Create Fully Editable Text Effects in Inkscape 1. 3+

1. Introduction: Have you ever spent a lot of time creating some awesome looking text for something like a logo or a video game title? Just to realize it would probably look better with a different font or that you have made a glaring spelling mistake. And now you have to start over from scratch. Well, in Ingscape, we actually have the ability to create text effects that are fully editable and customizable. At any time in this class, we'll learn the special techniques required for doing so and will put them to use by creating four stunning text effects. At the end of the class, I'll even show you some extra bonus effects. Once you learn how easy it is to create these dynamic text effects, you will never again waste your time creating static ones. 2. Class Project: Your class project. You can follow along with one or more of the sample project videos in this class, or you can use the methods that we learn to create your own editable text effects to find ideas. I like to do a Google Image search for editable text effects, which tends to bring up a lot of Photoshop results. When I find an image that I like, I'll copy and paste it into an inkscape document, then try to recreate the effect. All right, when you're finished with your project, don't forget to submit it, because I would love to see it. 3. Cloning Text Objects: The key to creating editable text effects in scape is to use multiple clones of a text object and apply various appearance changes and effects to them. This is because unlike with using simple copies or duplicates, clones will maintain things like the text and the font attributes of the original text object. To see this in ation, let's go ahead and create a simple text object. The text and font attributes don't matter at the moment. I'll grab the selector tool and scale it up a bit. By the way, the techniques that we'll use in this class only work in Cape version 1.3 and above. This is because in the earlier versions, text objects were handled a bit differently. Be sure to be using at least Inkscape version 1.3 Right. Now let's create a clone of the text object. Which we can do in the usual way of either right clicking it and choosing clone. Or by going up to the edit menu. Then down to clone and choosing create clone. We now have a clone of the text object, which we can move up here. Now if we go back to the text tool, we have no option of changing the clones text. But if we select the original text object down here, again we can change its text and we'll also changed the clones text. This applies to changing the font attributes as well. We can of course, create multiple clones of the original text object. We can do this either by directly cloning the text object again, or we can actually just duplicate the clone by right clicking it and choosing duplicate. We now have two clones of the original text object, as we can see, if we make some modifications on it. Now one problem with normal clones is that they also copy the original objects, fill and stroke appearance. For example, if we change the fill color of the original, it will also change for the clones. When creating editable text effects, we'll likely want to use a variety of colors. This isn't too good for us, but fortunately we're able to get around the issue. This is due to the fact that clones of a text object actually use the clone original pat defect. Which allows us to control exactly what to copy from the original. However, if we select the clone and open up the patifects dialogue, at least in my version of scape, we don't actually see the clonriginal pat defect in the list here. To see it, we need to add a patifect to the clone. Another problem we might face is the patifects pop up, not displaying for the clone. To fix this, we can create a random shape. We should be able to show the patifects pop up for it. Now we can delete the shape. If we select the clone again, the patefect should now show up. All right, now let's go with something that doesn't affect the appearance straight away, like offset here. Now we can see both the offset path effect that we just added and the clone original path effect. If we expand clone original, it provides us with several settings for controlling what to copy from the original. By default it copies the shape of the original along with its LP's, which are its path effects. It also copies certain attributes of the original, including its style, its clipping path, and its mask. What we're mainly concerned with here is that it copies the style which refers to the Phil and stroke appearance. If we don't want the clone to copy the style, we can simply highlight the word style along with the comma After it delete it, either press Enter or click this check Mark button. The clone style has now been unset and we can freely change things like this fill color and stroke color. Also changing the appearance of the original text object no longer affects the clone. It still affects this one though, since this clone is still copying the style. Changing the original text or font attributes, however, will still affect both clones. One issue that we might run into though is that once we start adding pat effects to the clones, they might not get fully updated after we change the original text or certain font attributes. This is likely a bug and might have already been fixed if you're using a later version of Inkscape than I am. But if not, to fix it, all we have to do is add an extra character, like a space, to the end of the text object which updates the clones correctly, then we can't delete the extra character. In this lesson, we learned that we can create multiple clones of a text object and that they will copy the original text and font attributes. We also learned that the clones use a clone original path effect, which allows us to set what we want the clones to copy. Now let's put this knowledge to use and get to work at creating some awesome editable text effects. 