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::BASIC
This tutorial demonstrates the basics of using Inkscape. This is a
regular Inkscape document that you can view, edit, copy from, or save.
The Basic Tutorial covers canvas navigation, managing documents, shape tool
basics, selection techniques, transforming objects with selector, grouping, setting fill
and stroke, alignment, and z-order. For more advanced topics, check out the other
tutorials in the Help menu.
Panning the canvas
There are many ways to pan (scroll) the document canvas. Try
Ctrl+arrow keys to scroll by keyboard. (Try this now to scroll this
document down.) You can also drag the canvas by the middle mouse
button. Or, you can use the scrollbars (press Ctrl+B to show or hide
them). The wheel on your mouse also works for scrolling vertically;
press Shift with the wheel to scroll horizontally.
Zooming in or out
The easiest way to zoom is by pressing - and + (or
=) keys. You can also use Ctrl+middle click or
Ctrl+right click to zoom in, Shift+middle click or
Shift+right click to zoom out, or rotate the mouse wheel with
Ctrl. Or, you can click in the zoom entry field (in the bottom right
corner of the document window), type a precise zoom value in %, and press Enter. We also
have the Zoom tool (in the toolbar on left) which lets you to zoom into an area by
dragging around it.
Inkscape also keeps a history of the zoom levels you've used in this work
session. Press the ` key to go back to the previous zoom, or
Shift+` to go forward.
Inkscape tools
The vertical toolbar on the left shows Inkscape's drawing and editing tools. In
the top part of the window, below the menu, there's the Commands
bar with general command buttons and the Tool Controls
bar with controls that are specific to each tool. The status
bar at the bottom of the window will display useful hints and messages as
you work.
Many operations are available through keyboard shortcuts. Open
Help > Keys and Mouse to see the complete reference.
Creating and managing documents
To create a new empty document, use File > New or press
Ctrl+N. To open an existing SVG document, use File >
Open (Ctrl+O). To save, use File > Save
(Ctrl+S), or Save As (Shift+Ctrl+S)
to save under a new name. (Inkscape may still be unstable, so remember to save
often!)
Inkscape uses the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format for its files. SVG is an open standard widely
supported by graphic software. SVG files are based on XML and can be edited with any
text or XML editor (apart from Inkscape, that is). Besides SVG,
Inkscape can import and export several other formats (EPS, PNG).
Inkscape opens a separate document window for each document. You can navigate
among them using your window manager (e.g. by Alt+Tab), or you can use
the Inkscape shortcut, Ctrl+Tab, which will cycle through all open
document windows. (Create a new document now and switch between it and this document for
practice.) Note: Inkscape treats these windows like tabs in a web browser, this means
the Ctrl+Tab shortcut only works with documents running in the same
process. If you open multiple files from a file browser or launch more than
one Inkscape process from an icon it will not work.
Creating shapes
Time for some nice shapes! Click on the Rectangle tool in the toolbar
(or press F4) and click-and-drag, either in a new empty document or
right here:
As you can see, default rectangles come up blue, with a black stroke (outline),
and partly transparent. We'll see how to change that below. With other tools, you can
also create ellipses, stars, and spirals:
These tools are collectively known as shape tools. Each shape you
create displays one or more diamond-shaped handles; try dragging
them to see how the shape responds. The Controls panel for a shape tool is another way to tweak a shape;
these controls affect the currently selected shapes (i.e. those that display the handles)
and set the default that will apply to newly created shapes.
To undo your last action, press
Ctrl+Z. (Or, if you change your mind again, you can
redo the undone action by Shift+Ctrl+Z.)
Moving, scaling, rotating
The most frequently used Inkscape tool is
the Selector. Click the topmost button (with the arrow) on the
toolbar, or press F1 or Space. Now you can select
any object on the canvas. Click on the rectangle below.
You will see eight arrow-shaped handles appear around the object.
Now you can:
Move the object by dragging it. (Press Ctrl to restrict movement
to horizontal and vertical.)
Scale the object by dragging any handle. (Press Ctrl to preserve
the original height/width ratio.)
Now click the rectangle again. The handles change. Now you can:
Rotate the object by dragging corner handles. (Press Ctrl to
restrict rotation to 15 degree steps. Drag the cross mark to
position the center of rotation.)
Skew (shear) the object by dragging non-corner
handles. (Press Ctrl to restrict skewing to 15 degree
steps.)
