How to create a light highlight in Inkscape?

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I have the following image created in Gimp.

enter image description here

I’d like to create a similar image in Inkscape. What I want to happen is to have a bright light source and I want this light source to brighten the circles having the most intense effect at the edge of the blue circle.

In Gimp I’m able to achieve this by having a white to black gradient as separate layer on top and setting the blend mode of that layer to addition (using the technique in this tutorial: http://gimp-tutorials.net/gimp-glow-effect)

How can I achieve a similar effect in Inkscape?

Answer

To reproduce the effect you made in Gimp with Inkscape I took the following steps:

  1. Create filled circles and make them a group

    enter image description here

  2. Create a large circle with the gradient circular fill (here black for illustration)

    enter image description here

  3. Duplicate the group of colored circles to then create a unified path (Path > Union)

    enter image description here

  4. Select this new path and the gradient circle to cut out the path intersection (Path > Intersection)

    At this point I added a canvas and changed the gradient fill from black to white.

  5. Move the gradient until happy

    enter image description here

After grouping the gradient object and the coloured circle group we will finally have a new object resembling your Gimp original:

enter image description here

Side note: for more fancy or realistic effects we may also want to try out some of the inbuilt filters to get many interesting effects (below I applied Filters > Bevels > Deep color plastic)

enter image description here

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : User , Answer Author : Takkat

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