Inkscape Word Cloud Art: How to Generate Custom Word Clouds in Seconds

[@LV4EVR]

Great tutorial. As a very longtime user of Adobe, and a relatively recent convert to Affinity, I have to say I'm more and more impressed with Inkscape.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks! I went that path too. Adobe products, then tried Affinity, but now I go with Inkscape.

[@LV4EVR]

@@IronEchoDesign I wouldn't be able to (and frankly wouldn't want to) not use the Affinity suite because I rely on both Photo for editing/creating bitmap and Publisher for document design and formatting. I could see if you don't have need of either, Inkscape could be a viable alternative to Designer, my choice to replace Illustrator. In my experience on Windows, if that matters, crashes are too frequent in Inkscape for (my) professional use. That said, there are a substantial number of features missing from Designer that Inkscape includes. I won't lie: If Affinity bought Inkscape and incorporated many of these missing features, I'd be very happy. I know people like free software, but I don't mind paying for what I use, assuming the price is reasonable, which Affinity certainly is. I do, however, refuse to ever RENT software again. It's ironic that as a former die-hard brand advocate for all things Apple and Adobe, I now refuse to purchase from either.

[@michaelsalais7393]

What an interesting method. Thanks, Rick, for showing us the many facets of Inkscape.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much! I might try to refine it, but I think it's pretty quick this way.

[@antoniiocaluso1071]

true Genius has never appeared so Humble! thanks! :-)))

[@IronEchoDesign]

Haha. Thank you so much. 😊

[@erikos]

Wow! Thanks so much, Rick! I really really appreciated this! 😊 Also, very nice to hear about your upcoming book!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks very much for the great suggestion!!

[@nickbeiser7176]

I love how quickly you get to the point and get stuff on paper/screen! Awesome job!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks! I try to keep things moving. 😀

[@sylvainbaril3909]

Oh, you just gave me a good idea for a personal project. Thank you very much!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Nice! Thanks so much!

[@LifeAccordingToJohn]

I'm so glad I found your channel. I'm learning so much. Thank You.

[@haresheranga]

Wow... this is insane Rick! Thank you very much!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks!! It’s a fun trick.

[@geoffphil]

Brilliant way to do a word cloud! Looking forward to your book. Two things I can't do in Inscape that you might know more about: 1. How to do automatic page numbers in a multipage svg file. 2. How to generate a hyperlink to another file on my pc. I can get hyperlinks to websites working (but links only work after creating a link and saving as a pdf).

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much!! Funny- I'm looking for the same answers. Right now I'm manually placing the page numbers. There has to be a better way. An extension maybe? Also, I was afraid to add hyperlinks because I don't know how the ebook version will embed them. Need to figure that out if I'm going to include them.

[@dreben77]

You are a Gangsta Thanks a lot, you are amazing!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Haha. Thanks!!

[@NamNguyen-mo3ds]

Nice work! Can't wait to get a hold of that book.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much! Having fun putting it together right now.

[@ForgottenDetails]

How incredibly cool! Thank you. I'm working on this project next. ;)

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks! It's a fun one!

[@centsiblecooking]

Exactly what I was looking for and it turned out great, thanks so much!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Nice! Thanks so much!! 😀

[@CTRL_SMarcos]

Always providing interesting things, thanks for the video.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thank you very much!!

[@patrickadams7061]

You are too good with this software sir…this is amazing ❤️❤️🔥🔥thanks a lot🇬🇭

[@zbychoo]

That's just great! I don't use inkscape at all, but I like to watch your videos from time to time :) Greets!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks!! I was sincerely surprised how the tool handled the amount of words. Inkscape will always be there if you ever want to play with it.

[@CoolCat00001]

I'm not sure if this is the proper place to make a suggestion for a tutorial, but here it goes. What if you wanted to make a cosmic nebula art, with stars, nebula clouds, and planets? How would that be done?

[@JVMIYO]

Great Tutorial, Thank you!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thank you!!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thank you!!

