I had what I thought was a nicely completed logo for my friend's company. But on closer examination, a hand-drawn "swish" over the main text, has serious imperfections! I copied the swish to another layer and began experimenting with it. I managed to cover some extraneous markings near the swish, by placing white shapes over the markings. They're covered up now. But when I tried to fill in some "cracks" in the actual swish, by placing shapes of the same color over the cracks, it didn't work. The blue shapes over the blue swish looked darker. There's a field in the Layers dialogue box that says "Normal." I tried the other options and none of them worked. Is there a way I could cover the cracks in the light blue swish with the exact same color as if this were a raster image in GIMP or something?

I also tried doing a screen-dump and putting the swish in Paint.Net, a raster program. But that means the swish will lose its vector properties!

Any help with this will be very much appreciated.

Could you please try to make your answers as literal and simple as you can? I'm severely dyslexic and have very poor eyesight, and I'm an Aspergers person among other yucky stuff.

Your answer should look something like this if possible:
1. Do this...
2. Do that...
3. Do this...
etc. ...

Oops, I left something out! Something's changed. When I tried putting a white shape over something like I did successfully before, this time it didn't work! All the colors I choose for shapes are now appearing lighter, as if they are partially transparent. A white shape over something now only lightens it.

I'm pretty upset.

Hello:

mmm...

Could you please attach that "swish form"?

I'm guessing that it could be just node editing.

Even before I do that, the fact that a method that worked a few minutes ago no longer works, is blowing my mind. I'm probably not seeing something.

I made the swish with the calligraphy tool. And at first, to fill in cracks in the swish, I found that all I had to do was color in the cracks with that tool! But now it only colors partially. Instead of the same color blue, it's lighter! And instead of white, drawing in white leaves some light blue now! What setting accidentally got turned down to make the tool act this way?

Part of the problem is I can't read those stoopid yellow tool tips that appear when you hover the mouse over a tool. The print is too small! I don't have a stable magnifier for that. It looks like I need to turn up an opacity setting but I don't see anything like that.

OK I'm not sure if I did this right. I uploaded the swish form.

Whoever happens to come by to help you will need the SVG, rather than PNG. (You can attach it. Look below Preview/Submit buttons, click Upload Attachment tab, go from there.)

Covering up gaps and holes with other objects probably is going to cause more trouble in the end, depending on your final use for the image/drawing. That's because you may be adding extra paths into it. And if you're going to use, for example, some kind of cutter tool (wood, metal, paper, vinyl, etc.) it might want to follow those new paths as well.

It would make a better result if you could take the time to learn how to edit nodes, or at least to use path operations. This is the tutorial from the manual, that was designed to teach node editing: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... atomy.html) that will help, so that it doesn't introduce gaps and missing wedges. I think there might be some tutorials on the Calligraphy tool, but I'd have to do some looking.

I'd say on the balance, if you do want to spend some time to learn something new, node editing should be at the top of the list.

And slightly off topic -- Lately I've seen several new members who say they have learning disabilities, and need special help. And I know we often refer people back to the manual to learn things about Inkscape. So for people with learning disabilities, that isn't very helpful. So what I propose is this:

For people with learning disabilities, when you recieve a reply that references the manual, at least read that section, and try your best to make your drawing/image work with whatever the referenced part of the manual is about. When you get stuck, post a new reply, explaining where you're stuck. We usually can tell by your message how much you've learned, and then we can go from there.

I know it's really bad manners to try and promote one's own website/forum, without an invitation. But in this case, I just want to say that my forum is still very new, and I have plenty of time to help people who might need extra support. I won't even put a link in this message. But it's in my signature. (We're friendly forums, not competitive, have some common members, and both just want to help people learn Inkscape.)

OK, I'm totally overwhelmed with all of this. Wasn't able to understand much of anything up to now. So I'm gonna take a different route. Hopefully, super-simple.

When I bring the color wheel up in the Fill and Stroke dialogue box, (by selecting something), it won't respond to my efforts to move the little dot on the center triangle. What am I doing wrong?

Hey, try this:

1. Open the hand-drawn image.
2. Select the pen tool (Shift+F6).
3. Start clicking with it over one swish form's edge.
   
   Preferably start with the one at the bottom, at the left cusp corner, and move in a counter clockwise way:
   click on the middlepoint of the first curve, click on the inflexion point between the first two arches,
   click on the middlepoint of the second curve, click on the other cusp corner, and go on.
   -remember to click on the starting node once finished, to end up with a closed path
4. At the fill and stroke panel, set a vivid colour, like red, and lower the object's opacity around 50%
5. After that, use the node editor tool (F2) to move nodes if necessary, then
   use the same tool to make segments of the path curved.
   Click on a straight segment, hold mouse key and move the cursor until it covers the shape below it, then release.
   After all segments look quite good, you can finetune them by making all nodes, except the cusp ones at the two ends smooth.
   Then, you can use the handle's displayed at each node, to make a more accurate path
6. Do the same with the other two shapes as well.
7. Once all three is finished, select and combine them together (Ctrl+K).
8. Move the original drawing a bit, so it won'be covered by the new path.
9. Raise path's opacity, and use the dropper tool (D) to select the right colour for the logo.
10. Delete the old logo.
11. Draw a rectangle over the new logo with a black fill and a 50% opacity.
12. Scale/move it around, so that it will represent the right borders/free space around the logo.
13. Group objects together (Ctrl+G), and scale them up by typing a reasonable value at the top toolbox.
    -Decide the size of the final image, and scale the group to that in one direction.
14. Open the document's properties tab (Shift+Ctrl+D) and set borders around selected group.
15. Resize document's size a bit, so in both directions it has an even value.
16. Ungroup objects.
17. Delete rectangle.
18. Save image.

Is there a step/description missing?


Edit: now that the original svg was uploaded, here are these steps illustrated:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=17167&p=63230#p63230

stoopidhead wrote:When I bring the color wheel up in the Fill and Stroke dialogue box, (by selecting something), it won't respond to my efforts to move the little dot on the center triangle. What am I doing wrong?

I'd try to drag anywhere in the triangle, rather than trying to drag the little dot... let the dot follow your mouse pointer.