smooth stroke going parallel to the guide path and always at the same distance from it.

When the stroke is ready, release your mouse button (or lift your tablet pen) but do not let go of Ctrl because, as long as you have it pressed, the tool remembers the hatch spacing you set when you started drawing. Now, you have just created a new stroke and, as usual with Inkscape tools, it gets selected instead of what was selected before. In our case, this means that the newly drawn stroke itself becomes the new guide path. Next, you can draw a second stroke along the first one, then a third one along the second, etc. Eventually you can fill any desired space with uniform hatching.

Alternatively, if you uncheck "Select new path" in the Calligraphy tool preferences, newly created strokes will not be selected, so your original guide path will be kept selected. In this mode, Inkscape will increase the tracking distance after each created stroke so that you can create uniformly spaced hatching by tracking a single guide path.

The attachment to the guide path is not absolute. If you stray your mouse pointer far enough from the guide path, you will be able to tear it off (the track circle turns from green to red) and move freely. This is intentional; this feature allows you, for example, to continue drawing a stroke past the end of a guide stroke, thus making your hatching cover a wider area than the initial guide path. Special care is taken to make such tearing off as smooth as possible and to suppress violent jerks, but this is not always possible; the general advice is to not try to hatch too fast. If jerking and unintended tearoffs still bother you, try increasing the Mass parameter.

Also, special code is in place to prevent flipovers - accidental jumps to the other side of the guide path. Brief flipovers are suppressed, but if you intentionally go over to the other side and stay there, eventually Inkscape will obey and your tracking stroke will also flip over to follow you.

Tracking a guide also allows some slight feedback by gradually changing the tracking distance in response to your drawing behavior. Thus, if you're consistently trying to draw closer or farther from the guide than the current tracking distance, the distance will correspondingly decrease or increase, so you will get a hatching that is slightly spacing in or out. (The effect is very slight, however, so as not to become a nuisance.) Also, note that since tracking follows the edge of the stroke, strokes of varying width (such as those tracing background, see below) will result in gradual bending of the hatching pattern as you proceed

Engraving

Combined with the Ctrl key, the Calligraphy Tool is able to simulate the ancient art of line engraving. Traditional engraving is a very labour-intensive process, and while for a long time it was the only practical way of reproducing lifelike images in black-and-white print, about a century ago it was almost completely displaced by automatic halftone screens in industrial process. However, line engravings have their characteristic charm, and are often still used for certain art applications.

Bucket Fill Tool

The Bucket Fill Tool is simple - it fills in unfilled areas with color.  Being a vector tool, however, Inkscape's Paint Bucket actually creates a new path that "fills in" the area in which you clicked.

It is important to note that the tool's operation perceptual, not geometric. That is, when looking for the boundaries around the point you clicked, it takes for such boundaries any visible color changes. This means that filling will stop at gradients, blurs, and even the color boundaries in imported bitmaps, but will ignore any paths or other objects that are fully (or almost fully) transparent or for any other reason do not stand out from the background. In short, it will work exactly as if you were filling a rasterized version of your image in a bitmap editor like Photoshop or GIMP - but will give you a vector object to work with.

Internally, the tool works by performing a bitmap-based flood fill on a rendered version of the visible canvas, then tracing the resulting fill using potrace and placing the traced path into the document.

It places the rendered path onto the current layer, so you can have a layer on top (for example, "Inks") and select the layer below ("Colors") and do the fills so that they always appear below the Inks.

Because the tool operates in this way, you can, for example, scan a pencil sketch, import the bitmap into Inkscape, and quickly fill all its cells with colors without tracing the bitmap first. This is a very convenient and interactive way of digitizing your paper drawings, making the traditional bitmap tracing unnecessary in many cases.

The resolution of the bitmap image used to perform the trace is dependent upon your current zoom level -- the more 'zoomed in' to an area that you are, the higher the resolution of the bitmap-based flood fill. So, if you have a fill that is too imprecise, has rough corners, or doesn't go where it is supposed to go, just undo it (CTRL + z ), 'zoom in' closer and repeat filling from the same point. Conversely, if the fill leaks out through a small gap, zoom out to make the gap less visible and fill again (or use the auto gap closing parameter - see below).

 

How to use

The Paint Bucket Tool works fairly intuitively: click in any area bounded on all sides and it will fill it with color - or, in reality, a path which can be filled and adjusted like any arbitrary path.

Style

Like all object-creating tools, the Paint Bucket may use the last-set style for the objects it creates (this is the default), or it can use its own fixed style. You can switch between these modes on this tool's page in Inkscape Preferences (Ctrl+Shift+P). As in all other tools, the style swatch on the far right of the Controls Bar shows the style that will be used for the next fill object you create. 

Controls

In the Tool Controls bar: Paint Bucket's perceptual fill can use either all visible colors or specific color channels. Using the Fill by drop-down list, you can restrict the fill algorithm to one the following channels:

• Red
• Green
• Blue
• Hue
• Saturation
• Lightness
• Alpha

The Threshold (in per cent units) controls how large the color difference must be at a point (compared to the initial click point) to stop the fill. 'Zero tolerance' means only an area which is strictly the same color will be filled; the larger the tolerance, the easier it will be for the fill to leak into adjacent different-color areas. The default value is 10%.

Using the Grow/shrink by parameter, you can control the amount of inset/outset to be applied to the created fill path. Setting a positive outset causes fill paths to be larger than the filled bitmap area (good for eliminating anti-aliasing errors), while setting a negative outset causes the path to be smaller. This works much the same as the Outset and Inset path commands, except it's done automatically after every fill.

