Intro to Inkscape for graphic design

Vector Graphics vs. Rasterized (Bitmap) Graphics

In general, diagrams are usually best made in a vector format, while photo-realistic images or paintings are better served with bitmaps. A rasterisation is the conversion of a vector-graphics format to bitmap. This has to be done to display it (in editors, browsers, print, etc.), but preferably as a last step.

Features

Example

Notice how at its regular size, all copies look the same for screen/printing resolutions lower than 96dpi. The difference is noticeable once we try to zoom in, or view it at higher resolutions.

Closed/Proprietary vs. Open Source

There are all sorts of philosophical reasons for opening source code and toolsets, and others for opening up content created. When it comes down to practice, the reasons are basically:

• it’s free;
• you can open and change it in the future;
• other people can make new work from yours.

Inkscape is the most mature, and most cross-platform vector graphics program.

Interface Tour

The interface of inkscape tends to be quite crowded, so it can be overwhelming when you first open the application. In fact, it’s so crowded, I don’t think it will help much to include a screenshot.

Instead, here are the important things to notice (in order of importance):

• Tool palette, typically on the left
• Tool-specific options, typically top-left
• Tool tips (e.g. modifier keys), at the bottom
• General toolbar (save, copy, group, show panels), maybe top or right
• Transform/Format/etc. panels, typically hidden, but on the right when shown
• Snaps, typically bottom or right
• Colour palette, at the bottom

Keyboard and mouse

The other tricky part is that it’s optimized for keyboard and mouse. Most tools have different behaviour when a modifier key is held down. For example, with the selector tool, shift+click adds to the selection, Alt+Drag does a path-selection instead of rectangle, and shift+alt+drag adds to the current selection with a path-selection. Note: if something is already selected, alt+drag moves the object.

Right-clicks and middle-clicks will also have different behaviours.

A notable modifier key is Ctrl (^). This will often force more “regular” shapes/orientations. For example, horizontal/vertical lines and moves, 45-degree rotation, and aspect-ratio locked scaling.

Often, Shift is used as a secondary modifier for opposite behaviour. Examples,

• ctrl+z is undo, shift+ctrl+z is redo
• ctrl+g groups objects, shift+ctrl+g ungroups

Notable hotkeys

Most hotkeys can be seen in the menus, or hovering over buttons on the interface. The following are ones that I use frequently.

• Escape will change tools and/or deselect. Keep pressing it until you’re back at the selection tool with nothing selected.
• The number row handles zooming
  • =, - zoom in and out
  • 5 zooms to fit document
  • 1 goes 1:1
  • back-tick (`) goes to the previous zoom (like undo)
• ctrl-z for undo
• ctrl-d for duplicate
• alt-d for clone (like duplicate, but the new object is linked to the original)
• ctrl-g for group
• ctrl-c for copy
• shift-ctrl-c for past style (stroke and fill)

Demo Tutorials

Everything else is probably best learned through using it. Here are some samples of what we’ll make in the tutorial.

Demonstrates rectangles, transforms, lines, text, clone, and gradients

Demonstrates polygons, rounded rectangles, elipses, object->path, grouping, spraying clones, arranging objects.

Demonstrates polygons, rounded rectangles, elipses, object->path, grouping, clones, arrows, importing PDFs.

Demonstrates circles, tiled clones, arrange, layers, lines, paste formatting, transform panel.

Demonstrates rounded rectangles, object->path, bezier curves, path offsets, gradients, clipping, transparency, layers, spraying clones

Demonstrates extensions (render -> plot function), cutting/joining paths, breaking/combining paths, cloning, z-order, rounded rectangles, transformations.

Python extensions

There may be a problem related to python versions when running some extensions. If an extension raises a syntax error, be sure to have Python 2.7 installed, and then specify the interpreter in ~/.config/inkscape/preferences.xml

On my system (Mac OSX), Python 2.7 was located at /usr/bin/python2.7. The interpreter option will likely not be there initially.

  <group
     id="extensions"
     python-interpreter="/usr/bin/python2.7"
     ...
  >

The plot function extension also depended on the lxml module, which can be installed with pip (pip2 if you have multiple versions of Python).