#Basic inkscape tutorial pdf#

You can use the same dialog to export your document to a bitmap format.

Resize your document using document properties (Control-Shift-D).

Setting the default font in 'Text and Font' menu item is very handy.

Text is self-explanatory, except that clicking and dragging the text tool will make a nice text box that does line wrapping.

Group things to ensure consistent resizing and rotating across several objects.

Aligning text is different than lining up objects: use the special text alignment buttons.

You can also align control nodes for paths.

To look super pro, use Colorbrewer colors.

Use color dropper to change color using an existing color.

Can have finer grained control using fill and stroke dialog (suggestion: use HSL, not RGB!).

Click to select fill color from little boxes, shift-click to select stroke color.Make ends meet pleasantly by using butt ends for your lines.

Change object properties with Fill and Stroke, such as stroke width and other line characteristics.

Change from a smooth node to a corner node and back.

Tracing a bitmap is a great way to cheat!.

To make an area, bound it with objects and then use the paint dump tool.

To make a more complex curve, you can use the pencil tool with simplification.

To make a Bezier curve, click and drag with left, release when you have the length right, then move the mouse and click left to finalize line.Īs before, you can continue adding segments to your path until you click right.

To make a closed path, just make your last click at the start point.

You can continue to add segments to your path by left clicking, then click right to end.

To make a simple line, click left to set a start point, then click left again to set the end point.

Squares: Tool Control Bar can give you rounded edges.

Circles: Tool Control Bar can give you partial circles.

If you mess something up, you have infinite undo (Ctrl-Z)! You can re-do as well (Ctrl-Shift-Z).

There is a button on the right of the Tool Control Bar to determine if stretching an object changes line thickness or not.

Objects have an order of what is on top of what, and you can change that using buttons in the Selection Tool Control Bar.

Click objects again to be able to rotate and skew them.

Hold the Control key to keep aspect ratio.

Or move your selection using the arrow keys.

Control-drag only moves in one direction.

Copy-paste and duplicate work as you might expect.

Click and drag to select objects in a box.

click while holding down Shift) to add an object to the selection.

Make sure you are using the 'Select and transform objects' tool (on the top).

Ctrl-arrows move your view of the document around.

Zoom in and out using Control and scroll wheel.

View menu has lots of options for zooming.

The magnifying glass enables zooming with a click or a rectangle selection.

It changes depending on what tool is being used. You can read more here, but just remember the location of the Tool Control Bar.

#Basic inkscape tutorial pdf#

If it doesn't, then perhaps it makes EPS or PDF files, which can be imported by Inkscape.

It is a vector format, which means you don't lose resolution when you zoom in, in contrast to bitmap (a.k.a.SVG is a file format you can open in modern browsers.Here are some essentials, which go along with the following video introduction: There is a lot of great Inkscape documentation out there, and the Basic Tutorial is a good place to start. Inkscape is a cross-platform graphical editor for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files. Making beautiful scientific graphics using Inkscape