With the Close gaps parameter, you can make the Paint Bucket tool ignore any gaps in the area boundaries that would normally cause the fill to spill out of the desired area. There are four settings to auto gap:

Note : setting this parameter to anything other than None may slow down Inkscape noticeably while filling large areas.

Hotkeys

The tool's shortcuts are:

• Single click performs filling from the click point.

• Shift+click performs filling from the click point and then unions the resulting path with the selected path. This way, if your first attempt did not fill in all of the desired area, you can Shift+click the remaining corner to fill it in separately and combine the result with the result of the previous fill.

• Ctrl+click on an object simply changes that object's fill to the current fill color of the tool, and Shift+Ctrl+click changes the stroke to the current stroke color.

• Click+drag performs filling from all of the points that you pass while dragging (you will see your path visualized by a red line). From each point, the fill spreads to its neighbours with the colors similar to that point - in other words, it's like clicking with this tool at each point of the drag path and joining the results. This lets you easily fill an area occupied by a gradient or blur - just drag from the darkest to the lightest points in the area you want to fill.

• Alt+click and drag works similarly to simple drag, except from each point of the drag path, the fill spreads to the neighbours (if any) with the colors similar to the initial point (the point where you started the drag). This lets you fill a series of similarly-colored yet separated areas (for example, multiple cells in a cartoon) by starting the drag in one of those areas, and Alt+dragging the tool through all the other areas.

Text tool

The Text Tool makes it possible to write text in an SVG drawing.

How to use

To invoke the tool, press Shift + Ctrl + T.  Alternatively there is a Text menu which allows you to change the aspect of the characters or their behavior with respect to other elements of the drawing. Text Tool uses several short cut keys to modify typographic elements.

There are two ways to use the Text Tool :

1. Select the Text Tool and click on the canvas to create a simple line field. It will grow with the written text.
2. Click and drag to draw a rectangle this becomes a text box : this frame will contain the text and will be the limit for the word wrapping. The text box will not grow with the text, so if there is too much text for the frame, some letters will simply not be displayed. This frame can be manually resized by dragging the handle at the bottom right corner. The  Flow into Frame  command of the Text menu makes it easy to use any shape as a text container.

Special Characters

• Ctrl + Space inserts on non-breaking space
  

• Ctrl U allows to use Unicode encodings within the document. To find a Unicode value refer to a Unicode character map program or reference.
• • To insert an arbitrary Unicode character, type Ctrl + U, then the hexadecimal code, then Enter. For example, type Ctrl U 2 0 1 4 Enter for an em-dash; Ctrl +  U a 9 + Enter for a copyright sign.
    
  • To stay in Unicode mode after inserting the character, press Space instead of Enter
  • Press Esc or another Ctrl U to cancel Unicode mode without inserting the character. 

Tips

• If you're not sure if all your text is visible in the frame, use the Text and Font window to read it all.

Connector Tool

The Connector tool (Ctrl+F2 or the o key) draws lines between objects that stay connected to other objects as they are manipulated. Any object may be marked as an object to avoid, which causes connectors to automatically route around the object. This is helpful for creating technical illustrations like flowcharts.

How to Use

Connecting

A new connector can be drawn by clicking and dragging from any point on the canvas. Connectors can also be created with two clicks, rather than click-and-drag, if this is preferred. In this case, click once on an empty point on the canvas to begin drawing the connector, then move the mouse to the new connector's target point and then click again to finalize the connector. Single clicking on a canvas object selects/deselects that object, just as with other tools. Usually connectors are drawn from an existing object:

 

Connection point handles are shown while the mouse cursor is hovering over a non-connector object in the connector tool. Currently they are shown only at the center of objects. When creating a connector, if the connector is started or ended over a connection point then the connector will be attached to that object. From then on the connector will be automatically rerouted whenever the attached object is moved.

Connectors attached to objects are currently drawn to the bounding box of those objects. It is planned that they will be drawn instead to the edges of objects.

The connector is finalized, when the mouse is released:

 

The Make connectors avoid selected objects button marks all objects in the selection as "avoided", causing all current and future connectors to automatically avoid these objects.

The Make connectors ignore selected objects button marks all objects in the selection as "ignored", causing all current and future connectors to completely ignore these objects. This is the default for all canvas items, i.e., no objects are automatically routed around by default.

Here the middle object is avoided:

By default, the Connector tool will not attach connectors to text objects. A checkbox in the Connector preferences controls this setting.

Rerouting

A selected connector shows two endpoint handles. By clicking and dragging these, the connector can be rerouted and attached/detached from objects.

Connectors moved as part of a selection will stay attached to other objects in the selection, rather than becoming detached from them.

Arranging

The margins around avoided shapes used for autorouting connectors can be adjusted via the "Spacing" control on the controls bar.

The Remove Overlaps button to move the selected objects enough that they don't overlap each other. A minimum spacing between the boundaries of objects can be specified. Together with the automatic layout tool, described above, this should be a significant addition to Inkscape's usability for diagramming. Removing overlaps is different from the "Unclump" button in that the former is completely deterministic and guarantees removing overlaps on the first application, but is not concerned with visual perceptive distances between objects. Unclumping, on the other hand, attempts to equalize perceptive distances between objects and can be applied repeatedly for gradual effect.

Automatic Diagram Layout: this function is available in the Align and Distribute dialog and performs automatic layout of diagrams involving a network of shapes and connectors. Edges are treated as if they are springs such that the distance between nodes will be proportional to the path length — number of connectors — between them. Disconnected components (where not every shape is connected) will be arranged around the circumference of a circle.

Gradients

The Gradient Tool allows the progressive passage of one color to another (or multiple others) in an object. It can be used on any shape, closed or opened, as a fill or a stroke (applied separately). Any number of selected objects can simultaneously display handles and direction lines for the linear and radial gradients in their fills or strokes. You can drag these handles directly in the drawing, to interactively adjust gradient positions.

