The Inkscape Layout Explained (User Interface)

In this article, I’ll be providing an overview of the Inkscape layout by showing you around the user interface (abbreviated as “UI”) or Inkscape workspace.

The Inkscape UI is a complicated layout on first glance. To help simplify things, let’s highlight each main area of Inkscape.

Inkscape Workspace Overview

There are essentially 9 main areas of the Inkscape layout or workspace. They are the 1) Menu Bar, 2) Commands Bar, 3) Toolbox, 4) Tool Controls Bar, 5) Page Area, 6) Color Palette, 7) Status Bar, 8) Snapping Controls, and 9) Docking Area. Let’s cover each of these in a bit more detail.

Inkscape Menu Bar

To start off, let’s look at the very top of Inkscape; this is known as the Menu Bar. This is going to contain all of the available menu items inside of Inkscape. And the menu items in here allow you to perform various actions.

For example, File>Save will save the document you’re working on.

You can also navigate to different parts of Inkscape from the Menu Bar. So for example, you can go to Edit>Preferences to navigate to the Preferences dialog.

And finally, you can use the menu bar to access various effects inside of Inkscape. For example, you have “Filters” as well as “Extensions.” And just one example of an effect is Filters>Shadows and Glows>Drop Shadow to add a drop shadow to an object.

That of course is barely scratching the surface of what the menu bar does, but hopefully those examples put it into context.

Inkscape Commands Bar

The next area is known as the Commands Bar, and that’s going to be the area directly below the Menu Bar.

In older versions of Inkscape, the Commands Bar was on the right side of the Inkscape window. If you’re using a newer version of Inkscape and your Commands Bar is located on the right side, you can move it to just under the Menu Bar by going to the View menu and making sure “Wide Screen” is unchecked.

The Commands Bar is kind of like a shortcut area. It contains various shortcuts for common actions without having to dive into the various menus inside the menu bar. So for example, you have a button labeled “New” to create a new document (hover your mouse over each icon to see the icon name/label). Another icon labeled “Copy” allows you to copy items in your composition (Ctrl+C is the shortcut key for that). You can change the zoom on your document. You can duplicate certain objects. And then you also have various shortcuts to the different dialogs inside of Inkscape.

You also have, for example, your “Document Properties,” which you can open up from here, or “Preferences” instead of going to Edit>Preferences.

So, the commands bar is really like a shortcut bar. Sometimes it’s faster to use shortcut keys. Sometimes it’s faster to use the icons in the commands bar.

The Inkscape Toolbox

Now lets jump over to the Inkscape Toolbox, which is located along the left hand side of the Inkscape User Interface.

This will contain all of the various tools available in Inkscape. Different tools, of course, have different functionality. You’re going to be able to add objects such as shapes, free-hand draw, edit or select colors, add text, add pages (a.k.a. artboards) to your composition, or zoom in and out of your composition.

Tool Controls Bar

The tool you have selected is going to change the next bar I want to cover, which is the Tool Controls Bar. In other software like GIMP, this might be referred to as the “Tool Options” because it contains different options for your selected tool.

The Tool Controls Bar is going to change based on each tool you have selected with the options available for that specific tool. And in some cases, the options themselves won’t be available until you actually draw with the tool on your composition or select an object.

For example, in the photo above I have the Selector tool active in the Toolbox and I clicked on the circle shape to select it. This made all the options in the Tool Controls bar visible.

The Tool Controls bar is a very useful and dynamic feature in Inkscape, and one that you will be using often as you work in the program.

Inkscape Page Area

The middle area or the area that takes up the most real estate in the Inkscape user interface is known as the Page Area. This is where your composition will display. It’s going to be where you work as you design your compositions.

Page

The middle of the Page Area is the “Page.” That is going to be the area that holds the actual design. When you export your design, as we did before, by default, it’s going to export everything inside the Page Area. However, there are other export options if you want to export selected elements or defined areas (I won’t get into the details of this in this particular article).

Canvas/Desk Area

Surrounding the Page Area, you have what’s called the “Canvas” or the “Desk Area.” It’s very common as you’re working to place objects outside in this Desk Area, just so you can sort of reference them or you can drag and drop them into your composition as you work and as you need those objects.

Rulers

On the left side of the desk area, as well as across the top, is going to be your rulers. Rulers provide measurements of your page area and help you determine objects’ sizes and locations on the page area.

One cool feature that they introduced relatively recently in Inkscape, if you click on an object, is you have this little blue line showing you exactly how large the selected object is across your ruler.

If you hold ctrl and zoom in with your mouse wheel, the ruler will get more and more precise as you zoom in. You’ll also see a little triangle following your mouse’s position on the ruler on both the x and y axis (the left ruler is the y axis, top ruler is the x axis). Rulers are just one of several features that allows you to precisely design inside of Inkscape.

