Hey guys! I have another question. How can I accomplish the effect where it looks as if the text/object is engraved or indented into the background? It looks so cool and professional, I would love to try it!

Thanks!

The easy way? Filters > Shadows and Glows > Cutout

There's a harder way, using a copy of the object as a clipping mask on a blurred version of itself, but the easy way is easier

Thank you sir!!!

So, I used the filter, and I love it! But.... There is this black bar that appears on the top. How do I get rid of that?

Hhmm, I don't get that when I try that filter. Could you provide the SVG file? Then we could examine and find what went wrong.

Sure! Here it is:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2dp3b1ptdavv6aw

OH, my bad. I was using Cutout Glow instead of Cutout. And I do see that black bar-like thing. I'll try to tweak the filter a bit, to see if I can get rid of it. Although in the end, it may take someone more skilled than me. But I'll try

Edit
Wow, that was easier than I ever could have imagined, lol! Here's what I did:
- select the text
- Filters menu > Filter Editor
- in the list of Effects, click on Offset to select it
- look to the bottom of the dialog at Effect Parameters tab
- change Delta Y value to 0

It does slightly change the appearance of the filter, but hopefully not too much for you. I do notice that the "I" is darker than the rest, so you could do the same for Delta X. After that I thought, well maybe we don't need the Offset primitive at all. But when I removed it, bad things happened. So probably best to just change those values, and leave the Offset primitive effect in the list

Awesome! Thanks Brynn, I'll try that as soon as I can

I noticed that issue as well, so I tried turning the text to a path to see if that fixed it. It did - but when I pressed Ctrl-Z to undo the text-to-path conversion, leaving me with text once more, it still looked fixed. Even modifying the text content worked okay, with the effect looking fine. So it might just be a rendering artefact in Inkscape that can be "fixed" by just about any type of tweaking, whether it's the adjustment Brynn suggested, or just converting to paths (then undoing).

I noticed that issue as well, so I tried turning the text to a path to see if that fixed it. It did....

What made you think to try that, Xav? There must have been some clue for you?

A combination of past experience, gut instinct and an almost certainly incorrect mental model of the inner workings of Inkscape.

I guess that Inkscape uses a third party library to handle text, either by including the library directly, or by using the text functions provided by the operating system. It's sensible to use a third party library for this, as it saves the Inkscape devs from the issues of trying to support various font formats.

With that assumption made, it must be the case that the third party library produces some sort of image or path data that Inkscape can use - but perhaps it's not quite the same thing as a native Inkscape path. So my gut reaction was "we've got a glitch with something that isn't a native Inkscape thing... let's see if there's still a glitch after turning it into a native Inkscape thing."

The fact that undoing this conversion still left it looking okay leads me to think that the truth is far more subtle than that (and I'm sure ~suv is now cringing at my assumptions about the internals of Inkscape!) - but that's the extent of my reasoning behind trying the conversion to a path.

Xav, haha
i'm with you, i also run a "hmm mayby this isnt inkscape-native[conversion time]" inner dialogue sometimes.

Well, you guys are ahead of me on the technical stuff! I only vaguely understand what you were thinking. Part of the reason I asked, is because I've seen something like that in the many hours I've spent trying to learn to make filters. I was hoping that whatever gave you that clue, would help me with filters. But it sounds like it might be more related to the text than the filter? Well, at least now I know not to use text in my filter experiments, lol. (Unless of course ~suv tell us it's not related to the text. Or you know who might know -- ivan louette, the filters guru) Thanks

brynn wrote:But it sounds like it might be more related to the text than the filter? Well, at least now I know not to use text in my filter experiments, lol. (Unless of course ~suv tell us it's not related to the text. Or you know who might know -- ivan louette, the filters guru) Thanks :D

In my tests, it is not related to the object type (doesn't matter whether it's a text or a group or whatever shape/path) - the cause it that the the filter effects region is defined too small in the preset filter effect (try 'Cutout' on a simple rectangle to verify).

The correct "fix" for 'Filters > Shadows and Glows > Cutout' IMHO is to extend the filter effects region (e.g. to "-0.1 , -0.1 | 1.2 , 1.2" or "-0.2 , -0.2 | 1.4 , 1.4").

The preset filter effects shipping with the next major version of Inkscape will have changed a lot (the effects in 'Shadows and Glows' have been reduced in number, but AFAICT the remaining ones use a more flexible structure which allows to achieve similar effects).

Omg, that's awesome! I never have been able to figure out what those Filter General Settings were used for. You're probably thinking I would have, if I had read the manual. But I get so frustrated trying to understand the Source Graphic section above that, that I've never read the rest of the page! That really is VERY helpful, because that weird kind of cutoff line has been one of the major stumbling blocks for me. I could NOT be happier

Thanks ~suv

Oh wait.....if that's the case, then why does Xav's trick of converting the text to path, seem to fix it? Be as technical as you need to be for Xav, even though I might not understand. I'll still try

Actually I'm not sure my "fix" does work - I haven't been able to reproduce it on my machine here at work. I'm 100% certain that I didn't change the effects region when I was playing around with this at home, but I did try various sizes for the text a bit of rotation, and so on. Although I definitely saw the black area vanish when I converted to path, and it remained gone when I used CTRL-Z, it might have been related to one of the other operations I'd done. If it's not reproducible then it's just a glitch or a coincidence, not a fix