For several years I have been writing a monthly column about the Free vector graphics program Inkscape, for Full Circle Magazine. Many of the articles have also been collated into “Special Editions”. Both these and the original magazines are available to download free of charge.
I used to maintain an index of the articles at the semi-official Inkscape forum, however that has been offline for several weeks now, and may never return. So it makes sense to host an index here, on my own site. The individual articles are listed first, in case you only want some reference material for a single topic. If you are planning to work through the tutorials from the start then the Special Editions may be more useful: these are listed at the bottom of the page.
Individual Magazines
- Full Circle Magazine #60: Prequel – About vector graphics and the SVG file format.
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- Full Circle Magazine #61: Getting started. Circles, arcs and segments.
- Full Circle Magazine #62: Basic keyboard shortcuts. Rectangle tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #63: The status bar. Stars and polygons.
- Full Circle Magazine #64: The colour palette, and the Fill & Stroke dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #65: Fill & Stroke dialog continued. Gradients.
- Full Circle Magazine #66: Introducing paths.
- Full Circle Magazine #67: Paths and Boolean operations.
- Full Circle Magazine #68: Selections and groups.
- Full Circle Magazine #69: Layers and blend modes.
- Full Circle Magazine #70: The text tool. Flowed vs normal text.
- Full Circle Magazine #71: Text tool continued: controls on the toolbar.
- Full Circle Magazine #72: Saving to different formats. Exporting bitmaps.
- Full Circle Magazine #73: Clipping.
- Full Circle Magazine #74: Masking.
- Full Circle Magazine #75: Using bitmap graphics.
- Full Circle Magazine #76: Manually tracing a logo (Guidelines, snapping, colour picker).
- Full Circle Magazine #77: Manually tracing a cartoon sketch (Bézier tool).
- Full Circle Magazine #78: Manually tracing a cartoon sketch, continued (Pencil tool, Calligraphy tool).
- Full Circle Magazine #79: Single scan (black & white) tracing using the Trace Bitmap dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #80: Trace Bitmap dialog continued (multiple scans, colour tracing).
- Full Circle Magazine #81: Colouring a black & white trace. Bucket fill tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #82: Tweak tool (object tweaks).
- Full Circle Magazine #83: Tweak tool continued (node tweaks).
- Full Circle Magazine #84: Zoom tool, plus other zooming tips.
- Full Circle Magazine #85: 3D Box tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #86: Spray tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #87: Eraser tool and Connectors tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #88: Introducing clones.
- Full Circle Magazine #89: Clones continued: creating mirrored or kaleidoscopic effects.
- Full Circle Magazine #90: Clones continued: using “unset” fills and strokes.
- Full Circle Magazine #91: XML Editor (to fix an issue with clones).
- Full Circle Magazine #92: The advantages of combining clones with clipping and masking.
- Full Circle Magazine #93: Using the “Create Tiled Clones” dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #94: The Scale, Rotation and Blur & Opacity tabs of the Tiled Clones dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #95: The Colour tab of the Tiled Clones dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #96: Finishing the Tiled Clones dialog, covering the Trace and Symmetry tabs.
- Full Circle Magazine #97: Grids.
- Full Circle Magazine #98: Align & Distribute Dialog: Aligning.
- Full Circle Magazine #99: Align & Distribute Dialog: Distributing and other features.
- Full Circle Magazine #100: Celebrating issue #100 with 100 Inkscape tips and tricks.
- Full Circle Magazine #101: The Arrange (formerly Rows & Columns) and Transform dialogs.
- Full Circle Magazine #102: Introducing Live Path Effects: Spiro Spline and Gears.
- Full Circle Magazine #103: LPE implementation details, and the Bend LPE.
- Full Circle Magazine #104: Envelope Deformation and Knot LPEs.
- Full Circle Magazine #105: Construct Grid, Hatches (Rough) and Interpolate Sub-Paths LPEs.
