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How to Use Basic Linear Gradients in Inkscape

By Stephen Bucaro

Inkscape is an amazing, easy to use, and powerful vector graphics drawing application, similar to Adobe Illustrator. One of the most amazing things about Inkscape is that it's brought to you for free by the Free Software Foundation in Boston, MA. One of the most powerful things about Inkscape is that you can use gradients. Gradients can make even the most crude drawings look professional.

A gradient is a gradual transition form one color to another color. But before we get deeper into gradients, lets briefly describe how colors are defined by computers. Computers create colors by defining the amount of red, green, and blue the color contains. Because computers are binary, and because the first computers had small data storage capabilities, each color is defined on a scale from 0 to 255. So, for example, the color blue would be encoded as 0,0,255 and the color white would be 255,255,255.

In Inkscape the beginning color and ending color of a gradient are each called a "stop". You can transition from one color to another, and then to a third color. This requires 3 stops. You can actually have any number of stops in a gradient.

To fill an object with a gradient, right-click with the mouse pointer inside the object, and in the popup menu that appears, select "Fill and Stroke". In the "Fill and Stroke" dialog box that appears, select the "Fill" tab. On the "Fill" tab, click on the "Linear gradient" button. At the top of the "Linear gradient" section that appears you'll see a drop-down list of all the linear gradients that have been defined.

You can click on one of the pre-defined linear gradients to apply it to your object or you can create a new gradient by selecting a the pre-defined gradient (there is always one default pre-defined gradient) and clicking on the [Duplicate] button.

You also delete gradient. First you have make sure the gradient isn't used anywhere on the drawing. Then in Inkscape's "File" menu select "Vacuum defs".

If the "Fill and Stroke" dialog box is open, the gradients and colors defined in the dialog box will be those of the object you select by selecting the "Select and transform objects" tool in the left-side tool box.

Inkscape Gradient editor dialog box.

To edit a gradient, in the "Fill and Stroke" dialog box, on the "Fill" tab, click on the [Edit...] button. The "Gradient editor" dialog box will appear. In the "Gradient editor" dialog box, one of the gradient's stop color and stop id number will appear. Below that will be tabs for the different methods of setting a color. You'll probably find the "Wheel" method the easiest to use, but for this example I'm going to use the "RGB" method.

I set the color of one stop to R=200, G=60, B=30. Note you'll also see an "A" button, this controls the colors "alpha" which sets its transparency, 0 being fully transparent and 255 being fully opaque. I then selected the other stop in the drop-down list and set that stop to R=210, G=170, B=24. Then close the "Gradient editor" dialog box by clicking on the "x" in its upper-right corner.