Inkscape

Table of Contents

Misc

  • Snap panel is located at the very right.
  • Snapping midpoints of bounding box edges is useful
  • Tiled grouping is really cool
  • <C-Click> to click into groups
  • Access Preferences with <C-A-p>
    • Added <C-S-b> to view objects pane
  • <Space> when in selection mode stop
  • Add a tablet
    • Edit → Input Devices
  • Trace from bitmap very cool - multiple scans to decompose bitmap into N colours

Node Manipulation

Clicking on a node reveals its handlebars

  • <F2> selects the node editing tool ('Edit paths by nodes')
    • Make sure the path you're editing is selected
  • <C-A-Click> creates and removes nodes
  • To transform multiple nodes in a coordinated way (e.g. push them together/apart), select them, enable 'show transformation handles for selected nodes' and then move accordingly

Exporting

To SVG

https://gist.github.com/brenopolanski/46cd370d634a1709aa8a58e55cfc9a03 doesn't quite work; do this:

  • Select object to export
  • Copy to fresh document
  • Open Document Properties (<C-S-d>)
  • Resize page to drawing/selection
  • Ungroup all. Object to Path, Stroke to Path
  • Save as Optimised SVG

Batch

Avoid setting the export path while objects are selected; see https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inbox/-/issues/249 - if they are set, you can undo by remove all attributes of

inkscape:export-filename="/home/xdl/dev/game-cafe/assets/g1162.png"

from the SVG file in a text editor. Otherwise they will keep overwriting each other.

  • Select all groups
    • To specify exported filename, set the ID field in the group's object properties <C-S-o>
  • Check 'batch export N selected objects'

Key Bindings

These seem to be consistent across Macs and Windows (i.e. no remapping of Ctrl to Cmd)

Tools

  • <U> for fill tool
  • w is the tweak tool. Jitter can be used to select a slightly different colour

Misc

  • <C-d> on a selection to duplicate (copies via value)
  • <C-c> <C-v> on a selection to copy and paste (copies via value)
  • <C-A-d> on a selection to duplicate (copies via reference)
  • <C-A-v> pastes in place
  • With a shape (e.g. circle) and text selected, you can wrap the text around path (text → put on path)
  • Holding shift and clicking on the cross sign will remove a stroke
  • When dragging a simple shape, hit <space> to duplicate

Viewing

  • Hold down <Space> to move the page about
  • 1 zooms to original size
  • 2 zooms to double size
  • 3 zooms into the selection
  • 4 sees everything
  • + zooms out
  • - zooms in

Dialogs

  • <C-S-a> for Alignment panel
    • Useful variation is to use the dropdown to select relative to 'last selected'
  • <C-S-o> for Object properties
    • Can change an object's ID, label or give it a title node
  • <C-S-p> opens Preferences
  • <C-S-d> opens Document properties
    • Change mm to pixels here
  • <C-S-t> for Text panel
  • <C-S-l> for Layers panel
  • <C-S-l> for Objects panel
  • <C-S-f> for Fill and Stroke (i.e. colour)
  • <C-S-w> for Swatches

Placement

  • <C-g> to group
    • Enter the group by double clicking (All new shapes, paths etc. will be created in that group)
  • <C-S-g> to ungroup (or <C-u>?)

Objects

  • <S-d> to look at the original of a clone
  • <A-d> to create a clone
  • A tiled clone can be created with perturbations on position, colour etc.
    • Make sure to set the fill colour to undefined if you want that to be randomly generated
    • Set Shift → Shift X to be -100 for Per Column if you want to create a radially tiled clone. And also use use 1 row x N columns for duplicating N times
  • <PgUp> to move selected object up in z-index (or <Fn-↑> on Mac)
  • <PgDown> to move selected object down in z-index (or <Fn-↓> on Mac)
  • <Home> to move selected object to the top of z-index (or <Fn-←> on Mac)
  • <End> to move selected object to the bottom of z-index(or <Fn-→> on Mac)
  • Use <A-drag> to select objects by drawing a line through them
  • <S-click> on the rotation center to reset it back to original rotation center

Node manipulation

Diamond nodes are cusp nodes (zero, one or two handles, resized in any direction), Square nodes are smooth nodes with handles at 180 degrees. Symmetric nodes are smooth nodes with handles the same length.

  • Shift dragging from the node will extend a handle
  • Align tools work on nodes
  • <C-&> to bring up path effects (e.g. mirroring)
  • Double click in path to add new node

Shape manipulation

  • <F4> for rectangles and squares
    • When making buttons, make sure to turn off scaling border radii with rectangle

Vector manipulation

  • <C-F2> for the connector tool
    • If the centres aren't showing up, make sure they aren't on top of any other shapes or object.
  • <F5> for circles
  • <F6> for freehand pen
  • <C-F6> for freehand calligraphy
  • <S-F6> or b for Bezier curves and straight lines (click, then right click to end path)
    • Right click or <Enter> to end path
  • <F7> or d for the eyedrop tool
  • <F8> or t for the text tool
    • To create a box that flows with width, make sure you draw a rectangle with it instead of just clicking on a page
  • Convert flowRoot to text with Text → Convert to Text
  • I don't think these are always true:
    • Object To Path breaks down the object so that it has a stroke property only
    • Stroke To Path breaks down the stroke so that it has a fill property only

Installing Fonts

  • For MacOS, copy these over to ~/Library/Fonts (or install them after opening the font file)

Troubleshooting

Known Bugs

MacOS

Resources

This content has been automatically generated. For feedback or errata, please email eddie at xiaodi.li.