- Full Circle Magazine #106: Pattern Along Path, Ruler, Sketch, Stitch Sub-paths and (barely) the VonKoch LPEs.
- Full Circle Magazine #107: The last of the LPEs: Power Stroke and Clone Original Path.
- Full Circle Magazine #108: Introducing filters: creating a basic drop shadow filter.
- Full Circle Magazine #109: Filters: The Color Matrix filter primitive.
- Full Circle Magazine #110: Filters: The Composite filter primitive.
- Full Circle Magazine #111: Filters: The Flood and Turbulence filter primitives.
- Full Circle Magazine #112: Filters: The Image and Morphology filter primitives.
- Full Circle Magazine #113: Filters: Speeding up rendering, and the Displacement Map primitive.
- Full Circle Magazine #114: Filters: The Convolve Matrix primitive.
- Full Circle Magazine #115: Filters: Diffuse and Specular Lighting primitives.
- Full Circle Magazine #116: Filters: Component Transfer primitive (Inkscape 0.91+).
- Full Circle Magazine #117: Filters: Using “Background Image/Alpha” and chaining filters.
- Full Circle Magazine #118: Some SVG and web politics, installing 0.92, and the “paint-order” feature from SVG 2.
- Full Circle Magazine #119: Mesh Gradients.
- Full Circle Magazine #120: It’s the 10th anniversary of the magazine, so I made a cake!
- Full Circle Magazine #121: The Measurement tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #122: New in 0.91/0.92: Finding & selecting objects.
- Full Circle Magazine #123: New in 0.91/0.92: The Objects dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #124: New in 0.91/0.92: The Symbols dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #125: New LPEs in 0.92: BSpline and Simplify.
- Full Circle Magazine #126: New LPEs in 0.92: Roughen and Show Handles.
- Full Circle Magazine #127: New LPEs in 0.92: Fill Between Many and Taper Stroke.
- Full Circle Magazine #128: New LPEs in 0.92: Fill Between Strokes, Transform By 2 Points, Interpolate Points and Join Type
- Full Circle Magazine #129: New LPEs in 0.92: Perspective/Envelope, Lattice Deformation 2, Rotate Copies, Mirror Symmetry, Bounding Box, Ellipse by 5 Points, Attach Path
- Full Circle Magazine #130: An introduction to Extensions: Colour > Brighter, Colour > HSL Adjust, Render > Function Plotter, Render > Barcode > QR Code, Render > Hershey Text
- Full Circle Magazine #131: More extensions: Arrange > Deep Ungroup, Arrange > Restack, Text > Lorem Ipsum, Text > Extract, Text > Merge, Text > Split Text, Images > Embed Images, Images > Extract Image, and a warning to steer clear of anything in the Raster submenu.
- Full Circle Magazine #132: JessyInk
- Full Circle Magazine #133: Using SVG in a web page. Introduction, exporting as PNG, and linking directly to an SVG file.
- Full Circle Magazine #134: Using SVG in a web page. Using SVG files in <object> tags or as inline code. An introduction to XML namespaces with an eye to reducing the file size of exported SVG images.
- Full Circle Magazine #135: Using SVG in a web page. Basic CSS animations.
- Full Circle Magazine #136: Animating SVG using SMIL (1/2)
- Full Circle Magazine #137: Animating SVG using SMIL (2/2)
- Full Circle Magazine #138: Creating a self-drawing path with CSS
- Full Circle Magazine #139: Showing part of an image in a browser using viewBox and named views.
- Full Circle Magazine #140: Showing one group or layer from an image in a browser using the CSS “:target” selector.
- Full Circle Magazine #141: Changing the colour of inline SVG using the currentColor CSS keyword.
- Full Circle Magazine #142: Introducing some JavaScript into your SVG files.
- Full Circle Magazine #143: Using embedded JS scripts to change an object’s style.
- Full Circle Magazine #144: Using CSS classes to change an object’s style with JS.
