The Ombré effect was one of the first tutorials i wrote for my blog by public demand, so to speak

Its kind of old now (and tacky, too), because i learned a lot of new tricks, but at that time i was very interested in duplicating Photoshop texteffects, and it was pretty much new ground for Gimp.

Old Gimp version:


Today i had another look at the tutorial and wanted to see if i could duplicate it in Inkscape.
I have very limited experience with all the filters (i think the 'Specular Light filter for the bevel is new too), but tweaking the effect was kind of successful, so here is my result.

New Inkscape version:

Some notes:

• There are a few unused filters stored in your defs
• "Bump" and "ombre" are still texts, while others are paths.
  If you use only clones of a text for all the parts, you can retype the lettering -this case, without cloning, you cannot edit them at once. Nor make the paths to follow. (I don't have the actual font installed, so it looks off anyway.)
• You used text for masking, not made of clones.
• Masking is not so well supported by renderers, and also would produce problems saving as a pdf.
• Instead of masking, you can make similar effect by adding a semi-transparent gradient fill and probably tweak the filter settings a bit.
• Instead of dynamic offsetting, using stroked paths may be a nicer workaround (to preserve the original shape).
• "Stroke"'s highlight and shadow paths could be represented by simple filters.
• A bit of turbulence can make such texture as on the original.

Other than that, quite good!

Wow ! So much new stuff to learn. Thanks Lazur for looking into it !


First question:
how do you know all of this ? (unsused filters, i did masking,etc.) Did you get that from a look at the xml information ?

There are a few unused filters stored in your defs

I noticed other filters in the 'Filter Editor', although i applied 'Remove Filter'.
Why is this bad and how do i know which ones to remove ?

"Bump" and "ombre" are still texts, while others are paths.
If you use only clones of a text for all the parts, you can retype the lettering -this case, without cloning, you cannot edit them at once. Nor make the paths to follow. (I don't have the actual font installed, so it looks off anyway.)

Right, so if i understand you correctly you are saying: have the base text outside the canvas and use only clones for the on canvas effect ?
That way its all easier on the CPU and i can change the letters to anything i want, and the effect will go with it, like in Photoshop's layerstyles ?

"Stroke"'s highlight and shadow paths could be represented by simple filters.

Im not a great fan of Inkscapes filters. A lot of them look pretty crappy and slow the computer.
But maybe that is because i dont understand them very well ?
What filter were you thinking of ?

Lazur URH wrote:A bit of turbulence can make such texture as on the original.

I had a second filter on the gradient layer, but it overlapped the 'Specular Light Filter'

Other than that, quite good!

Thanks !

i tried the method with the clones, but there are some strange problems with the last bit of the letter F
everything else works great, except i still dont understand how to add the 'Turbulence' in the middle

EDIT: it exports fine, but on my screen the last bit of the letter F is missing....

Didn't look at the xml editor, just moved around each part a bit one by one.

With the vacuum defs/clean file option you can get rid of unused filters.


Basically yes, cloning could do that, though it might not render right everywhere.
Like that "generated" one.


I'm not a big fan of inkscape's filtering either, probably due to its gui. A cast shadow would be straightforward.
Like this airplane's filter -you can set different colour, different offset and no blurring too.