Book Image

Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook

Book Image

Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook

Overview of this book

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor with an intuitive user interface that has enough depth to make quality graphic designs with an attractive layout comparable to what you would make using Illustrator or CorelDraw. But choosing the right tool and the best approach to creating the desired effect can be challenging. Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook makes it super-easy for you to make your own vector-based graphics with the powerful Inkscape editor. Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook provides you with the latest recipes to quickly create scalable vector graphics. Recipes in this book teach you about some of the most useful time-saving features in Inkscape accompanied by a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can easily memorize. In addition to covering use of Inkscape tools and their advanced features, examples from the recipes uncover solutions to common graphics problems. The book starts off with familiarizing you with the tools and techniques in Inkscape that you can use to draw 2D shapes, calligraphic shapes, and 3D boxes easily. It then guides you through the most common color-changing steps performed in Inkscape along with some convenient procedures that can save your time when dealing with colors. It explains drawing using linear and radial gradients, which are irreplaceable, usage of clones to create interesting effects in illustrations, and live-path effects that can help you speed up constructing a shape and make the process more natural. You will learn how to make those tweaks on some of the ready-made filters, and in the final recipe we will create a filter from scratch. This practical book also contains recipes showing how to use Inkscape as a raster editor and how to achieve photo-realistic effects in Inkscape. For each important technique and skill, you'll see some simple recipes, then some more advanced recipes followed by an explanation of how Inkscape works to produce the desired effects in your illustrations. By the end of this book you will be confident enough to create your own vector-based graphics with Inkscape.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Inkscape 0.48 Illustrator's Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Creating a golden award with a ribbon


This recipe will show us how to draw a golden award with a ribbon using interpolation extension and gradients.

How to do it...

The following steps will demonstrate how to create a golden award:

  1. 1. Select the Star tool (Shift + F9 or *) and create a 300 px upright star with 30 corners. Set Spoke ratio: to 0.96 and Rounded: to 0.2 by dragging upwards while holding Ctrl key.

  2. 2. Set its fill to #e1c446 and remove its stroke.

  3. 3. Select the Gradient tool (Ctrl + F1 or G) and create a linear gradient in the object fill by dragging from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner. Set the opacity of the end stop to 100.

  4. 4. Create a new gradient stop by double-clicking on the top one-third of the gradient path. Select the new stop by clicking on it and change its color to #f8ecbd (double click on it to pop up the color selector).

  5. 5. Duplicate the star (Ctrl + D), remove its fill and set stroke to 1 px, Black.

  6. 6. Convert it to a path (Shift + Ctrl + C). Select...