While in Selector, you can also use the numeric entry fields in the Controls bar
(above the canvas) to set exact values for coordinates (X and Y) and size (W and H) of
the selection.
Transforming by keys
One of Inkscape's features that set it apart from most other vector editors is its
emphasis on keyboard accessibility. There's hardly any command or action that is
impossible to do from keyboard, and transforming objects is no exception.
You can use the keyboard to move (arrow keys), scale
(< and > keys), and rotate ([
and ] keys) objects. Default moves and scales are by 2 px; with
Shift, you move by 10 times that. Ctrl+>
and Ctrl+< scale up or down to 200% or 50% of the original,
respectively. Default rotates are by 15 degrees; with Ctrl, you rotate
by 90 degrees.
However, perhaps the most useful are pixel-size
transformations, invoked by using Alt with the transform
keys. For example, Alt+arrows will move the selection by 1 pixel
at the current zoom (i.e. by 1 screen pixel,
not to be confused with the px unit which is an SVG length unit independent of
zoom). This means that if you zoom in, one Alt+arrow will result in a
smaller absolute movement which will still look like one-pixel
nudge on your screen. It is thus possible to position objects with arbitrary precision
simply by zooming in or out as needed.
Similarly, Alt+> and Alt+<
scale selection so that its visible size changes by one screen pixel, and
Alt+[ and Alt+] rotate it so that its
farthest-from-center point moves by one screen pixel.
Note: Linux users may not get the expected results with the Alt+arrow and a few other key combinations if their Window Manager catches those key events before they reach the inkscape application. One solution would be to change the WM's configuration accordingly.
Multiple selections
You can select any number of objects
simultaneously by Shift+clicking them. Or, you can
drag around the objects you need to select; this is called
rubberband selection. (Selector creates rubberband when dragging
from an empty space; however, if you press Shift before starting to
drag, Inkscape will always create the rubberband.) Practice by selecting all three of
the shapes below:
Now, use rubberband (by drag or Shift+drag) to select the two ellipses
but not the rectangle:
Each individual object within a selection displays a selection
cue — by default, a dashed rectangular frame. These cues make it easy
to see at once what is selected and what is not. For example, if you select both the two
ellipses and the rectangle, without the cues you would have hard time guessing whether
the ellipses are selected or not.
Shift+clicking on a selected object excludes it from the selection.
Select all three objects above, then use Shift+click to exclude both
ellipses from the selection leaving only the rectangle selected.
Pressing Esc deselects any selected
objects. Ctrl+A selects all objects in the current layer (if you did
not create layers, this is the same as all objects in the document).
Grouping
Several objects can be combined into a group. A group
behaves as a single object when you drag or transform it. Below, the three objects on
the left are independent; the same three objects on the right are grouped. Try to drag
the group.
To create a group, you select one or more objects and press
Ctrl+G. To ungroup one or more groups, select them and press
Ctrl+U. Groups themselves may be grouped, just like any other
objects; such recursive groups may go down to arbitrary depth. However,
Ctrl+U only ungroups the topmost level of grouping in a
selection; you'll need to press Ctrl+U repeatedly if you want to
completely ungroup a deep group-in-group.
You don't necessarily have to ungroup, however, if you want to edit
an object within a group. Just Ctrl+click that object and it will be
selected and editable alone, or Shift+Ctrl+click several objects
(inside or outside any groups) for multiple selection regardless of
grouping. Try to move or transform the individual shapes in the
group (above right) without ungrouping it, then deselect and select
the group normally to see that it still remains grouped.
Fill and stroke
Many of Inkscape's functions are available via dialogs. Probably the
simplest way to paint an object some color is to open the Swatches dialog from the
View menu (or press Shift+Ctrl+W), select an object, and click a swatch to paint
it (change its fill color).
More powerful is the Fill and Stroke dialog from the Object menu
(or press Shift+Ctrl+F). Select the shape below and open the Fill and Stroke
dialog.
You will see that the dialog has three tabs: Fill, Stroke paint, and Stroke
style. The Fill tab lets you edit the fill (interior) of the
selected object(s). Using the buttons just below the tab, you can select types of fill,
including no fill (the button with the X), flat color fill, as well as linear or radial
gradients. For the above shape, the flat fill button will be activated.
Further below, you see a collection of color pickers, each
in its own tab: RGB, CMYK, HSL, and Wheel. Perhaps the most convenient is the Wheel
picker, where you can rotate the triangle to choose a hue on the wheel, and then select
a shade of that hue within the triangle. All color pickers contain a slider to set the
alpha (opacity) of the selected object(s).