4. Effect 1: Graffiti Text: For the first defect, we're going to create some simple graffiti text. For all of the projects in this class, I'll be using the default four paper size for the page. The exact sizing for things doesn't matter though. Feel free to use whatever page size you want or you can just pan over and not bother with the page at all. Over here on the right, the dialogues that I currently have open are the aligned distribute dialogue. The layers and objects dialogue, The Phil and stroke dialogue and the pat effects dialogue. We won't be needing all of these dialogues for all of the projects. I thought I'd go ahead and save some time by opening them all up. To find and open each of the dialogues. You can use this drop down menu here. All right, for this effect, I've imported this image of a brick wall that I'll use as the background. I provided the image as a downloadable resource in case you would like to use the same one to follow along. However, you can use a different image if you like, or you can even just create a rectangle or something for the background. Okay, we're going to want to lock this layer so that we don't accidentally move or change the background. Let's go to the layers and objects dialogue. And let's click on the lock icon next to layer one. We'll create all of the text on a layer above this one. Let's click on the plus button up here. Make sure above current is chosen for the position. Then click the ad button. All right, now we're ready to create a text object. Let's grab the text tool. Let's create one down here. For now, I'm going to make the size a bit bigger for the font. I'll go to the Sedgwick Avenue display. Sedgewick Avenue display has a nice graffiti look to it. It's also a free font, as are all of the other fonts I'll be using in this class. And you can easily find a link to it by doing a search on Google. However, you can use pretty much whatever font you want for this, okay? For the color of the text. I'll head over to the fill and stroke dialogue and give it a can fill. Now I'll give it a linear gradient. Then I'll grab the transparent stop here, raise the alpha channel all the way up and make it a magenta. All right, now I want the gradient to be vertical, so I'll move the first stop here to the top of the text. Then grab the other stop, hold down control to snap the angle and put it down here. Now we can go ahead and move the text onto the background and resize it if necessary. Okay, next we're going to create a clone of the text object. If we already have the patifxs dialogue open. We can do this easily by clicking the clone button in here. Now we have a clone on top of the original. We want to offset the clone. Let's add the offset pathepect to it. But before we offset it, we also want to be able to make it a different color from the original text object. As we learned before, we can do this by expanding the clone original settings here, which we now have access to. Then in the attributes box, we can highlight and delete the word style. Then either click the Checkmark button or press Enter. Now we can change its color. This is going to be used as a border around the text. We want it to be a color that will stand out well against the background. For this, I'll just go with white. All right, now with the selector tool active, let's go up here and put the clone beneath the original text object. Then we can grab the node tool and if we expand the offset path effect settings, we should now see this orange circular handle which lets us offset the clone. All right, that already looks pretty decent, but to give it more of a painted look, we can roughen up the edges of the text a bit. To do this, we'll create another clone of the original text object and add the roughen path effect to it. Let's grab the text object then click the clone button in the path effect dialogue. Let's add roughen to it. We can play around with the settings in here if we want. I usually just click these dice buttons here, which add some slight variations to the effect. Can just move this clone down. One step that is between the original text and the other clone. This just makes it so that we can easily select the original if we want. We can also add the rough and path effect to the border clone here. Okay, and to really make the text stand out, we can add a bit of a shadow between it and the background. This, Let's first duplicate the bottom clone, either by going up to the edit menu and choosing duplicate, or by using the shortcut control D. This also duplicates all of the path effects. For some reason it might cause the rough and path effect to go all crazy, but we don't actually need it for this clone. Let's click on the trash icon here next to the rough and path effect. Now let's make the clone black. Give it a bit of a blur and lower its opacity sum. Then we can move it down into the left a bit and send it below all of the other objects. Okay, the effect is finished. Now if we want, we can select the original text object, then grab the text tool and make some modifications as we learned before. If it doesn't update all of the clones straightaway, we can add an extra space to the end. Then delete it and we can easily re, size and reposition everything. 