- Full Circle Magazine #145: Creating a clickable button with JS and CSS classes.
- Full Circle Magazine #146: Extending the clickable button from last time to control a different object, using an external JS file.
- Full Circle Magazine #147: Using Inkscape, JavaScript and a browser to create an animated set of traffic lights.
- Full Circle Magazine #148: A deeper dive into SVG and JavaScript.
- Full Circle Magazine #149: Using JS in the browser to add, remove and re-order SVG elements.
- Full Circle Magazine #150: Using JS in the browser to animate SVG objects.
- Full Circle Magazine #151: The “transform” attribute.
- Full Circle Magazine #152: Using JS in the browser to manipulate the “transform” attribute.
- Full Circle Magazine #153: Using JS in the browser to manipulate the “transform” attribute (cont’d).
- Full Circle Magazine #154: Last bit of JS and transforms (refactoring). Forum news. Heathenx video tutorials. A shameless plug.
- Full Circle Magazine #155: A long overdue examination of the fill-mode buttons in the Fill & Stroke dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #156: Looking at the “Create Link” context menu entry.
- Full Circle Magazine #157: Inkscape 1.0: the MacOS version and theme support.
- Full Circle Magazine #158: Inkscape 1.0: rotating and reflecting the canvas.
- Full Circle Magazine #159: Inkscape 1.0: new view modes – “Visible hairlines”, “Split view” and “XRay view”.
- Full Circle Magazine #160: Inkscape 1.0: this article takes a look at the text-to-path problems and the issue with reversing subpaths in v1.0, and provides workarounds.
- Full Circle Magazine #161: Inkscape 1.0: the (Un)lock and (Un)hide options in the context menu; inverse clipping paths and inverse masks.
- Full Circle Magazine #162: Inkscape 1.0: changes in Stroke-to-path behaviour.
- Full Circle Magazine #163: Inkscape 1.0: reordering the toolbox, Bézier tool paraxial mode improvements, the Calligraphy tool’s “dot” feature, chord mode in the Circle tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #164: Inkscape 1.0: Pressure-sensitivity in the Freehand tool, improvements to the Eraser tool (pressure-sensitivity and other options similar to the Calligraphy tool, plus a useful clipping mode), tooltip mode (and its problems) in the Measurement tool.
- Full Circle Magazine #165: Inkscape 1.0: Measurement tool (continued) – Measure Only Selected mode, On-canvas Alignment.
- Full Circle Magazine #166: New preferences in v1.0.2. Text-to-path regression fixes in v1.0.2. Text tool changes in v1.0. How to turn off SVG 2.0 compatible flowed text (not recommended).
- Full Circle Magazine #167: Flowed text implementation(s) in Inkscape v1.0.x.
- Full Circle Magazine #168: Inkscape 1.0: Support for variable and colour fonts. Almost-but-not-quite support for bitmap fonts.
- Full Circle Magazine #169: Smaller changes in Inkscape 1.0: Y-axis inversion, duplicating guides, on-canvas handles for the filter region size, more options for importing SVG files, mesh gradient polyfill, advanced options in PNG export, 3-digit RGB values, save as a template. Removal of “Import Clip Art”, “Save As Cairo PNG”, UniConverter library, Selection Sets dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #170: Inkscape 1.0: Trace bitmap dialog UI changes and the Trace Pixel Art mode.
- Full Circle Magazine #171: Inkscape 1.0: Trace bitmap dialog Autotrace and Center Line Trace modes.
- Full Circle Magazine #172: An update on colour and bitmap fonts (not good news). A quick foray into the topic of using CSS in SVG, in preparation for next month’s examination of the Selectors and CSS dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #173: Introducing the Selectors and CSS dialog; adding a new class selector and using it to set CSS styles. A warning about the unexpected consequences of removing a CSS class from an element.
- Full Circle Magazine #174: Selectors and CSS dialog continued: using it as a replacement for the Selection Sets dialog. Using element selectors in the dialog.
