So I'm having the weirdest problem here. I'm writing several labels with a drop shadow. So I type the text, duplicate, make it black, blur it and move it to the back. Easy, which is good because I have to do several of them.

So, now I write another label, same process, shadow looks bad. Why? Well, as it turn out the blur of 5.0 I used in one word, produces different result in another, and now I have to use 3.0. Even more, if I edit the text and type something else, the blur value changes! Just like magic, the value for blur just changes from what it was to something else, just by typing a couple more letters in.

In this picture



First word has a blur of 5.0.

Copied it, F8 to change the text to Minmus. Now it looks more blury but F&S Dialog still says 5.0.

Paste the original again, F8 and change the word, now the F&S Dialog says the blur value is 7.2.

So... I don't know what's happening here, did something change in 0.91 regarding text and blur? I don't remember this working like this in 0.48.

Hi.

As far as I know the blur value is relative to the object's size. 5% blur on a more square-like object should look less smudged than on a wide object.

Simple workaround would be grouping the text with a rectangle the size of the label, and applying the filter on it.
Oh you made the shadow manually.
Hmm easier to show than to guide blindfolded:


I would draw this way -text is grouped with a rectangle that has no fill,
then a dropshadow filter is applied on the group, and, the group is clipped with the same sized rectangle.

Hi, thanks for the help.

I actually went back to my 0.49 installation that I still have laying around and it works in the same way... I guess I never noticed.

I think after all these years I'll have to start using the drop shadow filter. Don't know why I never liked it.

One drawback could be filter general settings. By blurring simply, you would get to a "clipped" look much harder.



https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/inkscape-svg-filter-effects

Uktrunie wrote: I'm writing several labels with a drop shadow. So I type the text, duplicate, make it black, blur it and move it to the back.

For drop shadows on text there are two "better" approaches. They both result in only one text object, so that editing the text also updates the shadow. The first - and simplest - is to use a filter on the original text object. The built-in Drop Shadow filter should do for most uses. The other approach is to use clones:

1) Create your text.
2) Unset the fill.
3) Clone it twice.
4) Change one clone to black and add the blur.
5) Change the other clone to the colour you want for the main text.
6) Arrange all three as required. Putting the original off to one side of the page makes it easier to edit, but if you want to keep everything together you can hide it behind the second clone and (optionally) move it out if you need to edit the text.


Note that the blur slider in the Fill & Stroke dialog is just a shortcut for creating a filter, so whichever approach you take you'll be introducing a filter and could possibly suffer from the cut-off that Lazur showed.