5. Repeating & Duplicating Transforms: The tutorial. For the second effect, we're going to be using Ink scapes, duplicate and transform function to quickly apply a transform to multiple duplicates of an object. The duplicate and transform function, along with its companion, the reapplied transforms function, was introduced in Inkscape version 1.3 Each of these functions requires a keyboard shortcut in order to use it. Unfortunately, the default shortcuts don't work correctly for everyone, particularly for Linux and Mac users. But we'll see how to fix that in a bit. To use the functions, we first transform an object either by rotating it, scaling it, skewing it, or moving it. Then for the reapplied transforms function repeats the transform on the same object. We use the shortcut control for duplicate and transform, which applies to transform to duplicates of the object. We use control D. Now if both of these functions already work for you, feel free to skip the rest of this video. Otherwise, I'll show you how we can change the shortcuts. To do so, we first need to open up the preferences dialogue for using a Mac. You can do so by going to the Inkscape menu and choosing Preferences for the rest of us. We can go up to the Edit menu and choose Preferences. Here we need to expand the interface preferences, then choose keyboard. Now in the search box at the top here, If we type reapply, we should see both the duplicate and transform and the reapplied transforms functions along with their keyboard shortcuts. If we double click one of the keyboard shortcuts, the types changes to new accelerator. To change the shortcut, all we have to do is input a new combination of keys like control one. It might take a few seconds to update, and now it's showing the new keyboard shortcut for the other function we can use, for example, control two. Now we can close, add the prefaces dialog and try out the new shortcuts. All right, now we're ready to work on the next defect. 6. Effect 2: Retro Text: For the second effect, we'll create some retros style text. And I'm going to be using this color palette here mainly so that you're not forced to watch, be choosing colors from the philostroke dialogue. If you'd like to use the same colors. I provided the color palette as a downloadable image which you can import into your document. I've also provided the hexadecimal values of the colors in case you would rather just type them in. But of course, you can also just use whatever colors you want. Okay, to start creating the text defect, let's first grab the rectangle tool and create a rectangle for the background. For the fill color. I'll grab the Dropper tool and choose this orange color from the palette. All right, now let's lock the background layer by going to the layers and objects dialog and clicking the lock icon next to layer one. Then let's create a new layer above this one by clicking the plus button up here, making sure above current is chosen for the position and clicking ad. Alright, now we can grab the text tool and create some text for the font. I'll go with Pacifico, which has a nice retrophilkay for the color of the text. I'll use the Dropper tool to choose the second color here. Now let's go ahead and move the text onto the background. Okay, now we're ready to create a clone of the text object. Let's head over to the Patifect dialogue and click the clone button. We want to be able to change the color of the clone. We'll need to modify as clonorriginal settings if we don't already see the clonorriginal settings. In here we can show the patifect list and choose clonoriginal. All right, now we can remove the style attribute for the color. I'll go this dark blue here. All right, now we can send the clone below the original text. Then we can add the offset path effect to it. Grab the node tool and offset it just a bit. Okay, now let's duplicate the clone. Then let's grab the selected tool and let's zoom in quite a bit. Now let's also make the duplicate some random color that's different from all of the other objects, we'll see why in a bit. Okay, now let's move the duplicate very slightly down into the right. We're now going to use the duplicate and transform function to reapply that small movement that we just made to many duplicates of this duplicate. The duplicate and transform function by default uses the shortcut control D. Doing it about ten to 15 times should be good. Okay, now we want to put all of these duplicates underneath the original text object and the first clone. First we need to select all of the duplicates because they are the same color and they don't match the color of any other objects. We can select them all by right clicking one, Then going to select same fill color. And now we can send them to the bottom. Then we can make them the same color as the first clone. Now we have a nice looking three D effect. To make it look even better