Design Made Easy with Inkscape. A practical guide to your journey from beginner to pro-level vector illustration

Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1: Finding Your Way Around
Chapter 1: The Inkscape Interface
	Technical requirements
	Navigating the interface
	The Menu bar
	The Tool bar and Tool control bar
	The Desk and Page areas
	The Swatch Palette
		The color indicators
		The Layer Info Indicator
	The Status bar
	The Docking area and dialogs
	The Commands bar
	The Snap control bar
	The Display Transform Control
	Summary
Chapter 2: Moving and Styling Shapes
	Technical requirements
	Introducing shapes in Inkscape
		Raster versus vector images
		Drawing your first shape
		Fill and Stroke
	Using the Select and Transform tool
		Selecting and deselecting individual shapes
		Selecting multiple shapes all at once
		Selecting everything
		Fancy selecting with the Alt key
		Selecting objects with the same attributes
		Invert selection
	Moving shapes
	Cutting, copying, pasting, and deleting shapes
	Resizing shapes
		Resizing the height and width values with the Select and Transform tool
		Resizing shapes with Paste Size
		Scaling styles
	Rotating shapes
	Raising and lowering shapes
	Grouping shapes
	Flipping shapes
	Summary
Chapter 3: Drawing Shapes with the Shape Tools
	Technical requirements
	Inkscape’s object properties
	The Rectangle tool
	The Circle, Ellipse, and Arc tools
	The Polygon and Star tool
	The 3D Box tool
	The Spiral tool
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 4: Automatic Shape Alignment in Inkscape
	Technical requirements
	The Align and Distribute dialog
		Text object alignment
		On Canvas Alignment
		Rearranging options
	Grid arranging shapes
	Circular arranging shapes
	Automatic spacing and alignment with Smart Snapping options
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 5: Node Editing – Modifying Your Shapes with Nodes and Curves
	Editing shapes with the Node tool
		Adding and removing nodes
	Curve handles and node types
	Breaking and joining lines
	Drawing lines and shapes from scratch
	Line styles
		Classical drawing tools
	Advanced curves and line options
	Making brush strokes with Stroke Shape
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Part 2: Advanced Shape Editing
Chapter 6: Fast Shape Editing with Path Operations and the Shape Builder Tool
	Technical requirements
	What are Booleans?
	Exploring the Combine, Break Apart, Split Path, Fracture, and Flatten operations
	Exploring the Inset, Outset, and Dynamic Offset Path operations
	Fast Path operations with the Shape Builder tool
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 7: Using Text in Inkscape
	Installing new fonts
	The Text tool
	Font collections
	The Text and Font dialog
	Understanding variable fonts
	Text on a curve
	Flowing paragraphs into shapes
	Check spelling and other handy tools
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 8: Advanced Shading and Coloring
	Technical requirements
	The Gradient tool
	The Gradient Editor
	The Mesh Gradient tool
	Pattern Fills
	Using blur for complex shading
	Color blending with Blend modes
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 9: Clips and Masks
	Technical requirements
	Clips and clipping groups
	Clips inside clips
	Masking with vector shapes and images
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 10: Automation with Clones and Linked Files
	Technical requirements
	What is a clone?
	Cloning groups
	Clones as clips and masks
	Clone management using clones of clones
	Leveraging linked image files
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Part 3: Inkscape’s Power Tools
Chapter 11: Organization Using Layers
	Technical requirements
	What is a layer?
	Understanding the Objects and Layers dialog
	Organizing projects using groups and layers
	Layer transparency and Blend modes
	Cloning layers
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 12: Live Path Effects
	Technical requirements
	What is a Path Effect, and why is it live?
	The Path Effects dialog
	Using Path Effects with single-path objects
	Using Path Effects with groups
	Stacking Path Effects
	Limitations of Path Effects
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 13: Filters and Extensions
	Technical requirements
	Using filters
	Making custom filters
	Using extensions
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 14: Vectorizing with Trace Bitmap
	Technical requirements
	What is Trace Bitmap?
	Vectorizing to black with the Single scan tab
	Vectorizing to color shapes
	Tracing parts of a bitmap with the Fill Bucket tool
	Try it yourself
	Summary
Chapter 15: Document Properties, Pages, Exporting, and Printing
	Technical requirements
	The Document Properties dialog
	The Pages tool
	The Export dialog
	Save and export considerations
		Saving for printed magazine adverts
		Saving and exporting for email-friendly PDFs
		Exporting for the web
		Saving for CNC cutters and engravers
		Exporting for print-on-demand websites
	Printing
	Summary
Index
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