In Inkscape, is there a way to take an image and then, at user-designated points, stretch and squish it? The comparable tool in GIMP is the "Cage Editor", which is pretty darn cool.

Currently, there seem to be two primary ways of achieving distortions in Inkscape: simply scaling the whole object, which is uniform across the shape and therefore very limiting, or else grabbing the individual control points and moving them, which can be too time-consuming if the vector object is at all complex. The Perspective Extension works well, but this is also fairly limited.

The effect that I'm specifically trying to achieve is to stretch out text, just like in my sample below (which was achieved in GIMP, not Inkscape).



As always, great thanks and respect to everybody at Inkscape. God bless you!

turn your text into a path (shift ctrl C)
launch path effect (shift ctrl 7)
click [+] to add effect
add enveloppe deformation
click and bend top and bottom path

View this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=13496&p=53901&hilit=spirolive#p53901
If the mesh tool works right it may do the trick (?).

Hi.

Something similar is available for Inkscape with the help of an extension. Go to the Eggbot page; http://wiki.evilmadscience.com/The_Eggbot_Extensions

Download and install the extension.
( While you're at the page - order an Eggbot - it's loads of fun!)

To use you have to turn your text into path, turn it 90° and apply; Extension - Eggbot Contributed - Stretch, after the stretch you will have to turn it 90° back.



Chime back if you need more assistance!

Good Luck
RGDS
Ragnar

v1nce wrote:turn your text into a path (shift ctrl C)
launch path effect (shift ctrl 7)
click [+] to add effect
add enveloppe deformation
click and bend top and bottom path

This is working very well. Thanks a lot, vince!

(Thanks also to Lazur and Ragstian. I will check out the link and the Eggbot extension, presently.)

Hi.

Learning something new every day.
I'am impressed with the response time - four answers in 30 min - not bad!

RGDS
Ragnar

Yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised, too. When I first started posting here a year or so ago, it seemed most things took a day or so to get a reply (alas, all I do is post requests for help, so that's the type of topic of which I'm referring to).

So this is good. (Also, I think I'll have to look into Eggbot, as the Envelope Deformation isn't working quite as perfectly as I'd hoped - although it's definitely okay.)

Well, somehow I thought the envelope LPE might not do the trick for you... The GIMP cage does spoil users, although to be fair it does take about a year for an image of any size to be transformed and is kind of impractical for largish (i.e. 1000s of pixel images). But look here , anyway. But here is the real good stuff, and courtesy of Brainless our own forum member who has compiled the experimental extensions for windows users you can use it today in a development build which is unstable but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Here's an example - you can see the nodes (normally not colored) that I have moved around in the before and after, and the result.

druban wrote:Well, somehow I thought the envelope LPE might not do the trick for you... The GIMP cage does spoil users, although to be fair it does take about a year for an image of any size to be transformed and is kind of impractical for largish (i.e. 1000s of pixel images). But look here , anyway. But here is the real good stuff, and courtesy of Brainless our own forum member who has compiled the experimental extensions for windows users you can use it today in a development build which is unstable but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Here's an example - you can see the nodes (normally not colored) that I have moved around in the before and after, and the result.

rect96.png

I use Blender, and the how the Lattice Modifier works on 3D objects there would be perfect for the effect here in Inkscape, so hopefully that development continues. (The Lattice Mod in Blender is conceptually similar to the Cage Deform in GIMP.) It appears that the only way to use that Lattice tool is through the development build? Then thanks and acknowledgements to Brainless for building one for Windows (which I do indeed use) and I will probably end up trying that, as the Envelope Effect Editor is a lil' bit too far from ideal.

(And I agree with you about GIMP's Cage Transform: It is cool as heck....but is agonizingly slow and, worse still, seems pretty darn buggy. But I'm just observing, not complaining!)

Eggbot extensions and Lattice are pretty neat, but perhaps you could give another go for the Envelope Deformation. This time try to separate lines of text and then apply E.Deformation. Take a look on this topic

Or go old school and use the Tweak tool.

I've actually tried to use the Envelope LPE to do precisely this. But it is pretty tricky. Up to a certain point, it works perfectly. But if the curve needs to be very deep, it starts to distort around the 4 corners. At least that was my experience.