The gradient can be set in the Fill and in the Stroke Paint dialog to replace of any other type of coloration.

How to use

To invoke, either click the Gradient Tool icon  or press Ctrl +F1.

Types of gradients

There are two types of gradients:

1. Linear gradients transition the color change from one point to another in a straight line. Just click where the gradient should begin, hold and drag, and release where it should end.    Two handles now appear: the handle of the beginning is square and the end is a circle.  The two handles can now be used to change the color (select each one and choose the color for it from the fill and stroke dialog) or move and change the gradient direction.

   

2. Radial gradients work as colored circles with the color transition beginning at the center. Three handles are available : the square one is the center of the gradient, and the circle ones change the radius of the gradient. When the radius is the same for both circle handle, the gradient is perfectly circular. To move the placement of a radial gradient in the object, drag the square handle.

   

Once a gradient is created it is automatically saved in the drop-down list of the Gradient Tool Options bar so that it can be easily reused on other shapes.

More colors

To have more than two colors on a gradient, just double-click on the gradient base path to make a new handle (stop) appear.

By default first and last color stops have fill color that matches original flat color fill of the object, but opacity drops from 100% to 0% accordingly. All new color stops in between will inherit original fill color, but have various opacity depending on position of each color stops on the gradient line (i.e. percentage of the radius).

Click in the swatch to set the color. You can move this handle to adjust the position of this stop. To delete a stop, just press the Backspace key.

Selecting multiple stops

More than one gradient stop can be selected at a time. Shortcuts for working with multiple stop selections are generally modeled on the Node tool.

• Add a stop to the selected stops by Shift+click.
• Press Ctrl+A to select all stops in the selected objects.
• Shift+drag around stops to add them to selection.

Multiple selected stops:

• Can be moved together by mouse drag or by arrow keys. For example, creating a linear gradient, then press Ctrl+A to select all stops and use arrow keys to move the entire gradient as a whole.
• Can be deleted at the same time by pressing Del.

An always up-to-date description of the current handle selection is provided in the statusbar in the Gradient tool, including the number of selected handles (and the type of the single selected handle), as well as the total number of handles and selected objects.

Editing intermediate stops

Intermediate stops in gradients can be added, deleted, and edited right on canvas.

Stops can be added by double clicking or by Ctrl+Alt+Click on the gradient line. Also, you can drag-and-drop a color from the palette onto the gradient line to create a new stop with this color. Dropping a color on an existing stop changes the color of that stop.

When two or more adjacent stops are selected, pressing Ins adds stops in the middles of all selected stop intervals.

Intermediate stops can be mouse-dragged or moved by arrow keys along their gradient line, within the limits of the adjacent unselected stops (or end handles).

• Dragging with Ctrl moves the selected stops snapping them to 1/10 fractions of the available range.
• Dragging with Alt moves the selected stops depending on how close each one is to the stop being dragged, using a smooth bell-like curve similar to the node sculpting feature in Node tool. This makes it easy to approximate different gradient profiles; for example, if you have a two-stop gradient that you want to shape according to a curve profile, select both ends of the gradient, press Ins a few times to add a number of intermediate nodes, then Alt+drag a node in the middle to smoothly profile the gradient.

Stops can also be moved by arrow keys with all the regular modifiers (Shift for 10× movement, Alt for pixel-size movement at the current zoom, Shift+Alt for 10 pixels movement at the current zoom).

Stops can be deleted by Ctrl+Alt+Click on a stop or by the Del key for all the selected stop(s).

• When you delete an end stop, the nearest intermediate stop becomes the new end stop of the gradient (without moving — i.e., the gradient span becomes shorter).
• When you delete an end stop and there are no intermediate stops, the object will be painted with a solid fill taken from the color & opacity of the remaining stop.

Pressing Ctrl+L with some intermediate stops selected attempts to simplify the selected portion of the gradient, removing those stops that can be removed without too much change in the way the gradient looks. In particular, new stops created by double-clicking or pressing Ins initially do not change the appearance of the gradient, so if you press Ctrl+L, all redundant stops that weren't moved or repainted since creation will be deleted.

Automatic duplication of gradients

When copy/pasting or duplicating an object with gradient, it automatically gets a copy of the original gradient, so modifying it does not affect the source object's gradient anymore .

However, to accommodate the needs of users who rely on sharing the same gradient definition across objects, this behavior can be optionally suppressed. The Prevent sharing of gradient definitions checkbox on the Misc tab of Inkscape Preferences is by default checked; if you uncheck it, Inkscape does not automatically copy gradient definitions for new objects, which means that copy/pasting, duplicating, pasting style, and explicit assignment of a gradient to an object via the Gradient tool controls results in a shared gradient definition, so that changing the colors or mid-stop positions of the gradient on one object (but not changing the coordinates of the end handles) affects all other objects that share the same definition.

Dropper Tool

The Dropper Tool is used to select an object's fill or stroke color by sampling the color of an area of the canvas. The color selected is the single point at the center of the cross at the end of the Dropper Tool icon.

How to Use

Select an object to which you want to apply a new color and press F7 or D to switch to Dropper. Click a point on the canvas which is the desired color - the fill of the selected object will be changed to the target color.  Shift + Click to apply this color to the stroke.

The shortcut D can be used to toggle (not just switch to) the Dropper tool — much like space is used to toggle the Selector Tool. That is, pressing D a second time switches back to the tool used before.

Alpha Settings

The toolbar has only two options:

The left icon toggles picking the alpha channel. The right icon toggles setting the alpha channel.