Whenever you select an object, the color picker is updated to display its current
fill and stroke (for multiple selected objects, the dialog shows their
average color). Play with these samples or create your own:
Using the Stroke paint tab, you can remove the stroke
(outline) of the object, or assign any color or transparency to it:
The last tab, Stroke style, lets you set the width and other parameters
of the stroke:
Finally, instead of flat color, you can use gradients for
fills and/or strokes:
When you switch from flat color to gradient, the newly created gradient uses the
previous flat color, going from opaque to transparent. Switch to the Gradient tool
(Ctrl+F1) to drag the gradient handles —
the controls connected by lines that define the direction and length of the
gradient. When any of the gradient handles is selected (highlighted blue), the Fill and
Stroke dialog sets the color of that handle instead of the color of the entire selected
object.
Yet another convenient way to change a color of an object is by using the Dropper
tool (F7). Just click anywhere in the drawing with
that tool, and the picked color will be assigned to the selected object's fill
(Shift+click will assign stroke color).
Duplication, alignment, distribution
One of the most common operations is duplicating an object
(Ctrl+D). The duplicate is placed exactly above the original and is
selected, so you can drag it away by mouse or by arrow keys. For practice, try to fill
the line with copies of this black square:
Chances are, your copies of the square are placed more or less randomly. This is
where the Align dialog (Ctrl+Shift+A) is useful. Select all the squares
(Shift+click or drag a rubberband), open the dialog and press the
“Center on horizontal axis” button, then the “Make horizontal gaps between objects
equal” button (read the button tooltips). The objects are now neatly aligned and
distributed equispacedly. Here are some other alignment and distribution
examples:
Z-order
The term z-order refers to the stacking order of objects in a drawing,
i.e. to which objects are on top and obscure others. The two commands in the Object
menu, Raise to Top (the Home key) and Lower to Bottom (the
End key), will move your selected objects to the very top or very
bottom of the current layer's z-order. Two more commands, Raise (PgUp)
and Lower (PgDn), will sink or emerge the selection one step only,
i.e. move it past one non-selected object in z-order (only objects that overlap the
selection count; if nothing overlaps the selection, Raise and Lower move it all the way
to the top or bottom correspondingly).
Practice using these commands by reversing the z-order of the
objects below, so that the leftmost ellipse is on top and the rightmost
one is at the bottom:
A very useful selection shortcut is the Tab key. If nothing is
selected, it selects the bottommost object; otherwise it selects the object above the
selected object(s) in z-order. Shift+Tab works in reverse,
starting from the topmost object and proceeding downwards. Since the objects you
create are added to the top of the stack, pressing Shift+Tab with
nothing selected will conveniently select the object you created last. Practice
the Tab and Shift+Tab keys on the stack of ellipses
above.
Selecting under and dragging selected
What to do if the object you need is hidden behind another object?
You may still see the bottom object if the top one is (partially)
transparent, but clicking on it will select the top object, not the
one you need.
This is what Alt+click is for. First Alt+click
selects the top object just like the regular click. However, the next
Alt+click at the same point will select the object below the top
one; the next one, the object still lower, etc. Thus, several
Alt+clicks in a row will cycle, top-to-bottom, through the entire
z-order stack of objects at the click point. When the bottom object is reached, next
Alt+click will, naturally, again select the topmost object.
[If you are on Linux, you might find that
Alt+click does not work properly. Instead, it might be
moving the whole Inkscape window. This is because your window manager
has reserved Alt+click for a different action. The way to fix this is
to find the Window Behavior configuration for your window manager, and
either turn it off, or map it to use the Meta key (aka Windows key), so
Inkscape and other applications may use the Alt key freely.]
This is nice, but once you selected an under-the-surface object, what can you do
with it? You can use keys to transform it, and you can drag the selection
handles. However, dragging the object itself will reset the selection to the top object
again (this is how click-and-drag is designed to work — it selects the (top)
object under cursor first, then drags the selection). To tell Inkscape to drag what
is selected now without selecting anything else, use Alt+drag.
This will move the current selection no matter where you drag your mouse.
Practice Alt+click and Alt+drag on the two brown
shapes under the green transparent rectangle:
Conclusion
This concludes the Basic tutorial. There's much more than that to Inkscape, but
with the techniques described here, you will already be able to create simple yet useful
graphics. For more complicated stuff, go through the Advanced and other tutorials in
Help > Tutorials.
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