Inkscape Tutorials — Crop, Text, Nodes & Paths

Four things people ask how to do

Most search traffic for Inkscape help lands on a handful of concrete tasks. Each card below is a short how-to; the fully worked example that follows takes cropping start to finish. None of these need an extension — every command ships in the default install.

Worked example: crop a photo to a rectangle

Cropping in Inkscape is non-destructive. You are not cutting pixels away — you are placing the image behind a shape that acts as a window. That means you can move the photo underneath the crop, or undo the whole thing later, without losing any of the original.

1. Bring the picture in with File → Import (or drag it onto the canvas). Choose Embed if you want the image saved inside the SVG, or Link to keep it as a separate file.
2. Pick the rectangle tool (R) and draw a box over the exact area you want to keep. Its fill and stroke do not matter — only its shape is used.
3. Switch to the selection tool (S). Click the rectangle, then hold Shift and click the image so both are selected. The clip shape must be the top object, which a freshly drawn rectangle already is.
4. Choose Object → Clip → Set. Everything outside the rectangle disappears and the photo is now cropped to that window.
5. Need to adjust it? Choose Object → Clip → Release to bring the rectangle and the full image back, nudge either one, and set the clip again.
6. Export the result with File → Export (Shift+Ctrl+E) as PNG, or save the SVG to keep the crop editable.

Nodes, unions, and combines — which one?

Three commands look similar but do different things, and mixing them up is the usual reason a shape "won't join." Reach for the right one:

Union and the other boolean operations (Difference, Intersection, Exclusion) only work on paths, so run Path → Object to Path first if a rectangle or star refuses to cooperate. Combine, by contrast, keeps every subpath intact under a single fill, which is how letters with holes — like an O or an A — stay hollow.

Flattening text so a file opens anywhere

When you send an SVG or PDF to someone who does not have your font installed, their machine substitutes a different one and your layout shifts. Flattening the text fixes this by turning each letter into a plain vector shape. Select the text object, choose Path → Object to Path (Shift+Ctrl+C), and the letters become outlines that render identically everywhere.

Two things to remember. First, flattened text is no longer editable as text — you cannot retype a word or fix a typo — so duplicate the object (Ctrl+D) and keep an editable copy on a hidden layer before you convert. Second, the result is a group of paths, one per glyph; enter the group to nudge a single letter, or use Path → Union if you want the whole word as one merged outline for cutting or stencilling.

Where the official lessons live

The only tutorials maintained by the project itself are the interactive ones bundled with the program, under Help menu → Tutorials. The first three — Basic, Shapes, and Advanced — are the recommended starting point; the "Advanced" one is simply an introduction to paths, so beginners should not skip it. Further lessons cover specific features: Bitmap Tracing, Pixel-art Tracing, Calligraphy, Interpolate, Elements of Design, and Tips and Tricks. Because they open inside a real Inkscape document, you draw along as you read.

Once the basics click, the features overview shows the tools these lessons use day to day, the FAQ answers the licensing and file-format questions that come up next, and the install guide covers first-run prompts if you are still setting up. New here? Start from the download page and grab the build for your system.

These pages are an independent guide, not the Inkscape project. For the bundled interactive tutorials, the manual, and community-uploaded lessons, visit the official site at inkscape.org.

Common questions