Suppose you have an object selected and, using Dropper, click on an object which has blue transparent fill (#389bff7f).

If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is off, the selected object will get the fill color #9ccdffff (i.e. faded-out blue) and opaque:

 

If the "Pick alpha" checkbox is on, but "Set alpha" is off, the selected object will get the fill color #389bffff (bright blue) and opaque:

If both "Pick alpha" and "Set alpha" are on, the selected object will get the fill color #389bff7f (pale blue) and half-transparent, i.e. fully match the fill style of the object from which the color was inherited:

Hotkeys

Alt+Click picks the inverse of the color selected by the Dropper Tool (also works with averaged color selections and applying to target object borders).

Tips

You can pick a color from the target object itself.  You can do this, for example, to set the stroke fill the same as the object fill.

Path modification Effects

Modify Path Effects work on a selection of any number of paths and modify them in various ways without creating new paths or deleting existing ones.

Available effects

Envelope and Perspective

Maps bounding box of a path to quadrilateral to achieve effect of a perspective. These two effects are quite similar, but differ in level of natural look of the desired effect.

Here is how to use it:

1. Draw your to-be-distorted path
2. Draw and position a four node path (envelope frame).
3. Place the to-be-distorted path inside/above the envelope frame.
4. Select the path you wish to distort first and then add to selection the envelope frame. The original position of the four nodes is considered to be clockwise around the bounding box of the path to distort beginning in the upper left corner.
5. Apply the effect.

Here is the difference:

Add Nodes

Adds nodes to the selected paths. Each segment of the selected path is subdivided into ceil (Length/Max) equal length segments. Lengths are measured in SVG User Units calculated from the path data and do not take into account any transforms.

Parameters for example below:

• Division method: by number of segments
• Maximum segment length (px): 5
• Number of segments: 2

Color Markers to Match Stroke

Currently available SVG 1.1 Full specification doesn't allow using the same color for the path and its markers. This extension is a temporary workaround to fix that (until the new improved SVG specification is out). Just change the stroke color of your path and call this effect to recolor its markers to match.

Flatten Beziers

Flattens paths in the current selection, approximating each path with a polyline whose segments meet the specified criteria for flatness. Lower flatness values make a smoother line.

Parameters for example below:

• Flatness:10

Fractalize

Replaces each segment of the selected path by a crooked line, subdivided to the given depth, with randomly displaced nodes.

Available options are:

Parameters for example below:

• Subdivisions: 6
• Smoothness: 4.0

Jitter nodes

Randomly shifts nodes (and, optionally, node handles)

Parameters for example below:

• Maximum Displacement in X: 50.0
• Maximum Displacement in Y: 50.0
• Shift nodes: checked
• Shift node handles: checked
• Use normal distribution: checked

Straighten Segments

Straightens curved segment to a user defined level (in percents), using of two behaviours (1 stands for  rounded corners, 2 stands for less rounded corners).

Parameters for example below:

• Percent:50
• Behavior: 1

Whirl

Twists the selected paths around the specified center point.

Parameters for an example below:

• Amount of whirl: 15
• Rotation is clockwise: checked

Styling Text 

Many modifications can be done to Text. Some are available in Text Option Bar, but some aren't. Here is a little overview of the most useful options.

Text Selection

• Ctrl with arrows left and right : moves the beam word by word

• Shift with arrows left and right : selecting glyph by glyph
  
• Ctrl Shift with arrows left and right : selection by words
  
• Double click : select the word
  
• Triple click : select the line
  
• Shift + Home : select from the beginning of the line 
  
• Shift + End : select until the end of the line
  
• Ctrl  + Shift +Home : select from the beginning of the text
  
• Ctrl + Shift + End  : select until the end of the text
  

Text Aspect

The Tool Controls Bar provides several options such as :

 

• Font families
• Font size
• Bold style
• Oblique/Italic style
• Alignment

Hot Keys

• Ctrl +B and Ctrl + I applies bold and italic to the selected text. 

• Kerning : Alt with arrows left and right increases or decreases the space between characters at the end or beginning of the selection. You can also use  Alt + <, Alt + > to decrease or increase the space after all characters in the selection. Pressing Shift will change the letter spacing more significantly.  Use the Remove manual kerns menu of the Text menu if you are not satisfied with it. 

• Pressing Alt + [, Alt  +] rotates precisely the letters; Ctrl + [, Ctrl + ] do 90° rotation at once. 

• Alt arrows up and down change the vertical position of the selected text relatively to the baseline.

Text Effects

Writing text often requires the repetition of the same operations. The Effect > Text menu can do some of them automatically.

Lorem Ipsum Example

In the example below a standard latin text taken from Cicero is insterted into a text frame. This is useful in cases when a text placeholder is required (e.g. webdesign).

 

Replace Text

Replace Text simply replaces the text written in the first field of the dialog by the text written in the second one.

 

Sentence Case

Sentence Case replaces lower case characters by capitals ine the beginning of every sentence.

 

Title Case

Capitalizes first letter of each word.

 

UPPER CASE

Capitalizes all letters.

 

fLIP cASE

Reverses letter case, so that all capitals become lower case, and all lower case letters become upper case letters.

 

lower case

All the letters  become lower case.

 

rANdOm CasE 

Arbitrarily toggles letter case in the whole text.

 

Text and Paths

Text and path can be complementary elements that work together. Some options of the Text menu are very interesting.

Put on Path / Remove from Path

Inkscape has support for the SVG element <textPath>. That allows putting a text on a path so that it follows its shape. Both text and path remain fully editable (including kerns and letterspacing in text).

Select the path and the text and use Text->Put on Path. When you move the path, its attached text moves with it; however, you can move the text away from its path or transform it without losing the link. The Text->Remove from Path command converts a text-on-path into a regular text object.