though, we should at least add a shadow to separate the text from the background. To do this, we'll use a duplicate of the first clone. To easily select it, we can first select the original text object at the top, then hold down Out and click it again. Now we have the clone selected and we can duplicate it. Let's make this one black and lower opacity sum. Now let's move it down into the right of all of the other clones, then send it to the bottom. If necessary we can reposition it using the arrow keys holding down oughts. As we do this we'll let us move it in smaller increments. Can looks pretty good. For a final touch, we can add a bit of a separation between the original text object and the first clone. For this, let's first duplicate one of the clones. Again, I'll just duplicate the shadow clone that I still have selected. And I'll raise the opacity of it all the way up. We won't be needing the offset for this one. So we can go to the path defects dialogue and remove the offset path effect. Now I'll use the dropper tool to make it this off white color. Okay, now let's move the clone so that it's slightly down into the right of the original text object. Then send it down one step. All right, the effect is finished, so now we can do some editing. 7. Effect 3: Wavy Text: Next we'll create some wavy text for the colors. I'll be using this palette here, which I provided as a downloadable image in case you would like to use the same colors. All right, let's start by creating a rectangle for the background. I'll set the field color of this to the top color in the palette, Al. Right now we can grab the pin tool and let's draw a wavy path across the center of the rectangle. Let's bring it around the bottom of the rectangle and close it off. I'll use the second color in the palette for this. Now let's like both the rectangle and the wavy path. Then go up to the Path menu and choose Fracture. Now we can delete this extra piece down here. I'm actually going to give the wavy path a linear gradient. I'll select the transparent stop here, raise the opacity all the way up and make it a bit of a darker blue. Now I'll grab the gradient tool, Move the first stop here to the top and the other one to the bottom. It's pretty subtle, but it'll look better when we add the text. Right now we can lock the background layer and create another layer above it. Can I just create some text for the font? We want something that has **** letters. I'll go to the Montserrat and I'll change the style too heavy. I'll also resize it a bit. All right, for the color, I'll use the same cyan color from the background. Then I'll give it a linear gradient. Raise up the opacity of the transparent stop. Then grab the dropper tool down here and choose the third color in the palette. And I'll make the gradient line vertical. Okay, next we're going to create a wavy path over the bottom of the text and use it as a clipping path for the text. Let's grab the pin tool and draw a wavy path here. All right, now we can selke both the text object and the wavy path. Then write, click them and choose Set Clip. Okay, and before we put the text on the background, let's go over to the Patethcs dialogue and create a clone. Now as you can see, the clone is also being clipped. And that's because if we show its clone original settings, one of the attributes that is copying is the original objects clipping path. We can remove clip path from here. And let's also remove style so we can change the color. All right, for the color, I'll go with color swatch number four. Let's put it below the original text. All right, next let's duplicate the clone. Let's add the offset patethc to it and offset it a bit. I'm going to change the join type here to routed so that the corners aren't so sharp. All right, now let's give this clone a linear gradient. Then use the gradient list box here to choose the same gradient as the original text. Now we can send it to the very bottom. Then we want to adjust the gradient line so that it matches the gradient of the original text. That looks pretty good, except you might notice that some of the bright color of the first clone is showing at the edges. To fix this, we can inset the first clone just a bit. To do this, let's add the offset Patifect to the first clone. Then grab the node tool and drag the orange handle inward. There we go. However, if we would also like to round the corners of the first clone, now that we have inset it, even if we change join to round it, it doesn't round the corners. What we can do is we can add the corners path effect to it. Then adjust the radius setting just a bit perfect. Can just grab the bottom clone again and duplicate it for the color of this one. I'll go with this dark purple. Now let's send it to the bottom and outset it a bit more. Now we can finally move all of the texts onto the background. To make the text stand out a bit more, we can first duplicate the bottom clone, make it white, send it to the bottom, and outset it more. Then for a shadow, we can duplicate, again, make this one black blur it a bit and lower. Then let's move it down into one side of all of the other clones and send it to the bottom. And that's it. Now we can select the original text object, which remember is just this wavy part, and we can change up some things. Now one thing you might notice after changing the text is that a clipping path might be a bit off. To fix this, we can select the text object. Go to the Node tool, toggle on this button in the controls bar. This shows the nodes for the clipping path, so now we're able to adjust it and add extra nodes. 