It's a 30 minute video! Can you give us the gist of it?

@microUgly

The video is about creating a logo with Corel DRAW and Photopaint. The guy uses a photograph of a football player and a horses head to make a logo of a football team called "Mustangs", where horses head is on man's shoulders above arc bended "Mustangs" title with some shadow and 3D-like stuff.

@capnhud

Hi, I've just watched the video. It's fun looking at the way other people work.

I don't see any reason you shouldn't be able to do the same with GIMP and Inkscape. I would even nuke GIMP and use Inkscape exclusively. See, IMHO, there isn't much point in using raster graphics editor just to draw severla lines over another bitmap and then trace the result manually.

And I don't see a point in using that photograph either. The guy clearly could have drawn it from scratch using wacom tablet. Maybe he just got used to drawing bitmaps and then tracing them manually.

Which steps exactly do you find impossible/difficult to do with Inkscape?

I was mainly concerned with way the text effect were done. I know it is a long video but manipulating the text section part is where I am having trouble. I think in CorelDraw convert to a curve is the same as convert to path in inkscape, but when I try to align to the bottom as in the video my text does not end up like in the video. Because in the video it looks as though the M & G even though they are aligned to the bottom they sit further down than the rest of the text. See attached screenshot. If you open the video and move to where I have a red square you will see what I am talking about. [img=http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/3975/screenshoton2.th.gif]

Hmmm... your looking for an "Envelope Distort" feature in Inkscape. Envelope Distort is a fairly essential feature among all vector drawing applications, but I can't find it in Inkscape. From what I've managed to find in my searches, the closet effect is "Envelope" under Effects > Modify path, but when I tried the results was not what I expected (perhaps I'm using it wrong).

This feature may introduced as a part of this project idea for Googles Summer of Code - http://code.google.com/soc/inkscape/app ... EE79C0429F

microUgly is right. an envelope effect is probably needed.

i was able to get close with a straight bezier segment that i curved upward. i placed some text on this path. then turned the text into a path. then i made a bezier path rectangle starting from the upper left hand corner. the staring point of your path is critical when using the perspective or envelope effect. anyway, i curved the bottom and top segment upward and pulled in the upper nodes. i selected this path then my text and used the envelope effect.

it will take some playing to get what you want but i think you could get it close.

http://misc.heathenx.org/mustang_text.svg

I guess I was more concerned with the M & G being aligned correctly since it larger than the rest of the text, but when it is aligned as in the video the middle of the text appears centered and below the rest of the text. That is where I am having the problem in achieving that particular look. Because the M & G are both enlarged then aligned back with the rest of the text.

You will need to do what they did in the video. Convert the text to a path using Object to Path (Shift + Ctrl + C) then Break Apart the paths (Shift + Ctrl + K). This will allow you to edit each letter invidually. Note that letters that have a hole (o, a, e, etc) will need to have the hole added back by selecting the letter and the hole and got to Path > Difference.

Those steps i did follow it was just that when I align the letters my M & G line up with all the bottoms lined up the same.

capnhud wrote:Those steps i did follow it was just that when I align the letters my M & G line up with all the bottoms lined up the same.

If you've converted to paths you can align top, centres or bottoms in the align dialog (shift+ctrl+A) just pick the option you want. That or align just the M and G together then use the arrows to nudge them up or down as appropriate.

I know this was touched up back in the days when the forum just begun but I was wondering in lue of having the interactive envelope how could I get the text curve up like these examples

We have interactive envelope now? I'll need to check this out.

We have interactive envelope now

Maybe you misunderstood what I meant was since we do not have the interactive envelope how do you get text objects to curve like the examples

it is possible to do what you want but you would have to do it manually...which takes time and patience. as far as i'm concerned the envelope effect in inkscape does not work like i think it should...or maybe it does work like it should but just not fully baked yet. take xara for example. that is how i think the envelope effect should work.

http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/xealo ... page_5.htm

Edited: sorry, i think i was referring to xara's mould tool. to see how it works you could download xara lx and play with it a bit. i was able to make this:

to see how it works you could download xara lx and play with it a bit

This would be an excellent idea if I was not on windows. As to doing it manually I think I would have the patience if I knew a way to make the selection like a rectangular path that way I could just manipulate only a couple of nodes acheive the effect like you did with the xara mold tool. The problem with trying to acheive that effect is that there are so many nodes to manipulate when you convert text to objects. By the way you how do you even begin to use the envelope effect, when I tried to use it all I got was this error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "share\extensions\summersnight.py", line 1, in <module>
dfa#!/usr/bin/env python
NameError: name 'dfa' is not defined

you might have the envelope bug:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... s-Envelope

sorry about xara. i think inkscape and i think linux..even though i use inkscape on windows just as much as i do on linux. when doing this manually in inkscape you would catch as many nodes as you can and stretch them to shape then grab individual nodes to tweak. xara's mould tool and adobe's warp tool are incredible time savers. i hope inkscape gets something like this soon.

There is a way to get something like the text in those images, but the results are a bit off. You may be able to use this to get close to the result you want and then edit individual nodes to clean things up.

• Create your text and convert it to a path.
• Locate a node as close to the center of the object is possible. If there's not one very close, create a new node.
• Drag a selection rectangle over the top half of the letters, so that only the top half nodes get selected.
• Hold Alt and click-drag the "center" node up or down.

Alt-dragging a node will tweak the path for all selected nodes, changing the shape as you drag. In my brief test, I admittedly could not get the best results, but if you played around with it, you might be able to get it close to what you want.

I will give that suggestion a try

You can easily get this text effect using WordArt feature of MSWord.

Guest wrote:You can easily get this text effect using WordArt feature of MSWord.

I guess you could do that and then load it as a bitmap to trace. Although I don't think Word gives a lot of control over the exact shape.