Hi Guys,

I've been using inkscape for a while now and I'm really enjoying it for my work ads I have to whip up. Now, I have an issue.
I cannot seem to set drop shadows on text without them being cut off by the object bounding box.



Doesn't seem to matter if I make a large text box for the text to go into, or if I convert the text to paths before hand.

I'm assuming I'm doing something very simple incorrectly, but I've googled my little heart out and just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Any help, GREATLY appreciated.

-LachieC

hi, and welcome!
Do you have the stroke or blur set to something other than 0 on the shadow? Are you using a filter on the blue background? It's hard to tell.
It would be helpful if you could attach a copy of the file, so someone on here can see what is happening. It may also be helpful to tell us what your operating system is, etc. The more info we have the better for analyzing it. I'm not very technical on some of these issues, but others are, so figured I could at least ask you for the file and info, as it may save a little time.
I can't say that I've ever had any issue with drop shadows, but haven't done once since upgrading to the latest stable version.

I'm on Linux Mint 14; latest version of Inkscape via the repo.

Doesn't seem to matter what background I have etc. To reproduce it I open a new document, put some text on it, filter>shadows-etc>drop shadow>OK.

I've attached a sample file. Thanks for the tips

It looks like the settings of the filter bounding box isn't large enough [*] according to your blur radius + offset.
(Plus your y-offset is badly set : see the l)

*: Which is quite normal coz it's broken by design in svg 1

I cannot reproduce the problem with blurring a normal or a flowed text.
Maybe you should update to the latest version of inkscape (?), or, if nothing works, convert the text to path.

v1nce is correct... but he didn't mention how to fix it.

With your object selected open the filter editor (Filters > Filter Editor). The drop shadow should be selected in the list on the left.

At the bottom of the dialogue are two tabs - one for the parameters of the currently selected filter effect, and one for "Filter General Settings" which affect the entire filter. Select this second tab and you'll see two pairs of spinboxes, for "Coordinates" and "Dimensions". These define the maximum area for which Inkscape will calculate the filter - outside of this area the filter is not drawn at all.

The units are in terms of the object's dimensions: the typical values of -0.1, -0.1, 1.2, 1.2 really mean "the top left corner of the filter region is 10% to the left of, and 10% higher up than, the top left of the object. The width of the filter region is 120% of the object width, the height is 120% of the object height." In other words, the filter region extends for 10% of the object size all round the object.

So in your case you need to increase the dimensions - try 1.5, 1.5 or even 1.0, 2.0. You may also need to reduce the coordinates if the shadow is being cut off at the top or the left. Remember, if you reduce the coordinates you'll need to increase the dimensions to keep the bottom right corner of the filter region in the same place.


Why does it work like this? It's because some filters (such as Gaussian blur, as used in your drop shadow) are theoretically infinite, even though the visible effect drops off quite quickly. Rather than spend too long doing a lot of maths these parameters let you set a limitation on how far out the filter should be calculated. For most smaller filters the default values are fine, but if you are trying to push to a particularly large filter by using a big offset or huge blur, you need to adjust the filter region accordingly.

How do you apply the drop shadow filter ?
1) Duplicate text ; set it black ; apply blur from Fill&stroke dialog
2) Filter > shadow & glows > drop shadow

1) automatically adjust the filter bounding box but not 2)

to adjust manually
filters > filter editor
select your filter (name should be drop shadow something)
click "filter generall settings"
adjust offset & width.

[edit]grilled[/edit]

Xav wrote:Rather than spend too long doing a lot of maths

adding 1/2 kernel width is not "a lot of maths"

In my experience, you have to be careful about changing the Filter General Settings, i.e. Filter Effects Region. I would make very conservative changes, because if you go too far in any direction, you may introduce other similar issues.

brynn wrote:In my experience, you have to be careful about changing the Filter General Settings, i.e. Filter Effects Region. I would make very conservative changes, because if you go too far in any direction, you may introduce other similar issues.

You won't introduce any issue doing this (other than slowing down the filter because there will be more pixels to compute and removing (unwanted) clipping).

Vince is the huge filter expert here , but I can offer a little workaround that I have found useful in the past:
Group a completely transparent rectangle with the objects to be blurred. If you have already blurred them and they are not in a group then of course you will have to remove the filter group them and reapply the filter; if they are already in a group you can open the group and draw the rectangle. What this does is to effectively give you on-canvas control of the filter area because the rectangle, while invisible, can be resized in outline view without any effect on the drawing EXCEPT making the filter area larger.

druban wrote:Vince is the huge filter expert here , but I can offer a little workaround that I have found useful in the past:
Group a completely transparent rectangle with the objects to be blurred. If you have already blurred them and they are not in a group then of course you will have to remove the filter group them and reapply the filter; if they are already in a group you can open the group and draw the rectangle. What this does is to effectively give you on-canvas control of the filter area because the rectangle, while invisible, can be resized in outline view without any effect on the drawing EXCEPT making the filter area larger.

rect1401.png

It looks like you applied filter on every letter instead of the full text, how did you manage to do that ? Was it deliberate ?

v1nce wrote:It looks like you applied filter on every letter instead of the full text, how did you manage to do that ? Was it deliberate ?

Just to make the point I guess, I should have said that they are converted to paths and ungrouped before applying the filter.
The top shows the same paths grouped with an invisible rectangle before applying the filter.

v1nce wrote:

brynn wrote:In my experience, you have to be careful about changing the Filter General Settings, i.e. Filter Effects Region. I would make very conservative changes, because if you go too far in any direction, you may introduce other similar issues.

You won't introduce any issue doing this (other than slowing down the filter because there will be more pixels to compute and removing (unwanted) clipping).

If you change the Coordinates (under Filter General Settings tab) rather than Dimensions, and you change too far, you will fix the boundary on one side, but you'll start to see the boundary on the opposite side. If you change the Dimensions smaller, you'll make the situation even worse. If you change the Dimensions larger, the object's bounding box gets larger. For those reasons, I suggest very small changes

brynn wrote:
If you change the Coordinates (under Filter General Settings tab) rather than Dimensions, and you change too far, you will fix the boundary on one side, but you'll start to see the boundary on the opposite side. If you change the Dimensions smaller, you'll make the situation even worse. If you change the Dimensions larger, the object's bounding box gets larger. For those reasons, I suggest very small changes

You're right. I meant enlarging (no, not that part of your anatomy) the width or height.