Texture in Inkscape

So I have been using Inkscape for many years now and I absolutely love it.  I remember when I was taking some Adobe Illustrator classes in college that I would use Inkscape instead because it was so much easier and faster to use.  There were however occasions where there were some assignments for the class that simply could not be done in Inkscape.  I have decided to go and look at some Illustrator tutorials and see if I can replicate the concepts in Inkscape.

This first tutorial is a fun one.  I found the tutorial here:
http://vectips.com/tutorials/creating-seamless-textures/

This is a great website and I will probably be using it more for some Inkscape tutorials.

Let us begin!

We will want to start by creating a box.  Any color is fine. Go ahead and add a gradient to it. Once the box is complete, duplicate (ctrl+d) the box.  Now open up the layers dialog box. Create a layer called background and another layer called background texture.  Select one of the boxes and move it to the background texture layer (ctrl+page up).


Now with the box in the background texture layer selected, go to Filters>Filter Editor...  Here we will create the filter we are going to use for the background.  Play around with this. (This step was completely new to me and is pretty fun to play around with!)

In the filter dialog box press new. Rename the filter to "Background Texture."  Now press Add Effects: Turbulence.  Change the Type to Fractal Noise.  In the Filter General Settings we will take the filter back to the original size. Coordinates= 0,0. Dimensions = 1,1.  Adjust the Effect Parameters until it is to your liking.

Now go to Filters>Colors>Desaturate.

After you have done that, you can move the boxes together. Put layer mode on Multiply and take down the opacity of the texture layer (I did 45%).  Now the background looks like it has some texture.

Let us beef this up a bit so we can highlight the text some.  Select your original box and duplicate it.  Add a radial gradient to your new box.  Make sure the center is white, then place it on top of the original box.  I took the opacity of the gradient on mine to 70%.  See below:

Now that we have our background ready, we will do something pretty similar only now with some text.  Create two new layers. Name the first Text, and the second layer will be named Text Texture.  In the Text layer write anything you would like (I am writing TEXTURE).

I used the font ChunkFive with a font size of 70.  At this point I should mention a wonderful website I discovered this morning.  It is fontsquirrel.com This site has commercial free fonts that are great for graphic design.  Most of the fonts I have are downloaded from this site.

Give your text a nice gradient. It is nice to have it whitish on top and greyish on bottom. Do what you would like then place it in the center of your background.

Now that your text is in place, duplicate it and move the duplicate to the Text Texture layer.  On this text, we will apply the filter Filters>Texture>Rough Paper.

You will notice that the filter distorted the text. We do not want this.  To fix this, we will open up the filter editor. Filters>Filter Editor...

You should see a filter that has been applied to the text (select and de-select to make sure you are working with the correct filter).  Under the Turbulence effect, you should see a Displacement Map effect.  Select that then turn the scale down all the way.

Now that the shape is back to normal, we can place it directly over the text in the layer below.  Change the blend mode of "Text Texture" layer to multiply, then turn the opacity down to 20%

Select the non textured text and duplicate it. Make the fill black and blur it a bit. Put it underneath all the text so it creates a nice shadow.

Now is should look something like this:

We will give it some more text. Create a new layer called "Additional Text."  Add your text.  I wrote INKSCAPE using the font "HamburgerHeaven" size 50.

Add a gradient so that it is darker on top and slightly opaque on bottom.

To give it some more dimension, we will add some highlights.  Duplicate the text. Take out the fill of the new text and make the stroke a white gradient that is whiter on the bottom than on top. You can blur it a bit then put it underneath the original text.

That is it!  You are done!

It should look something like this:

This is a great way to add some texture without having to use Gimp (or Photoshop).  It might be a bit of work but is super quick once you have done it once or twice.