inkscape

If you’ve used Inkscape for any extended period of time then you’ve undoubtedly had the application crash on you, and if you haven’t saved your work then it may be gone forever. It’s important to save your work often, but it’s also easy to forget sometimes. This is where a feature like autosave comes in…

In previous lessons we went over how to use Inkscape’s “Pattern Along Path” feature to take an object and repeat it along a path of your choosing. The downside of using this feature, however, is that it warps (or “deforms”) the object in such a way that it stretches along the path, and there’s no…

Layering makes for an excellent way to organize your design elements when working on complex vector designs with lots of objects. What if you’re working in Inkscape and you’ve already created the entirety of your design on a single layer though? Unfortunately there is no direct way to separate an image into layers in Inkscape.…

In today’s tutorial we’ll be going over a more obscure feature in Inkscape, which is the ability to draw in “symmetry mode”, where transformations made to one object are mirrored and copied on the other side of the axis. In order to mirror in Inkscape we will need to use a designated path effect. Upon…

Inkscape isn’t just a vector design tool. As we’ve gone over in previous lessons, it also allows you to make common transformation to images as well, such as scaling and resizing. In this tutorial we’ll be going over how to resize an image in Inkscape by manually scaling it or by inputting numerical values. In…

As demonstrated many times in previous lessons, there’s no shortage of ways in which you can use Inkscape. It’s not just a tool for editing vectors. Inkscape also allows you to make common edits to photos and even alter PDF documents if needed. In this tutorial we will be going over a workflow that allows…

One of the benefits of working in a vector environment (such as Inkscape) is that you can edit the properties of a text object on a more granular level and transform them in ways you otherwise couldn’t in pixel-based editors. However, you’ll have to convert your text to paths first. Converting text to a path…

Today we’ll be going over an important function in Inkscape — layers. Layers are a way of organizing and compartmentalizing your artwork, and in this tutorial we’ll be going over how layers work in Inkscape. In short, layers allow you to organize elements of your artwork into sections. These sections can then be rearranged and…

In today’s tutorial we’ll be going over how to erase in Inkscape using the Eraser Tool. This tool allows you to delete portions of objects that happen to be vector paths and can serve as a more efficient process for shape building than using standard Boolean operations. Knowing how to use the Eraser Tool can…

In today’s tutorial we’ll be going over path offsetting in Inkscape. This is a fundamental function of vector design, and no vector design software is complete without it. There’s two ways to offset a path in Inkscape. One is quick and rudimentary, and the other requires more time but provides more control. Let’s briefly go…