Another cool feature of rulers is you can click your mouse on the ruler and drag a guide from that ruler. When you release your mouse, the guide will be placed at that location.

Scrollbars

On the bottom and right sides of the page area is going to be scrollbars.

If you don’t see scrollbars, go to View>Show/Hide, and make sure “Scrollbars” is checked. I can scroll up and down on my composition with the right scroll bar, or with the bottom scroll bar, I can scroll left and right.

Inkscape Color Palette

Below the Page Area is the Color Palette. Sometimes it’s referred to as the “Swatches Panel.” This feature allows you to change the fill and stroke colors of objects. When an object is selected, left-clicking on a color swatch changes the object’s foreground color (sometimes referred to simply as the “fill” color), and shift-clicking changes the stroke color.

Fill/Stroke Markers

When an object is selected, you’ll see a small dot on the color swatch that the object is currently using. Anytime you see a solid dot, that represents the foreground color that is selected. An outlined circle on a color swatch represents the selected stroke color.

Anytime you have the stroke and fill colors as the same color, you’ll see both circles on the same swatch (the small dot inside the outlined circle).

Change Your Palette

You can also cycle through the various swatches available in the Color Palette using the up and down arrows on the right side of the palette.

Additionally, you have a small hamburger icon menu (the three lines icon) off to the right of the arrows. This menu allows you to select from some other color palettes installed in Inkscape. There is also a “Configure” option here for further customizing your palettes.

Inkscape Status Bar

Below the color palette, you have what’s known as the Status Bar. This area of Inkscape displays pertinent information to help improve your experience while working with Inkscape, and also contains icons with useful actions.

For example, this is going to display (from left to right) your fill and stroke color, your stroke width, the opacity of the current selected object, and your current active layer. You can toggle the visibility of the current layer that you have selected. You can lock or unlock the current layer.

You’ll also see information about selected objects, as well as helpful tips, including shortcuts and other key modifiers, which help you know your options when you’re working with certain objects and provide general guidance when you’re not sure what to do. This is always a good place to check to see what options you have available.

Further to the right, you have your X and Y coordinates of your mouse. You have your zoom level. And then you have the rotation in degrees of your page.

Inkscape Snapping

You also have some hidden areas inside the Inkscape layout. For example, in the top right of the Inkscape user interface we have our snapping controls, denoted by the magnet icon. You can toggle snapping on or off by clicking this icon.

Simple Snapping Mode

Next to the snapping icon is a dropdown arrow with additional options for customizing snapping settings. The “Enable Snapping” checkbox is the same as clicking the snapping icon – this will toggle all the user’s last snapping settings on or off.

When that snapping icon is enabled, you can have three different options enabled simultaneously, or you can turn off any of these three options if you want.

Advanced Mode Snapping

At the bottom of this window is a link labeled “Advanced mode.” Clicking this will take you to another window with even more customization options, allowing you to get more granular with your snapping controls.

You can enable snapping at path intersections, at perpendicular lines, tangential lines, at the base of text. You can enable or disable snapping to grid lines. So there’s really a ton of options. There’s another link at the bottom of this dialog that allows you to revert back to the more simplified version of snapping. Just click “Reset to simple snapping mode” and that will take you here back to the original dialog for snapping.

As you get more experience with Inkscape, you’re likely going to want to use those more advanced snapping features.

Inkscape Docking Area

The last area I want to cover of the Inkscape layout is the Docking Area, which is the area to the right of the Page Area where dialogs appear. So for example, coming up to the commands bar, I’ll click the icon to open the Layers and Objects dialog.

This area where these dialogs open is known as the Docking Area. You can grow or shrink the size of the dialogs in this area by clicking your mouse along the left edge and dragging it out or in. You can also have multiple dialogs open simultaneously.

For example, let me open Align and Distribute. Now we have two dialogs opened up here, and I can click on the tabs to cycle between them (outlined in red in the image above). These dialogs don’t close automatically once you’re done using them. So sometimes you can find multiple dialogues stacked over here and that can clutter your user interface while you’re working. Click the “X” in the active tab’s corner to close out that dialog.

Show/Hide UI Elements

Inkscape’s user interface is highly customizable. And one way you can customize the user interface is you can show or hide any of the areas I just covered. You can do that by going to View>Show/Hide.

Here you’re going to see all of the areas we just covered. So for example, if you don’t want the Commands Bar to show anymore, we can click on that item and it’ll uncheck the visibility of that item. Now the commands bar is gone.

Also, if you notice that perhaps one of the areas we covered in this video was missing for you, it may be hidden in this area. Go to View>Show/Hide, and see if any of these areas are unchecked and simply click on that item to check that item and therefore make it visible.

That’s it for this article. If you liked it, you can check out my other Inkscape tutorials.