The part of an object with black fill or border will block any part of the object beneath it.The part of an object with white fill or border will allow the object beneath to be visible.This means you can crop images with feathered edges or translucent areas. HOWEVER, masking allows for gradients and blurs to modify the cropping in special ways. Like clipping, you can use masking with shapes, objects, and paths, like so: Masking works in a way very similar to clipping, but with some important advantages.įirst, access the tool in Object > Mask> Set : Now, you can go to Object > Clip > Set to crop your image: Remember that you can also sculpt the nodes of the path for even more precision: The more patient your are, the more precise the crop. One way to do this is to use the Pen Tool (or any drawing tool, such as Pencil) to carefully draw around the shape you wish to crop. Instead of shapes, you can also create your own path in order to crop in Inkscape.

In addition, you can use multiple shapes or paths for cropping images in Inkscape. You can even use a vector object, such as text: The image is now cropped according to the shapes you use to clip (in this case, a square): Now, go to Object > Clip > Set to apply clipping and crop the image. Note that the clipping shape or object always goes on top of the image to be clipped. Next, place the shape on top of the image in the area you wish to crop, and select both the image and shape, like so:

You can use squares, circles, stars, or any other shape). To clip an image (assuming you’ve imported your image to Inkscape), first create the shape you’ll be using to clip or “cut” your image. This first method for cropping images allows you to cut out a shape using Inkscape.īy creating geometric shapes and then clipping your image, you can easily cut out any shape you want on a jpeg or any other raster file, including circular, rectangular, triangular, and elliptical shapes. With clipping, you can crop in Inkscape by using regular shapes, objects such as text, or paths.

It’s like using a cookie cutter to create a cookie from dough. The clip operation in Inkscape lets you place a vector shape, object or path on top of an image in order to “clip” or cut a portion of that image according to the shape used.

Inkscape arrow on path