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Colors - Quick and Custom

There are a couple different ways to change the color of a shape, image, or stroke. Colors can be changed in three different ways:

  1. There is quick selection via the bottom bar color guide.
  2. Custom colors in the fill and stoke menu bar. There are a variety of different ways to change the color in here including RGB, color wheel, among others. I use HSL the most often and will use it explain fill and stoke, but you can decide which one works best for you.

The way HSL works is:

H alters the Hue (what the color is)
S alters the Saturation (how much grey tones are in the color)
L alters the Lightness (how dark to light the color is)
A alters the Alpha or opacity (how translucent the color is)
  1. Or change the color via Hex codes (in the RGBA color slot).

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Word of caution when using the alpha slider.

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While the alpha slider can be used to alter how much color one sees, there is also the opacity slider below the blur slider which additionally alters the opacity level.

If you set the A to 0, even if the opacity is set to 100%, your shape or object will appear to disappear.

To avoid confusion, I’d recommend only altering the opacity through the opacity slider, not the A slider.

Making custom color gradients

Color gradients are a great way to add depth, shadows, and other details. There are two major ways to make color gradients. If you have the fill and stroke menu bar open, you can select linear gradient or radial gradient. Now**,** a gradient selection will appear where you can name the gradient and you can add more gradients via the ‘+’ button. ****

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To edit the color gradients colors, select the light to dark green tool. Your shape will now have two dots with a line.

  1. Select one of the two dots, adjust the color using the same color fill tool as shapes (and describe above).
  2. Select the second dot and repeat color choice.
  3. To adjust how the colors gradient (i.e. how quickly they change in across pixels), select and drag dots until the gradient is as desired.

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Aligning Shapes and Lines Together

In order to help make images look clean, it makes it easier when shapes and components are aligned. There are two mechanism in Inkscape that can help with this,

Enable Snapping and Align and Distribute