Flow into Frame / Unflow from Frame

The Flow into frame Alt+W command of the Text menu takes any selected text and puts it into the selected shape.  Word-wrapping is automatically done so that the text fits the shape as precisely as possible. Manual adjustment can still be done on the text after this. To separate the text from the path, just use Unflow or press Shift+Alt+ W.

 

Copy, Clone and Duplicate

Introduction

The artist may have need, at some point in his work, to replicate an object he has created for any number of purposes. Possibly he is populating a scene with bubbles or blades of grass which will all look exactly alike, or else he may want to create a very similar object which has some minor modifications.

Fortunately, Inkscape offers several tools to replicate objects. Each one has advantages in disadvantages, of course, which will be defined also by the purpose of the replicant object.

A strict copy of an object repeats the object on screen and within the xml code, and the new object is entirely separate from the original. This means that changes can be made to the replicant indifferently to the original, and changes made to the original do not affect the replicant either. This is done with either the Copy or Duplicate commands.

A clone is merely a repetition of the original on screen and in the code. Most modifications made to the original, like fill and transparency, are transferred to the replicant as well, and only a few modifications, such as transform and position, may be made to the replicant directly (some of these only under certain circumstances). Clones are created with the Clone command.

How to Use

Copy

The Copy command ( Ctrl + C or Edit > Copy or the command bar button) makes an exact copy of the selection in Inkscape's memory; the Paste command ( Ctrl + V or Edit > Paste or the command bar button) puts an exact copy under the cursor. The last selection to be copied can be pasted an indefinite number of times. It is also possible to paste the object wherever it is needed, for instance on an other layer, without the trouble of having to reposition the copy after its creation.

Duplicate

The Duplicate command ( Ctrl + D or Edit > Duplicate ) allows you to copy and paste a selection automatically with one command. The new object or selection is in exactly the same position as the original and is selected (instead of the original), ready for further manipulation.

Clone

The Clone command ( Alt + D or Edit > Clone ) allows you to create a copy of the selection that is linked to the original, also known as its parent.  The clone's shape, style (fill and stroke, transparency) and dimensions are linked to its parent. Thus, editing the parent's transparency (etc.) will also affect the clone's transparency.

Unlink clone

Select original

Use Select original ( Shift + D or Edit > Clone > Select original ) to find the parent of a selected clone. This is very useful when you have lost your parent.

Clipping paths and masks

Introduction

Clip paths, masks, and patterns are greatly useful additions to an artist or designers' tool set. A common property that all three share is the concept of boundaries. Clip paths and masks bound the contents of the items they contain, whereas patterns are only visible inside the bounds of the object they are applied to (in all three cases cropping visibility).

These methods do not delete parts of your objects, they merely tell the SVG renderer not to display them. This non-destructive editing makes it so that we can also release objects from from their bounded areas as well.

There are benefits to working with clip paths or masks combined with either individual or grouped objects.

Use of patterns fills is addressed in a dedicated chapter.

Clipping

The clip function in Inkscape allows an object or a group of objects to be clipped (cropped) so that only parts of the elements are visible. Clipping can be applied to any object (including groups, layers, bitmaps, etc.)

The easiest way to understand clipping is to see it in action. Take the following assortment of objects:

Now, place another object on top of all the others. This is what we are using for our clipping object. Note that the Z-order of the clipping object is important, as the default behavior in Inkscape takes the top-most object as the clipping object. Also note that the style (fill, stroke, opacity etc.) of the object is irrelevant, all that is used when clipping is the shape of the object.

The next step is to select all the objects that you want clipped and the clipping object. Then in the menus, go to Object > Clip > Set. The result is:

Since this is all non-destructive editing, it means that we can also release objects from a clip. Do this by selecting the object that you wish to release, and in the menus go to Object > Clip > Release. In the following example the blue star object was selected, and the clip was released:

So the purple clipping object has now returned, and the blue star object is no longer clipped. Note that the other two objects are still clipped, as the clip was applied to 3 seperate objects. These clips still apply and can be released if needed. Because clipping paths can be applied to any object, if you wanted to treat the 3 objects as a whole, you would group them, then apply the clip to the group.

Clipping can be done on any object, even objects that have had filters applied to them. Below is an example of using clipping to create a bubble effect on a circle:

A clip can also be done on bitmaps that are embedded into or linked from an SVG:

Masking

Like clip paths, masks allows an object or a group of objects to be visually cropped. The difference is that the mask's black or transparent areas become fully transparent in the masked object; mask's opaque white areas become fully opaque; and all intermediate colors translate into intermediate levels of opacity in the masked object. This allows you to apply, for example, arbitrary transparency gradients to objects.

In the following example you will see both the masks and the items they're applied to. As you'll notice, masks offer the ability for you to texture objects, give them depth, and other things that clip paths can't provide:

Introduction to Positionning 

Every new object is placed at a higher level of z-order. It is impossible to have two or more objects at the same level. If there is a need to change the stack, use some Object menu entries or Selector Tool F1 options.

If layers are defined, the stack changes occur in the layer.

When the Selector Tool F1 is on, this option appears in the Tool Controls bar.

Raise to Top

Raise to top  (Home) command puts any selected object at the top, above all other objects in the drawing.

SVG places any newly created object at top. However it is impossible to have 2 objects at the same stack-level. Some shapes or paths may be masked by these new objects.

 

Lower to Bottom

Lower to Bottom puts all selected objects at the bottom, below all other objects of the drawing.

 

Raise

The Raise  (PgUp)  command changes the stack of any selected object so that its z-order is just changed by one level and goes over only one other.