- Full Circle Magazine #175: Selectors and CSS dialog continued: advanced CSS selectors, and why you probably don’t want to use them!
- Full Circle Magazine #176: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): LPE dialog redesign and setting default parameters
- Full Circle Magazine #177: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Dashed Stroke, Fill Between Many,
- Full Circle Magazine #178: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Ellipse From Points, Offset
- Full Circle Magazine #179: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Measure Segments (general usage)
- Full Circle Magazine #180: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Measure Segments (technical details of the generated SVG)
- Full Circle Magazine #181: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Corners (Fillter/Chamfer)
- Full Circle Magazine #182: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Power Clip and Power Mask (and why you might not want to use them)
- Full Circle Magazine #183: New Live Path Effects (1.0/1.1): Boolean Operation and Slice LPEs
- Full Circle Magazine #184: Live Path Effects and Extensions (1.0/1.1): Additions to the Taper Stroke LPE. Render > Frame extension. Export > Export Layer Slices extension.
- Full Circle Magazine #185: Introducing the Web > Interactive Mockup extension (added in 1.0)
- Full Circle Magazine #186: Improving the behaviour of the Interactive Mockup extension with some simple JavaScript and CSS
- Full Circle Magazine #187: Extending the JS and CSS from last time, to remove the need for the Interactive Mockup extension, and create a more capable mockup
- Full Circle Magazine #188: New features in Inkscape 1.2: Icons, Tools and the Snap controls
- Full Circle Magazine #189: Inkscape 1.2: More on icons and the main toolbox; changes to swatches and Palettes; changes to the colour pickers in the Fill & Stroke dialogue
- Full Circle Magazine #190: Inkscape 1.2: The return of the Gradient Editor to the Fill & Stroke dialogue
- Full Circle Magazine #191: Inkscape 1.2: Changes to the Stroke Style tab in the Fill & Stroke dialog – custom dashes and marker editor
- Full Circle Magazine #192: Inkscape 1.2: Multi-page support, plus a quick look at the updated Export dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #193: Inkscape 1.2: A couple of ways to get multi-page documents sort-of-working in a web browser. Note that this article is erroneously numbered as 132 within the magazine
- Full Circle Magazine #194: Some JavaScript to get multi-page files working more easily in a web browser. NOTE: the next article imcludes an improved version of this code
- Full Circle Magazine #195: An improved version of the JS code from the previous months, followed by further changes to support named pages
- Full Circle Magazine #196: Some changes between 1.2 and 1.3 – Icons & Toolbar, Snap Controls, Colour Palette, Multi-page Documents
- Full Circle Magazine #197: New in 1.3: The Shape Builder tool
- Full Circle Magazine #198: New ‘Boolean’ operation in 1.2 – Split Path
- Full Circle Magazine #199: New ‘Boolean’ operation in 1.3 – Flatten and Fracture. Changes to ‘Object to Path’ when used on a text object
- Full Circle Magazine #200: New in 1.2 (and improved in 1.3) – ‘Layers and Objects’ dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #201: New in 1.2 – Alignment & Distribution snapping, Node Tool improvements, Set origin of Selector Tool transformations, Tiling LPE, Clipart Importer extension
- Full Circle Magazine #202: Improved in 1.3 – Document Resources dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #203: Improved in 1.3 – Object Attributes dialog
- Full Circle Magazine #204: Improved in 1.3 – Live Path Effects (LPE) dialog, Symbols dialog. New in 1.3 – Display Mode popup, Quick Preview option
Special Editions
These can all be downloaded via this page.
- Inkscape Special Edition #1: Prequel article, plus parts 1-7 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #2: Parts 8-14 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #3: Parts 15-21 in one handy download (Updated in January 2017 – parts 22-24 were split off into Special Edition 4)
- Inkscape Special Edition #4: Parts 22-28 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #5: Parts 29-35 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #6: Parts 36-42 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #7: Parts 43-49 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #8: Parts 50-57 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #9: Parts 58-64 in one handy download
- Inkscape Special Edition #10: Parts 65-72 in one handy download
Mark, there is a star in the galaxy just for you.