[@garorag]

Great job sir 👍

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much!

[@MrAjitb502]

Wonderful!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks!

[@sidney001]

How would you confine the test to an object? E.G. An outline of the US and then all the states as words or The UK and all the counties as words, but confined into the country boarder

[@IronEchoDesign]

That’s a great idea. First idea would be to spray with tighter settings and delete away the parts not wanted. Second idea: There is a very good feature called Flow into Frame. You could draw whatever shape/ border you want, type all your words normally and then to the Flow into Frame technique. I have a related video (the one with the cat in thumbnail) if you want to check it out.

[@Nuttoz]

Superb!!!

[@IronEchoDesign]

Many many thanks!

[@brain_respect_and_freedom]

Great! Thank you.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thank you!!

[@graphosxp]

control + D! very cool!💯👍

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much!!

[@fightclube-sports2773]

It's incredible! Thanks! Could you make a video on letters in a circle logo?

[@fr000bify]

Love it, in the passed i tried doing this manually.. will deffo try this later, am i right in thinking that you could then Union the whole word cloud , then place a shape on top and using difference turn the word cloud into a shape of my choice

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks! I think that's a good idea. You could try it without Union too in case you want to manually move things around after the clip. So many possibilities.

[@zerosalary]

Great video ❤

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thank you! 🙏

[@brainangles]

Cool. Thanks. How would you do this to fit into a particular shape similar to the word cloud site Tagxedo or in various directions like Wordle? Stay inspired!

[@ahabib545]

That's amazing

[@KirkWitmer]

This is a really good one Rick, but I had a slight problem. After selecting the list of text items and then doing "Object to Path" the items would not separate. So I did an Ungroup and it worked fine from there. Hope that may help someone else who encounters the same thing.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks Kirk! Interesting. Thanks for the note about this. Ungroup is a good solution if this comes up with others. Tried it again on my computer and its working like in the video. Maybe it's typeface related?

[@IronEchoDesign]

Or coming in as unformatted text from Notepad? Just thinking.

[@KirkWitmer]

@@IronEchoDesign I did think of something going haywire during the import from Notepad to Inkscape, but not having the knowledge of how to figure that out I let it go. But odds are good that if I had the problem someone else might also. Now I'm wondering if Notepad++ (part of Windows 11) might have avoided the problem.

[@IronEchoDesign]

That could be. If all else fails the words can be typed directly into Inkscape separately. I just want to do it as quickly as possible.

[@axelb.5589]

​@@IronEchoDesign Just to share a personal learning: For the breakdown of a word list into individual word-pathes the Inkscape version is essential. While in Inkscape 1.3 the "Object to Path" of such list leads to the desired individual word-pathes, this seems to be different with earlier versions. In Inkscape 1.2 it causes a breakdown into the individual letters - regardless of the font or how the list was imported/generated.

[@cpm-freeware]

Very fine video, well done, thanks :) Alas: a file size of almost 2 mb :o

[@AquaticFeather]

Amazing idea! Thank you for sharing. Also I have a question: there are many duplicates words in your example, is there a way to prevent that from happening while spraying?

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks so much! One solution would be to add more words to the list. Spray tool will start repeating items once it runs out. I probably could have come up with a longer chain of Inkscape word association, but was going quickly and wanted to try out the technique.

[@AquaticFeather]

@@IronEchoDesign Ok, thanks for your reply! 😊

[@martinscrapp7166]

Hi Rick, love your videos which are very interesting and informative. Question for you: do you have a video or can you explain the difference between an Object and a Path? And how does this affect the application of path effects like , Union, Difference, etc which are found under the Path tab?

[@coreycodes2898]

My understanding is that an object is what gets created by most of the tools, and so has tool-specific tweakables attached to it. ex: An ellipse has the start/end angles and the radius for x/y. When you convert it to a path, it seems to convert the object into what the bezier tool outputs, which are node-based lines/curves. My guess would be that the extra 'Convert to Path' was put in to avoid automatically/accidentally losing those tool-specific options when you're not done with them yet. It forces you to say: "Okay, I don't need the ellipse specific options anymore, I just need a shape".