Lower

The Lower (PgDn) command changes the stack of any selected object so that its z-order is just changed by one level and goes below one other.

 

 

Align and Distribute

Align and Distribute moves multiple selected objects to the same axis and distributes them equally relative to a selected anchor object.  The Align and Distribute dialog offers many ways of applying these functions to object selections.

How to Use

The Align and Distribute dialog can be called by pressing Shift+Ctrl+A, selecting Object > Align and Distribute, or clicking the icon on the Toolbar:

Make sure your objects are selected.  Depending on which object you wish to have as the anchor and which relative to setting you have selected, order of selection will be important.

"Relative to"

Objects can be aligned and distributed relative to:

• the last or first selected
  
• the biggest or smallest item
  
• the page
  
• the drawing (all objects within the document)
  
• the selection of objects
  

Align

To align selected objects, click one of the align icons:

• Align right sides of objects to left side of anchor
• Align left sides
• Center on vertical axis
• Align right sides
• Align left sides of objects to right side of anchor
• Align baseline anchors of text vertically
• Align bottoms ob objects to top of anchor
• Align tops
• Center on horizontal axis
• Align bottoms
• Align tops of objects to bottom of anchor
• Align baseline anchors of texts horizontally

Distribute

To distribute selected objects, click one of the distribute icons:

• Distribute left sides equidistanly
• Distribute centers equidistanly horizontally
• Distribute right sides equidistanly
• Make horizontal gaps between objects equal
• Distribute baseline anchors of text horizontally
• Distribute tops euidistanly
• Distribute centers equidistanly vertically
• Distribute bottoms equidistanly
• Make vertical gaps between objects equal
• Distribute baseline anchors of text vertically
• Randomize centers in both dimensions
• Unclump objects ; try to equalize edge-to-edge distances

Remove overlaps

You can also define:

• Minimum horizontal gaps between objects,
  
• Mimimum vertical gaps,
• Move objects as little as possible so that their bounding boxes do not overlap

Connector network layout

If you are using the connector tool and need to distribute the connected objects, use this button to rearrange the selected connectors.

Nodes

There are 4 buttons to organize nodes in path. Select the nodes with Node Tool and click one of the node align buttons:

• Align selected nodes horizontally
• Align selected nodes vertically
• Distribute selected nodes horizontally
• Distribute selected nodes vertically
  

Layers

Layers are a type of object group within an SVG document.  As the name indicates, they are like stacked slices of the image which can be stacked, arranged, added and removed.  In addition, layers can be locked and made invisible to ease editing of objects within other layers of the document.

Layers can be very useful for several purposes:

• Arranging sets of objects by z-order (or stacking);
  
• Grouping objects which should be made visible/invisible or locked/unlocked together;
• Setting background layers which are visible but not selectable;
• etc (limited only by your imagination)

The Layers Widget on the Status Bar

The quickest and easiest way to work with layers is to use the layers widget on the statusbar.

 

Once you have created multiple layers in your drawing, you can select a layer easily from the combo box.  You can also hide / unhide or lock / unlock the current layer from this widget.

The Layers Dialog

The Layers dialog controls all layer functions - adding new layers, renaming, deleting, arranging, toggling visibility and edit-locking, and setting Blend mode and opacity.

 

Blend Mode and Opacity

You can choose to apply a Blend mode to layers, which makes all objects in a layer blend together as if they were one object - i.e., the two objects within the same layer will not blend with each other when layer blend modes are used.  The available modes are the common Multiply, Screen, Darken, and Lighten.

Opacity for an entire layer operates in a similar manner - objects within the layer have their opacity set as if they were a single object, so that one will not show through the others.  Only objects from layers beneath will show through the affected layers.

How to Use

New documents created by Inkscape using the default template have only one layer.  It is simple to create new layers which can be used right away.

To create a new layer, click "Create a new layer" on the Layers dialog.

Note : Although it is possible to have the same name for multiple layers (since each is given a different ID automatically), this is not the SVG standard.  It is good practice to name each layer differently.

Renaming Layer

Selecting Layers

To select a layer (in order to make it active), simply click on the layer once in the Layers dialog or select it from the layers widget on the status bar.

To move the current selection to the previous or next layer press Shift+PgUp or Shift+PgDn .

Moving Layers

To raise a layer one level press Shift+Ctrl+PgUp or click the "raise the current layer" arrow in the  Layers dialog.

 

To lower a layer one level press Ctrl or click the "lower the current layer" arrow in the Layers

To raise a layer to the top press Shift+Ctrl+Home or click the "raise the current layer to the top" arrow in the  Layers dialog.

To lower a layer to the bottom press Shift+Ctrl+End or click the "lower the curent layer to the bottom" arrow in the  Layers dialog.

Deleting Layers

To delete a layer, it must be selected. Click the "delete the current layer" button in the Layers dialog.

Locking Layers

To lock or unlock layers, click on the lock icon to the left of the layer name in the Layers dialog or the status bar.  The icon changes to reflect the current edit-lock status.

Hiding Layers

To make a layer invisible or visible, click on the eye icon to the left of the layer name in the Layers dialog or the status bar.  The icon changes to reflect the current visibility status.

Blend Mode

To change the blend mode, click on the blend mode dropdown in the Layers dialog and select a new mode.

Opacity

To change the opacity of a layer, move the opacity slider in the Layers dialog to the right or left.

Grouping

Sometimes several objects need to be manipulated together in a group rather than separately.  For example, if you want to keep the position of several objects relative to each other but still be able to grab and move those objects around the canvas quickly and easily.  You might also want to adjust one setting for several objects at the same time, such as fill or transparency.

