I have the following situation: I have a piece filled with small shapes, created using tiles clones which then had their clone connections severed. Now, I use the tweak tool to change the colors of these shapes, and it works fine thus far - as long as I chose the colors I want to use manually.

What I would like it so use the dropper tool to pick a color from another piece which already has a certain pattern (think snake skin). But when I use it, it chances the fill of all the shapes, not the "active" color for the tweak tool... Is there a way to get it do to what I want?

Thanks in advance!

Hi.

Make sure your clones are unlinked - select all objects and unlink - ( Shift-Ctrl-D )
Tried to make some tiled clones and got no problems filling the colors using the dropper tool.
Be aware that you can copy ( CTRL - C ) and paste the stroke and fill only by - ( Shift-Ctrl-V )
When copying gradients the gradient does not show until "activated" by clicking
the gradient icon on the toolbar - strange, you might have the same problems with patterns.

The color fill for the hearts was picked from the rectangles.
Last row of hearts was cloned manually and gradients & filters applied by the dropper tool.


Click image for larger version.

Good Luck.
RGDS
Ragnar

Hhmmm, interesting question! I've reviewed what the manual has to say about the Dropper tool, and don't see anything like you describe. I did learn something that I didn't know before though. While the dropper tool is over the desired color, you can do Ctrl + C and copy the hexcode to the clipboard. So I tried that, and tried to paste it into the Tweak took, but it didn't work. The Ctrl key switches the Tweak tool to Grow/Shrink mode! (I'm not sure if that's by design or not, since I haven't reviewed the Tweak tool info in the manual yet.) So Ctrl + V isn't an option. And if you click the Paste button, it just pastes the color onto the selected object, as if you had used the Dropper tool in the first place.

I don't think this functionality exists, although again, I haven't reviewed the manual for the Tweak tool. So you might find a nice tip there

Thanks brynn, I did not know that about the Dropper either. I will check the manual about the Tweak tool, too.

I think in my initial description I forgot to mention that I select the whole bunch of ex-clones in order to use the tweak tool to draw patterns.

Interesting....I have to admit, I was curious about what you were doing in the scenario you described. By "draw patterns" do you mean like textures? Or more like decorative patterns? And with the color controls in Tiled Clones > Color, I'm curious why you break the clones' links, and color them separately. Because the technique Ragnar mentioned, is just the tip of the iceberg (as they say) for that feature.

Oh hey! When you say you need to take the color from....well, either a raster image, or something where you don't have access to the hexcode, I guess.... The Trace tab of the Tiled Clones dialog really has some pretty cool effects, and perhaps some potential to help you with this! You might want to check the manual for that as well

Basically, imagine a snake - a shape filled with scales (overlapping tiled clones). I use the Tweak tool to create patterns on the snake's skin, say, a black line along the spine with green shapes on both sides on some base color. One reason for this approach is to create different kinds of snakes, the other - the one for unlinking the clones - is that I had some bad experiences with clones and moving them across layers, and did not dare to leave them linked in this project. I hope that explains it . But on the other hand it might indeed be worthwhile to look into the feature some more and learn how not to break it...

I will look into tracing, but if it only works with raster images... I want to keep things within Inkscape to avoid file clutter, but you are right, this looks promising... I will look into it, thanks.