Lets say you want to have some pattern displayed within the bounds of a shape, as the blobs are to this rectangle. There are a number of ways you can do this in Inkscape, with crops and masks etc, but I’m going to show you a far more effective way that allows you to resize the shape, without having to worry about re-cropping the pattern.

(more…)

Introducing my latest papertoy – Paolo the Whale

Click here to download

Comment and suggestions, are more than welcome!

I’ve been climbing a steep learning curve recently with Inkscape, and now I’m scalling the peak of CMYK Colour Profiles (I’ll be alternating the British/American spelling where appropriate).

If, like me, you’ve never known which colour space you were working in, chances are it was RGB. CMYK is an alternative, commonly used in the printing industry. I’ll spare you further details, but if you want to know more, you know where to go.

Support for CMYK in Inkscape is ongoing, as is the discussion surrounding it. Click Click Click But we cans till configure Inkscape for CMYK to make things easier further down the road.

Before I go on, a disclaimer: I am in no way an expert in Inkscape nor CMYK colour profiles. These settings seemed to work for me, they may also work for you. I am more than happy to accept comments & criticisms in the comments below.

Download the Adobe Color Profiles and copy them all in to /usr/share/color/icc
http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/adobergb.html

Follow the instructions on this page to generate an ICC profile for your monitor
http://www.ubuntufieldmanual.com/?q=node/38

Copy the icc file in to one of the locations that Inkscape searches
/home/username/.local/share/color/icc
/usr/share/gnome/color/icc
/usr/local/share/color/icc
/usr/share/color/icc (best for all users)

Open/restart Inkscape
Go to Inkscape preferences (Shift+Ctrl+P)
In ‘Color management’
Set ‘Display Profile’ to your monitor profile (lcms RGB Virtual Profile)
Tick ‘Simulate output on screen’
Tick ‘Mark out of gamut colors’
Select a highly visible color for the warning color (I prefer a bright green)
Set ‘Device profile’ to an apropriate output profile for your region (US Euroscale etc) and print medium (Coated, Uncoated etc)

Open the Document Properties (Shift+Ctrl+D)
Click the Color Management tab
Link the ‘lcms RGB Virtual Profile’

Now, if you enable Color Managed View (in the view menu), colours that are out of the printers range will show up on the page. You’ll also be looking at colours more-or-less as they come out the printer.

… is Paolo the Whale, looking awesome printed up proper!

Recently I’ve been getting to grips with Inkscape, the vector graphics editor, and mighty good it is too. To ease my climb up the learning curve I’ve been following a few tutorials. If, like me, you want to get a handle on Inkscape, try these bad boys out for size.

Working with Colour and Gradients

If you’ve never touched Inkscape before, this tutorial is a total must.
http://www.kendraschaefer.com/2009/06/inkscape-tutorial-color-and-gradients-for-absolute-beginners/

Spiro Swirls

A new feature in the latest version, this video tutorial (no sound) shows you haw to create killer spirals. Push the algorithm to the edge to see what it comes up with.
http://verysimpledesigns.com/vectors/inkscape-tutorial-spiro-swirls.html

Text Styling

This tutorial runs through the great range of control that Inkscape gives you with text, and shows you how to make a great page title.
http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2008/04/inkscape-tutorial-2-text-and-simple.html

Creating Icons

This tutorial takes you through the process of creating a Tango style icon. Even if you’re not interested in creating icons, there’s a lot of good tips about working with paths in here.
http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/illustration/how-to-create-a-vector-light-bulb-icon-with-inkscape/

I found all these tutorials through the Inkscape Tutorials Blog, jump on in!