8. Linking Clones: At the moment, I have a text object and I have a clone of the text objects. Now let's say I want to warp the shape of the clone, such as by adding the bind path effect to curve it. And now I'm going to duplicate the clone. As you can see, it does also duplicate the clones bin path effect settings. However, if I now change the bin curve of the first clone, it doesn't affect the duplicate. This is because the duplicate is still cloning the original text object, not the clone. Now if I wanted to, for example, use the duplicate to create a border around the clone, I would need the duplicate to automatically copy the clones bin path effect settings in case I want to change the curve later. In order to do this, I need to link the duplicate to the clone, and I find that this works best with a clean slate. I'm going to delete the duplicate. Also remove the bin path effect from the clone. Now I'm going to copy the clone into the clipboard. Right now, I duplicate the clone again. To link the duplicate to the clone, I can go into its clone original settings and click this link to item button. This will for some reason align it with the original text object, but we can move it again. The duplicate is now basically a clone of this clone. If I add the bin path effect to the first clone, again, as I change the curve, it also affects the other clone. What's cool is I can add additional separate effects to the duplicate, like maybe offset. Now I can change the color of it, send it to the bottom, and move it underneath the first clone to give it a border. Changing the curve of the first clone will still affect the other one. We can also of course change the text font attributes using the original text object. Now the reason we're keeping the original text object down here in no man's land is that we're not able to bend it like we can with the clones. Putting it on top of the clones like we've been doing so far won't work. However, if we don't like having the object visible down here, we can put its opacity at 0% We're still able to select the text object and modify it, but just in case we forget where it is, we can grab the first clone here. And in its clone original settings we can click the select the original button. 9. Effect 4: Comic Text: The fourth and final effect, We'll create a style of text that you often see used for sounds like boom and Pal in comic books. And I'll be using this color palette here. All right, let's start by creating a rectangle for the background. I'll make it this red color. Let's grab a star and polygon tool. Let's create a star that has a lot of corners, like maybe 11. I'll adjust the base radius a bit to keep it from skewing. I'm holding down control for the color. I'll choose this off white color here. Now I'll move the star onto the rectangle and adjust the size A. Okay? Now let's add some rounding to just the inner corners of the star. To do this, we can first turn it into a path by going to path object to path. Then we can grab the Note tool and click this Add corners LPE button. To easily select just the inner nodes, we can hold down Alts and click and drag to do free hand node selection. Now we can use these white circular handles to round off the corners a bit. All right, let's finalize this by once again doing path object to path canal is, duplicate this object, make it black, send it down one step and skeleton up a bit while holding down shift and control. If we can group these two objects together in case we want to do some adjustments on it. Right, we're finished with the background. So we can go over to the layers and objects dialogue and lock the background layer. Then add a new layer above it. Canal is create a text object. The font, I'll go with The Luckiest Guy, which is a free font that has a cartoony look. Right, Let's go over to the Patifx dialogue now and create a clone. And we need to be able to change the style of the clone. Let's get the clone original Patifx settings in here and remove the word style from the attributes box. Right now, let's move the clone onto the background and resize it if we want for the style. We'll give this one a polka dot pattern. For this, let's go to the Phil and Stroke Dialogue and click the Pattern Fill button. I'll choose the half tones category and go to the first option here. And we can change up some of the settings if we want. Okay, now I'll click on the color swatch here. Then I'll click the eye dropper icon and choose the same red as the background. Okay, next we're going to create some duplicates of this clone. However, we're also going to add some extra path effects, like envelope deformation, to the clone. And we want the effects to automatically be applied to the duplicates. This means we'll need to link the duplicates to the clone first, let's copy the clone into the clipboard, then let's duplicate it. And in the duplicates clonorriginal settings, let's click the link to item button. This might position and re size the duplicate to match the original text object. But we can fix that by unchecking the allowed transforms option in its clonorginal settings. This forces the duplicate to