A group is treated as a single object, and for most operations it can be manipulated as such.  For example, groups can be "stacked", meaning that you can create groups made of groups or groups other objects.  (This can be helpful, but it can also be very confusing if it becomes complicated.)

Groups cannot, however, be created between groups; in other words, you cannot select one object from two groups and create a new group without destroying or modifying the original groups.

In order to add objects to a group, you can use several methods, each having its own benefits and drawbacks:

1. Select the group, ungroup, add the object to the selection, then regroup.
2. Enter the group and draw a new object.
3. Copy or cut the object from the canvas, enter the group, paste the object.

Introduction to Styling

Objects in SVG can have various types of styles applied to them, and Inkscape offers multiple approaches to applying these styles.  Unfortunately, this makes the discussion of styling objects fairly complex.  This chapter aims to simplify the discussion as much as possible while revealing the possibilities of Inkscape and SVG drawings.  Accordingly, this introduction will focus on explaining the types of object styling and a little bit about alternative ways of applying styles.

Fill

There are three basic types of fill:

• Solid Fills - invariant color fills the object.  This color can have an opacity setting from 0 to 100 (0 being completely transparent, 100 being completely opaque).
• Gradient Fills - are a combination of two or more colors (or transparencies).  A gradient begins with the first color and blends smoothly into the next, etc.  Gradients can either be linear or circular.
• Pattern Fills - are comprised of repeating images which can be selected from a preset or defined by the user.  They can be either paths and shapes or bitmaps.

In addition, the fill can be set either to render or not render at any place where the object crosses over itself with the even-odd or non-zero settings.

Stroke Paint

Stroke Paint settings are basically the same as fill in that they consist of solid colors, gradients or patterns.  Stroke Paint cannot be set to even-odd - it always renders when it crosses over itself.

Stroke Style

Alternate Application Methods for Styles

Apart from selecting style types individually from the dialogs, there are several ways to paste copied styles by keystroke:

Copy Styles from Other Objects

Copy Dimensions from Other Objects

There are six options for copying dimensions from one object to a new object.  They are found in Edit > Paste Size

Paste Size - paste both the copied height and width to the selected object(s) so that the whole selection has the same dimensions as the original

Paste Width - paste only the copied width to the selected object(s) so that the whole selection has the same width as the original

Paste Height - paste only the copied height to the selected object(s) so that the whole selection has the same height as the original

Paste Size Separately - paste the copied height and width to each selected object individually (when multiples are selected) so that each separate object within the selection has the same height and width as the original

Paste Width Separately - paste the copied width to each selected object individually (when multiples are selected) so that each separate object within the selection has the same width as the original

Paste Height Separately - paste the copied height to each selected object individually (when multiples are selected) so that each separate object within the selection has the same height as the original

Fill and Stroke

The Fill and Stroke Paint panels are found in the Style dialog.  The settings contained in these panels are used to apply color or pattern styles to their respective object elements, and function almost the same for each.  Fill affects the interior part of an object (anything inside the object's path), Stroke Paint affects the path's stroke following its border.

An interesting point: when stroke paint has partial transparency, the object's fill will show through the inner half of the stroke paint but not the outer half, since the path stops at the center of the stroke and bounds the object's fill.  This can either make for interesting drawing possibilities or frustrated artists.  This is by SVG specification design.

 

The fill or stroke paint of an object can be set to:

In addition, there are a few settings that can really complicate the ease with which this dialogue might otherwise be understood:

• Even-odd
• Non-zero
• Blur
• Opacity
  

How to Use

Select one or more objects or groups you want to edit, then call the Fill and Stroke dialog by selecting Object > Fill and Stroke or by pressing Shift+Ctrl+F.

The following list describes each property setting.  (Examples are given using the Fill properties since they are seen more easily.)

No Paint

No paint or fill is visible in the object or stroke.  This means that any visible object behind the invisible fill will show through it.  Though it may seem counterintuitive, this is not the same as "Unset" since this is actually a fill type rather than no fill type.

Objects set to "No Paint" still act as normal shapes and paths when they are manipulated in path operations.  For instance, a boolean operation will react to the path exactly the same whether it has no paint fill or any other kind of fill.

Note: any object with 0% opacity (completely transparent) on both fill and stroke is not selectable by normal click selection.  Any other selection method should work for transparent objects.

Plain Color

A solid color paints the object or stroke.  In both Fill and Stroke Paint tabs, there are sub-tabs whereby color selections can be made either precisely (with the numeric and alpha-numeric controls) or more generally (with wheels and sliders).  Each selector type also shows an RGBA definition box at the bottom-right in which one may define a specific hexadecimal color.

• RGB offers four sliders representing percentages of red, green, blue, and alpha
  

• HSL offers four sliders representing percentages of hue, saturation, lightness, and alpha

• CMYK offers five sliders representing percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow, black and alpha

• Wheel offers a convenient (though less precise) selection apparatus consisting of a hue wheel and a combination saturation/lightness triangle, underneath which is an alpha slider
  

• CMS (only available in some distributions) allows selection of a color profile and offers an alpha slider underneath
  

Linear Gradient

 

A linear gradient paints the object or stroke according to two settings.  The gradient selector box chooses the gradient definition to use.  The repeat type selector box chooses none (the gradient only fills once from it's beginning point to its end point), direct (repeats the gradient infinitely, likely causing an abrupt color change at the end of each repetition if the ends are different colors), or reflected (repeats the gradient infinitely also, except that each repetition flips the gradient so the color changes are always smooth at the end of each repetition).

The direction and extent of the gradient is adjusted by dragging the handles.

Gradients may also be duplicated or edited from this dialog panel using the provided buttons.

Radial Gradient

 

This panel works the same as linear gradient except that the gradient is applied radially.