Thanks for creating these kickass tutorials!
(I suggest a tip-jar or Patreon link on this page so we can support your work.)
Question: there are 55 magazines, but only 42 parts. I have all the special editions downloaded and wanted to quickly see which one covers clipping . . . except I can’t find a correlation between the ‘parts’ and the commands listed by magazine.
An index of commands included in each special would be fab.
Huh. Also just discovered that in the magazine, the parts are labeled Part XX, but there’s nothing to indicate what they cover. Meaningful titles would also be super.
Yes, I realize these are free and you’ve already put in an enormous amount of time and effort. And thanks.
I’m not responsible for producing the Special Editions – other people have essentially extracted the pages from the magazines and compiled them to produce the Special Editions. Hopefully someone will step up to produce more of them, since there have been a lot of articles since the last SE.
This page is the closest thing to an index across all the articles. For example, searching this page for “clipping” would point you to part 13 in issue #73.
I would like to compile the complete series into a single book (with a proper index) one day, but that would require a lot of time that I simply don’t have at the moment. Perhaps when the whole series is complete – probably in a year or so – I’ll be able to get round to it.
Hi, got here from the Inkscape page. I cannot view/download any of the magazine pages (EPUB and PDF). I am a beginner and was looking forward to start learning via these. Is there another source for these tutorials?
I’ve tried a couple of the links myself, and they appear to be working okay. The links on this page go to the Full Circle Magazine page for the relevant issue, from which you can find the links to download the PDF or EPUB file. I usually right-click on the link and choose “Save link as…” (or whatever the equivalent option is on your browser) in order to ensure the file gets saved on my hard drive, rather than opened directly in the browser.
If you are having a problem with specific files, please let me know which ones and I’ll take a look.
Hello: I have been reading through your tutorials and as part of the learning process have transcribed the contents into html pages with updated images to reflect v1.2 layout.
You expressed a desire for someone to step-up and consolidate your later tutorials, although my efforts are not pdf files would the html pages be of any use to you?
My apologies for only just spotting this – 99.9% of comments are spam, so I only check them irregularly.
The Inkscape Special Edition PDFs are not created by me, but rather by members of the community generously compiling them in their own time, and submitting them to the editor of Full Circle Magazine. I suspect that he would only really be interested in PDFs rather than HTML files, as that’s the way the magazine is distributed.
If you have somewhere that you are able to host the pages, however, I would be more than happy to link to them so that other readers might benefit from the time you’ve spent on this. There is also a thread for my tutorials on the Inkscape forum (https://inkscape.org/forums/tutorials/inkscape-tutorials-in-full-circle-magazine/) which would be another good place to link to your files.
Thanks for getting in touch, and I sincerely hope my articles are helping you to find your way around Inkscape – even if the older screenshots are a little out of date now.
Mark – Can’t thank you enough for all these tutorials over the years.
Trivial observation is a disconnect in part number labeling in both Full Circle and the Inkscape Tutorial post. FC193 has Part 132 (multi-page work arounds) and FC192 has Part 132 (multi-pg tool). The Inkscape Tutorial forum, comment #52, shows the subject of FC193 as ‘…return of Gradient editor…’ .
I appreciate that editing can be more work than the content itself but thought you might want to know before the next Part (133?) comes out. Perhaps on your Peppertop index you could make FC193 refer to (Part) 132-B and edit the Inkscape Tutorial for FC193 to describe content as ‘Multi-page user tips’ (or similar).
Again, Many Thanks
Thanks for paying such close attention! The index on this site is the one I try to keep correct. You’re right that part 133 in FCM issue 193 was erroneously titled as part 132 (again) in the magazine itself. I’ve added a note to the index here to draw attention to this discrepancy. Sorry for any confusion caused.