7) Basic Editing - Move, scale, rotate, skew

                           Basic Editing - Move, scale, rotate, skew

Inkscape being a vector graphics editor, it offers the advantage of being able to select objects (eg. shapes) separately and edit them.

In order to move, scale, rotate or skew the created shapes, one has to first use the selector tool. Click on the topmost button on the toolbar, or press F1 or Space. Now you can select any object on the canvas.

How to recognize that an object is selected

When you have anything selected, you will see that the object is surrounded by eight arrow-shaped handles.

Moving

Once the object you want to move is selected, drag the selected object with your mouse to move it. If many objects are selected then dragging any one of them, moves all of them.

(Press Ctrl to restrict movement to horizontal and vertical.)

Scaling

Select the object you wish to scale and then by dragging any of the 8 arrows, the objects can be scaled.

(Press Ctrl to preserve the original height/width ratio.)

The rectangle is selected

The right side center arrow (blue in colour) can be dragged to scale

The bottom center arrow (blue coloured) can be dragged to scale

The corner arrow can be dragged to scale

Rotating and skewing

In order to rotate and skew a shape/object, you need to just click on the already selected object. Notice that the arrow marks/handles change, when it is rotate/skew mode. Now the selection is in rotate/skew mode. Now, to rotate the object drag the corner handles, the object rotates around its centre (+ cross mark). To skew the object, drag the non-corner handles.

Rotate Skew

The rotation center (marked as cross) of the selected object/s specifies the point around which it rotates. It can be placed anywhere on the canvas (not just within the bounding box of the object). When several objects are selected, they use the Rotation Center of the first selected object. If the first object does not have center set (i.e. if it is in a default central position), then several objects will rotate around the geometric center of their common bounding box.

To move the rotation center of an object, click and drag it to the desired spot. It will snap to the bounding box of the object as well as other snap points as set in the Preferences.

Rotation around center which is in it default position
Rotation around center which is moved to upper right corner of a shape