Hi everyone, I am a super-noob , so please go easy on me. I'm trying to learn how to use Inkscape (using it on Windows 10) and I am following a tutorial that is putting together some shapes to create an image.

Step one consists of a basic action: creating an ellipse. As I drop the shape onto the board, the default color is blue. I want the shape to be with a "white" or transparent fill and simply have the stroke black.

I am able to change the color of the fill to whatever I want and that's fine, but I can't seem to change the color of the stroke, and please allow me to clarify if I understood correctly, a stroke means the border of the shape? If that's so I cannot change the stroke color.

I have tried to look up online and here for help and suggestions, but they didn't seem related or they didn't work (like Shift + dropping the color I want for the stroke), and I'm sure it's something really simple for someone who's an expert, but it's driving me nuts and I have already lost 2 hours so I would really appreciate your help as otherwise I am not off to a good start.

The simplest way is to hold Shift whilst clicking on a colour in the palette at the bottom of the screen. If you still can't see it there are number of possible reasons - the best thing would be to post a copy of your SVG file here and someone will be able to tell you exactly what the problem is in next to no time.

I have a series of free tutorials which start with the absolute basics, including colour selection and reasons why an object might not be visible. You can find links to them here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11981

Thank you Xav I will check out your tutorials! And...I have an update: I found out what was the reason, so I'm gonna write it here for reference if anyone else will have the same issue, because I have not seen this mentioned anywhere.

On the Fill & Stroke advance panel the width of the Stroke Style was at "0"....no wonder it did not work...or rather the color was changing but the stroke was invisible due to zero width.

I increased the width and the stroke appeared and any changes of colors needed. Great, finally I can progress with my first project.

MightyM wrote:On the Fill & Stroke advance panel the width of the Stroke Style was at "0"....no wonder it did not work...or rather the color was changing but the stroke was invisible due to zero width.

Actually the original draft of my reply offered that as a possibility - along with the opacity of the object and the alpha value of the stroke colour. Inkscape has lots of different ways to make something "disappear" when you don't want it to! As my message got longer and longer, I decided it was better to trim it down to the basics and point you towards the tutorials.

One thing to note is that the stroke width is displayed next to the colour in the bottom left of the Inkscape window. You can right-click on the width there to select from a list of pre-defined widths, which can often save a trip to the Fill & Stroke dialog.

Thanks Xav. Yes I saw that on the bottom. They should make it a default for stroke to be at least a 0.5 width but hey...

Today on day 2 I am already finding my way around faster than yesterday, and I remade the subject of the vector that I created yesterday and today is coming out much better looking already, not finished yet as I'm making it more complex than the one from yesterday, but as always it's just matter of getting familiarised with the settings.

I usually do stuff on Photoshop but for my new project, I need to create vectors and while it's time consuming now as I could simply offload the work to someone else, on the long term it will be more productive for me to know how to do them properly, especially because I hate depending from others.

MightyM, would you like to help proofreading our new beginner's manual? You can browse as you like, and learn the basics, and if you notice something that you don't understand, or have an improvement suggestion, you could post in the corresponding thread.

(Manual draft: write.flossmanuals.net/start-with-inkscape/_draft/
Feedback thread: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape-do ... s/issues/7 )

Moini wrote:MightyM, would you like to help proofreading our new beginner's manual? You can browse as you like, and learn the basics, and if you notice something that you don't understand, or have an improvement suggestion, you could post in the corresponding thread.

(Manual draft: write.flossmanuals.net/start-with-inkscape/_draft/
Feedback thread: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape-do ... s/issues/7 )

Sure, happy to have a read through.

Cool See you on gitlab!