• Introduction
• Introduction
• Why use Inkscape?
• Professional software
• About this book
• Interface
• Managing the workspace
• Draw geometric shapes
• Drawing geometric shapes
• Select tool
• Shape tools
• Rectangle / square tool
• Ellipse / circle tool
• Star / polygon tool
• Spiral tool
• 3D Box tool
• Draw with free hand tool
• Drawing with freehand tools
• Pen tool
• Bézier / pen tool
• Pencil / freehand tool
• Boolean
• Nodes
• Editing paths
• Align and distribute
• Node tool
• Vectorize an image
• Sculpting paths
• Color
• Color
• Palette
• Fill & Stroke dialog
• Custom colors
• Copy color
• Gradients
• Use a pattern fill
• Edit a pattern fill
• Create a custom pattern fill
• Strokes
• Markers
• Customize markers
• Text
• Text
• Writing text
• Edit text style
• Edit text color
• Adjust character positions
• Text along a path
• Flowed text (text in a frame)
• Create your own font
• Advanced techniques
• Advanced techniques
• Saving your work
• Export to PDF
• Export to raster (PNG format)
• Import pictures in a document
• Copy/duplicate objects
• Clone objects
• Customize keyboard shortcuts
• Cut or apply a mask
• Filters
• Extensions

Interface

Inkscape shows a window per edited document. Each window contains the toolbars, and a white, empty area.

In this manual, we use the ‘Large’ view which puts the first toolbar on the right. You can get this view with the menu: ‘View > Large’.

• The application menubar along the top provides general menu options. Some are similar to other software programs (‘File > Save’, ‘Edit > Copy’, etc.) and there are also Inkscape-specific ones.
• The tool controls bar just below is contextual, and displays options for the currently selected tool.
• Vertically on the left, the toolbox contains the main drawing tools. Only one tool can be selected at once.
• The large blank area is the canvas, where the image is edited. A black outline represents the visible page, A4 format by default (at least in the French edition of the software).
• On the right, the left-most toolbar is the commands bar which gives quick access to common commands which are also available via the dropdown menus.
• The right-most toolbar is the snap controls bar and allows to configure snapping.
• There are rulers at the top and on the left of the canvas, to help with sale and guideline placement.
• Scrollbars are available to the right and bottom of the canvas to move around.
• The color palette toolbar is situated near the bottom of the window.
• At the very bottom, the status bar contains various information, such as the colour of the selected object, layers, a status bar, cursor coordinates, and zoom level.

Other options are available via popup dialog boxes which will appear attached to the right of the canvas.