[@IronEchoDesign]

This is a great answer. Thanks so much for sharing!

[@IronEchoDesign]

I like @coreycodes2898 answer in this thread. LogosByNick has explained it well in his videos too. The tricky part is beyond the semantics, certain things only work with a path and a path (like the Path functions you mentioned). Hope these replies help!

[@dandy193]

Nice

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks!

[@rudywlf]

Request if you can turn up the volumn a bit. I find it difficult to follow. And I do follow your videos a lot. Thanks

[@doctormo]

Jabier was just fixing the spray tool, have you been following his work?

[@IronEchoDesign]

I didn’t know that. Whatever he’s doing is working! Spray Tool in 1.3 is very nice. Thanks for everything, Martin!

[@doctormo]

@@IronEchoDesign Two things, 5766 improves the no-overlap feature and 5375 adds a preview so you can see which shape would come next.

[@IronEchoDesign]

Awesome. Such a good tool, and now even better. Thanks again!

[@buttlerben6448]

Ohhh I have a Problem with the words to bring in these position????? Can you help me??? THANKS :-) After I saved the words in Notepad++ with "Ctrl C" and pasted them in Inkscape with "Ctrl V", the program doesn't help me. Inkscape refuses to take any further steps after I have marked the words in different colors. I also set the top bar with the exact values. From this moment on nothing works anymore. How do I move forward??

[@IronEchoDesign]

Happy to help. One failsafe way to get it to work is to type the words directly into Inkscape. From troubleshooting other people who have had cut and paste issues come up- it seems to be the easiest fix. No need to do Object to Path ot worry about separating the long list. The tradeoff is typing each word in, but it gets the job done. Once you have all your words select them all and Spray Tool will shoot them out based on whatever setting you tell it to. Hope this helps!

[@trinitri9345]

Thanks for the video but usually when I try some of the things you show, it doesn't quite work out like how yours does & I cant figure out why. So for e.g. I copied the words I created from Word just as you did and they came out tiny even though it is a size 14 font. When you did it the words came out the same size as you had in your word pad as soon as you copied it . Then I try to separate the words as you did with object to path and it's not separating. I tried spraying by holding down the tool and its not spraying either. Could it be the version of IS I'm using that it does not happen as you do it?

[@IronEchoDesign]

Let’s try to solve this. Can you try typing the words into Notepad instead of Word? MS Word carries special formatting with it on a cut and paste. For the Spray Tool, can you try spraying just a circle to see how the settings are working? Then we can look further to troubleshoot.

[@trinitri9345]

@@IronEchoDesign Thank you for your willingness to help! I tried word pad as you recommended and it still is not working as you demonstrated in the video. I tried doing the object to path and it broke up the individual letters of the words I created. Then I tried the spray tool which worked (i guess it woke up this morning :-)) but it sprayed the entire list. So it's not working for me. I guess there is an additional step I need to figure out to get this to work as you did.

[@IronEchoDesign]

I just tested it out again and a failsafe is to type your words directly into Inkscape. Then you can select them all and spray as you please. Don't need the Object to path step at all.

[@trinitri9345]

@@IronEchoDesign Ok, I'll try that and see if it works and will let you know. Thanks again for trying to help me!

[@trinitri9345]

@@IronEchoDesign Hi, I tried the last thing you suggested It didn't work like how you got it to. 🙄 It sprays the entire word list. Anyway, I feel it's the version of IS I have compared to yours which acts differently in some cases. Thanks again!

[@StephanieTelesca]

I typed the words in Inkscape but I cand separated the words

[@genessonluizdelima116]

👍👍

[@IronEchoDesign]

Thanks!!

[@rectvsv]

and with the silhouette of some person

[@IronEchoDesign]

Word cloud with a silhouette would be cool. I'll try it.