Vector graphics are the right format for anything that has to be resized, cut, plotted, engraved, or embedded in a web page. And the standard tool for making them costs a monthly subscription.
Inkscape is free, open-source, runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and — the detail that matters most — saves native SVG. Not an SVG export from a proprietary format. The file it writes is the file everything else reads.
Logos By Nick’s complete starter guide — the most thorough free introduction to the current interface.
Install and first-run
Download from inkscape.org. On Linux, apt install inkscape or use the Flatpak, which tends to be more current.
First thing to do: File → Document Properties (Ctrl-Shift-D) and set your document units and canvas size. If your work is destined for a laser cutter or a plotter, set this to millimetres now. Getting units right at the start saves a category of problem later that is genuinely painful to unwind.
The six tools you will use for everything
| Key | Tool | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| S | Selector | Move, scale, rotate objects |
| N | Node editor | Edit the points a path is made of |
| B | Bézier / pen | Draw paths point by point |
| P | Pencil | Freehand draw |
| R / E | Rectangle / Ellipse | Primitives |
| T | Text | Type |
S and N are the two you live in. Selector moves whole objects. Node editor edits the inside of a path. The mental shift from raster editing is this: an Inkscape document is not pixels, it is a list of shapes, each defined by points and curves, and node editing is where the real work happens.
Press S, click an object, click it again: the handles change from scale arrows to rotate arrows. That toggle catches everyone once.
Drawing with the Bézier tool, properly
Press B. Then:
- Click to place a corner point (straight line to the next)
- Click and drag to place a smooth point (the drag sets the curve handles)
- Enter or double-click to finish an open path
- Click the first point to close the path
Then press N and fix it. Nobody draws a good path first time; the workflow is rough it in, then edit the nodes.
In the node editor:
- Double-click on a path segment inserts a node there
- Select a node and press Delete to remove it while preserving the curve shape; Ctrl-Delete removes it bluntly
- The toolbar buttons turn a selected node corner / smooth / symmetric / auto — this is the single most useful control in the program
- Ctrl-A with the node tool active selects all nodes in the path
Fill and stroke
Ctrl-Shift-F opens Fill & Stroke. Three tabs: Fill, Stroke paint, Stroke style.
Two things that catch people:
Stroke width does not scale with the object by default. Scale a square up 400% and the outline stays 1px, which looks wrong. The fix is the fourth of the four small toggle buttons at the right end of the Selector toolbar — “when scaling objects, scale the stroke width by the same proportion.” Turn it on. Most people want it on.
A shape and a path are different things. A rectangle drawn with R is an SVG <rect> — it has width, height, and corner radius, and the node editor can only adjust its corners. To edit it as an arbitrary shape you must convert: Path → Object to Path (Ctrl-Shift-C). This is one-way. Do it when you need to, not before.
Path Operations — the real power of the program
Path menu, and these five are most of vector illustration:
| Operation | Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|---|
| Union | Ctrl-+ | Merge shapes into one |
| Difference | Ctrl-− | Subtract the top shape from the bottom |
| Intersection | Ctrl-* | Keep only the overlap |
| Exclusion | Ctrl-^ | Keep everything except the overlap |
| Division | Ctrl-/ | Cut the bottom shape with the top |
The thing to internalise: complex shapes are made by combining simple ones, not by drawing them. A crescent is a circle minus an offset circle. A gear is a circle with a rotated-and-duplicated tooth unioned on. Reaching for the Bézier tool to draw a precise shape by hand is almost always the slow path.
Two more that matter constantly:
- Path → Stroke to Path (Ctrl-Alt-C) converts an outline into a filled shape. Essential before sending to a laser cutter or vinyl cutter, which need closed paths, not strokes.
- Path → Inset / Outset / Dynamic Offset for growing and shrinking shapes.
Text, and the one rule
Type with T. Set the font in the toolbar.
Before you send a file to anyone else, or to a machine: select your text and Path → Object to Path. This converts letters into shapes. If you do not, the file references a font by name, and anyone without that font installed — including most cutter and plotter software — gets a substitution or nothing.
Keep an editable copy with live text. Export a flattened copy with text converted. Always.
Alignment, and the thing that makes it click
Ctrl-Shift-A opens Align & Distribute. The dropdown at the top — “Relative to” — is what people miss. Set it to Page, Selection, First selected, Last selected or Biggest object, and the same buttons do completely different things. Aligning to Last selected is how you line a row of objects up to one specific anchor.
Exporting for each destination
For the web: File → Save As → Optimized SVG. It strips Inkscape’s private metadata and shrinks the file substantially. Check “Remove metadata” and set coordinate precision to 2 or 3 decimal places.
For a laser cutter or vinyl cutter: all strokes converted with Stroke to Path, all text converted with Object to Path, units in mm, document size matching the bed. Many cutters key on stroke colour for cut/score/engrave — check what yours expects and set the colours by exact hex.
For a pen plotter: keep paths as strokes (the opposite of the above — the pen is the stroke), and look at the plotter extensions; the AxiDraw tooling reads Inkscape SVG directly.
For print: File → Export (Ctrl-Shift-E) → PDF, and in the dialogue choose whether to convert text to paths there. Inkscape’s CMYK support is weak; if you need real colour-managed CMYK separation, do the layout in Inkscape and hand off to a prepress tool.
For raster: Ctrl-Shift-E exports PNG at a DPI you specify, with options for page / drawing / selection.
Coming from Illustrator
- Ctrl-Shift-C (Object to Path) is your Illustrator “Expand”
- Path Operations are Pathfinder, and behave the same
- Inkscape has no artboards; it has one page plus Document Properties, and multi-page support in recent versions
- XML editor (Ctrl-Shift-X) shows you the actual SVG tree and lets you edit attributes by hand — there is no Illustrator equivalent and it is enormously useful once you are comfortable with SVG
- Live effects live under Path → Path Effects, and are non-destructive