copy the size and position of the clone, which is what we want. All right, now let's put the duplicate beneath the clone. Let's change its color. I'll first go with this yellow here. Then I'll give it a linear gradient, Make the transparent stop fully opaque, and change the color of it to the orange color in the palette. Then I'll make the gradient vertical. Okay, And to make this all look a bit better, we can make it so the dots of the clone start out transparent near the top and get more and more opaque near the bottom. To do this, we can use a black to white gradient mask. But first, if we select the clone and take a look at its clone original settings where by default copying the original objects mask, we'll need to remove this. Actually we won't be dealing with the clip path at all, so we can just remove everything in here. All right, now let's create a rectangle covering the entire clone. Let's make it black. Now let's give it a linear gradient. Then grab the transparent stop, raise the opacity all the way up, and set it to white. Then let's speak the gradient vertical. Okay, now to select both the rectangle and the clone that's underneath it, we can hold down Shift and Alts and click in here. Now we can right click and choose Set Mask. Now as you can see, this also affects the duplicate. This is because if we select the duplicate, which we can do easily by going to the patifxs dialog and clicking the slight path with Clone Original LPE button in the duplicates Clone original settings is copying the clones mask like we did with the clone. We can remove all of this. Now the duplicate is no longer being masked. All right, now with the duplicate still selected, let's duplicate it. Let's make this one black and send it to the bottom. Now let's add the offset path effect to it, and outset it a bit. Okay, let's duplicate again. Let's move this one down and to the left of everything. But we can't move it at the moment, and that's because we need to turn on its allowed transforms option. Okay? Now let's move it, then let's send it to the bottom duplicate one more time. Lower the opacity of this one quite a bit. Move it down into the left even more and send it to the bottom for a shadow. All right, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to add some patifects to the first clone. And because all of the duplicates are actually clones of the first clone, any changes that we make to the first clones, patifect settings will also be applied to the duplicates. Okay, so let's grab the first clone here at the top. And let's add the envelope deformation patifect to it. With this we can click one of the edit on canvas buttons like for the right side, and use these handles to warp the object. Okay, and just for fun, let's add the bin path effect to the clone and give it a bit of a curve. Okay, the effect is finished, so we can do some editing on the original text object down here. All right, so that should do it for this effect and this class. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope it encourages you to create your own awesome editable text effects. Thanks for joining me. 10. Bonus Effects: One cool path effect that we can add to the clone of a text object is the slice path effect with a slice. If we go to the node tool, we get the sliced line that we can adjust. Now if we grab the selector tool, we can move the two parts around separately. We can also give them different colors, and we can even apply separate path effects to each part. If we go back to the settings for the sliced path effect, we can still adjust the sliced line as well. If we add the tiling path effect to the cone of a text object, we can tile the text in various ways. If we check the split elements option, it lets us select the individual copies, so we can change their colors. For this next effect, we can use the text object directly without dealing with clones. Right now I have a text object and a path, and I'm going to copy the text object into the clipboard. Next, I'll grab the path, add the pattern along path path effect to it, and click this link to Path and Clipboard button. I can now repeat the text along the path in various ways. At the moment, I have a text object that has a stroke and no fill on a black background. Now let's say I want to create a neon glow effect. To do this, I'll first clone the text object and I'll remove the style attribute from his clonorriginal settings. Now I can go to the fill and stroke dialogue. Turn off his fill color, give it the same stroke color as the original text object, and make it stroke with a bit thicker. Now I can blur it, lower its opacity and send it below the text object. Then I can duplicate the clone. Make this one stroke width even thicker, blur it even more and lower its opacity a bit more, then send it to the bottom. This works fine, but if I now decide to change the color of the text by changing the original text object stroke color. This doesn't affect the clones because they're not copying the text objects style. To fix this, I can select the top clone by holding aughts and clicking the text object. In this clonorriginal settings, I can add the word stroke to the CSS properties box here. Now the clone is copying the text object, stroke color. Then I can select the other clone by holding aughts and clicking here again and make it also copy the text object, stroke color.