The elliptical "shape", placement and extent of the radius is controlled by the three handles.

Pattern

An SVG or bitmap pattern, selected from the selection box, paints the object. 

To create your own pattern, select the object from which the pattern will be created.  Then select Object > Pattern > Object to Pattern or pressAlt+I. Your object will dissapear from the canvas and appear on the list of patterns.

To do the reverse, select Object > Pattern > Pattern to Object or press Shift+Alt+I.

If the object filled with pattern is transformed, the pattern will be also.  If you don't want the pattern to be transformed, uncheck "Transform patterns" from the Transforms tab in the Preferences dialog.

Unset

 

Unset fill is applied to a master object of clones in order to make the clones paintable.  This must be applied individually to the object's fill and stroke to affect each.  This will make the object's fill appear black and its stroke appear invisible.

Even-Odd

This setting is available only for an object's Fill.  It causes the fill to be completely transparent wherever a path crosses over itself.

Non-Zero

 

This setting is available only for an object's Fill.  It causes the fill to be shown wherever a path crosses over itself.  This is the default setting.

Blur

Blur is not actually a paint function at all - it is actually an SVG filter effect.  However, it makes sense in Fill and Stroke, since it is a very commonly useful visual effect.  It is also important to note that blur affects the entire object, not just the fill or the stroke, and cannot be applied separately to either.

Apply blur by dragging the slider or setting the number box to the desired blur factor.  Usually only a small factor (0-10) is needed.

Opacity

 

Opacity sets the degree to which objects behind the affected object may be seen through it.

This opacity setting is separate from the color alpha setting, which is particular to either the fill or stroke paint.  Like blur, opacity applies to the entire object, affecting both fill and stroke together.

Stroke Style

Object strokes or outlines can have various styles applied to them from the Stroke Style panel on the Fill and Stroke dialog.  (Stroke paint is applied from the Stroke Paint dialog and is not covered in this chapter.)

The center of an object's stroke follows the path of the object.  For example, if the stroke is 10 pixels wide, the stroke will be drawn 5 pixels in opposite directions on either side of the path.  

How to Use

While an object is selected, activate the Fill and Stroke dialog by pressing Shift+Ctrl+F or selecting Object > Fill and Stroke.  Changes in the dialogue will immediately affect the selected object(s).

A brief list of stroke style options follows:

• Width controls how thick the stroke is and your desired measurement unit.
• Join controls the type of angle on a non-curve joint - miter (angled corners), round (rounded corners) or bevel (flat corners).  This affects the outside of the join only.
• Miter limit keeps corners mitered at set limits of corner angle; the higher the miter limit setting, the sharper the corner can be while retaining its miter.
• Cap controls the type of cap that is on the end of an open path - butt cap (flat), round cap (half-circle) or end cap (flat but extended).
  
• Dashes controls the dash pattern and its offset from the primary node.
• Start Markers, Mid Markers and End Markers set a marker selection from the dropdown (there is a pre-set selection of arrow-heads, etc).  Mid Markers places only one marker at the middle of the path.

Creating New Markers

Somebody Should Set The Title For This Chapter!

Live Path Effects

Live path effects (not to be confused with Extension Effects or SVG Filters) are a new way to non-destructively modify path and shape objects. Path Effects affect the path data of an object but not its style. The original path is preserved and can be edited directly on canvas, and the path effect applied to it will be updated live.

In the version 0.46 several path effects that are analogous to the corresponding extension effects (such as Path along Path effect and Pattern along Path that replaces the extension of the same name) are included. The most important advantage of path effects is that they are, indeed, live — you can still edit the original path and the effect will update in real time (unlike the extension effects which were one-time one-way transformations).

Details about operation

The following schematic tries to explain how LPE work.

   original style  ------------>  output style
   original path   -->  LPE  -->  output path
                         ^
                         |
                     parameters

The original style and path are from the path that the effect is applied on. The output is what is visible on screen. What is very important to notice is that output style equals original style.

The parameters can be paths, numbers, points, text, in principle anything.

Applying effects

Path effects are applied through the Path Effects dialog. This is opened from the Path menu, or by pressing Ctrl +Shift +7. This dialog is also used for controlling the effect's parameters and for removing effects.

When a path with a path effect applied is selected, the statusbar description gives details, for example "Path (4 nodes, path effect)".

There is a special Paste Path Effect command Ctrl+ 7 that can be used to copy effects from one path to another.

Editing effect parameters

When switching to the Node Edit tool F2, the original path can be edited. The original path is shown as a red helper path. Normal path operations, like simplify, still work.

Some parameters of these effects can be edited on-canvas. For example, path parameters can be node-edited, by pressing the edit on-canvas button in the Path Effects dialog. Press 7 to cycle through the different on-canvas editable parameters. This way, one can edit the parameters without opening the Path Effects dialog. The statusbar tells the name of the parameters that is currently being shown.

Available effects

Currently available live path effects are:

• Bend
• Pattern along path
• Stitch subpaths
• Gears

Development of new effects

One of the goals of the Summer of Code project was to make it easy to create new effects. There is a framework that greatly simplifies effect implementation; very little code is needed to get the effect hooked into Inkscape. This leaves valuable time for the actual effect to be implemented. See the http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/MakingLivePathEffects wiki page for an explanation of how to get started with your own effect!

Gears

The Gears effect is a toy effect. It generates a chain of interconnected gears from the path that has the effect applied to it. The nodes of the path define the centers of the gears. The first 3 nodes are special; the first defines the start angle of the chain, the second defines the center of the first gear and the third knot specifies the radius of the first gear. That is, to create a chain of 2 gears, you will need a path with 4 nodes; for 3 gears, 5 nodes, and so on.