Swatch not giving proper color

[Digit5]

I am a new user of Inkscape. Yesterday I installed the 64-bit Windows version of Inkscape on my PC running Windows 10 and today I tried making a drawing with the tool. I soon noticed that when I assign a color to an object the color turned out lighter than the color I picked. Particularly noticeable is when I select black the color on my object turned out grey.

I tried Googling to see if I found anybody else with similar problems but only found one related issue that someone said installing the 32-bit Windows version may fix this problem. In the last hour I uninstalled my 64-bit version and installed the 32-bit version but the problem still remains.

I did a screen capture of me drawing the color black to an object to assign the color. The black spot I was dragging is in the middle of the picture below, and the grey color of the block is the result of dropping the black spot on it. The letter 'f' to the left is also supposed to be assigned the color 'black.'

One other thing I noticed is that the swatch docked window on the right shows a dark red X, and the only color available there is 'none.' I can only pick color from the swatch bar across the bottom of the screen.

A guess I have is that my color space is not set up correctly. But if that is the case I don't know how to correct it. Help if you have the answer to my problem. Thank you.

[brynn]

Welcome to Inkscape Community!

As far as I remember from when I installed Inkscape for the first time, all the shapes automatically were partially transparent.  I think that's what you're seeing, a partial transparency.  To save yourself some headaches, read this:  Customize Your Inkscape Tools

The short version is that by default, Inkscape applies whatever object you draw with the style of the last object you drew.  It seems like a crazy behavior to me, and in 8 years using Inkscape, I've never heard of anyone who actually uses that feature, and certainly I've never heard any praises about it    So that article tells you how to give your tools their own style, and stop re-using the same style.

And to help solve unintended transparency issues in the future, this one might also be interesting:  What To Do When a Tool Stops Working (or Tools are Drawing Invisible Objects)

In Inkscape, Swatches work somewhat differently than in raster graphics programs.  Unless you have some need to create a set of custom swatches for a particular image (or maybe for a document template), just use either the palette at the bottom (or any of the other installed palettes) or Object menu > Fill and Stroke which is the most comprehensive dialog for assigning a style (color, transparency, stroke width, etc.).  For any new document  (unless you're using a custom template) swatches are always empty, until you start creating a custom swatch palette.

[Digit5]

Thank you, brynn. Your article helped me correct my problem. The only thing is after I customized my environment if I paste in my original design it won't take on the correct settings. Since the design is really simple it was no problem creating it from scratch again.

There is so much to learn from using Inkscape, I think I will be busy for a while.

[brynn]

Yes, when you pasted the design, it kept the same style.  That's what we would expect.  The changes you made for the style for each tool will only affect the new objects that you draw. 

Instead of creating it again, you would just have to select each of the objects and raise....I think in this case it will  probably be the alpha level for each color.  Select an object, go to Fill and Stroke dialog, move the A slider all the way to the right, or make the value 255.  That 2nd article I gave you will tell you all the places to look for transparency-related problems.

Yes, Inkscape is much more complex that it appears to be at first.  I was so happy when I first started using it, because it was much easier than raster graphics (which I still find to be difficult).  But the more I used it, the more I learned how much more powerful it really is.  Even now, 8 years later, there is much I don't understand.  But it's a super-great tool!

Happy Inkscaping!