When people are thinking about digitizing an image with Inkscape, they think about having a fast and
reliable and most of all Artomatic solution, and this is the world we are living now.
Everyone is looking for a fast solution.
And why not?
Inkscape can offer a solution for that.
And that is called tracing.
Bitmap.
This means automatic tracing, which is importing an image, hit a few buttons and Inkscape is doing
the rest for you, creating a vector image out of your hand drawn artwork.
Now, first of all, you need a drawing.
Then you need to scan that drawing or photo or made that digital of digital bitmap and then imported
into Inkscape and let Inkscape do the work for you.
So first I go to I have my drawing and I scanned it and first I go to import.
Or control I.
Which is opening my folder.
I'm looking for this drawing about the puppies I have.
And I open it.
When Inkscape is importing a bitmap image, which is means it's not factored, that it is asking if
you want to embed the image or link it.
I usually keep looking because this means smaller fire size and Inkscape can work faster that way.
On some machines, an embedded file can be huge and slow down a bit.
And the work of Inkscape image DPI.
I also led on from file DPI is that per inch, which means the image resolution and.
I'm looking for high resolution images when I want to use the outracing, uh.
Tool in Inkscape.
Imagine the remote doesn't matter now because.
The image will be only the source of the trace.
Not included in the final artwork, I mean.
I hate OK, and this is my.
Drawing here.
You will get the same drawing with the course, and I really hope you like it is just drawing about
some we so on the field with my wife the other day and I created it on a white paper with a fatty pen.
And this was a brush pen.
This is why if Isumi you see that some lines are like a brush stroke thing on one end and thick on the
other.
It's a very nice thing to play with brush pens.
I really, I really do like them.
So why I want to trace it because I want to recalibrate, I want a cleaner image, I want to print it
or I want to use part of it in a vector image or redraw or reshape it totally.
Which all of these things I cannot really do with a small image on a paper.
So.
If my image is important, they let me talk about the two criteria for an image.
To be the source of automatic tracing it, Inkscape, those two things, you have to take care.
First of all, the image has to be high contrast, and especially so because in this course, we would
like to make our lynott.
So I'm focusing on having images on white background with thick black lines and clearly visible.
I'm not talking about, I don't know, scanning watercolor paintings now or pencil drawings.
I am talking about Lynott.
OK, so black and white line are so high contrast.
High contrast is helping the algorithm in Inkscape to really recognize where the edges of your drawing
and this will reside in much nicer, crisper lines closer to your original brushstrokes.
Secondly, as I said before, the important thing you need to have a high resolution image to for the
outrace to work perfectly, which means 150 300 DPI and a clean, a clean, a very nice clean scan for
this image.
I used a flatbed scanner which is building in our printer, so I didn't just take a photo with my phone
as I was suggesting.
Other parts of the course, of course, feel free to do that when you just want to create a base for
a sketch.
But this to work, for this to work, you need a high resolution image.
OK, so how do we trace how the other trace works in Inkscape?
I select my image and I go to Path because whatever is coming out after the tracing will be a path which
means that editable line and Inkscape.
So I go to path and I hit trace bitmap.
And from here, I have some options.
I just put it here so I have some options and I have this preview window and then I just if I'm happy
with everything, I just heat, OK?
And the tracing happened.
It's very fast, really.
That your options, check your preview heat, OK, done.
But first, I'd go through a bit what is here.
We are focusing on single scans because as I said on this course, we are not working with colors or
different layers of paint.
We are only working with black and white light.
Not so single scan and brightness cut off for tracing.
Method is great for us.
There are some other tracing method here or at the multiple, multiple scans.
Of course you see color grays.
Etc., But what we do is brightness can use the brightness cutoff, which is set by this brightness
threshold, which is telling the algorithm, OK, what is black and what is white for me, what is black
and white on my drawing and how I want it to be represented in the vector image.
So usually it comes about 400, 500 originally.
And what if I sat down to 100?
I hit update and I can check it here, OK?
Uh.
My image got brighter, but so much brighter that a lot of my details are not lost.
What if I said it to, I don't know, 800?
I update, OK, now the black is black, but some details are lost here because some of the original
white part of the image also turned black.
You know what I'm getting with this?
Play with this and figure out what is good for your image.
Somewhere in the middle is great, I think.
He'd update.
OK, you see, the lines are crisper and closer to what I had here originally.
Now we have some options here.
Uh, I can set, uh.
The little sports, the little sparkles, if they should be ignored or not, if it should smooth corners
and optimize, I leave all of this on.
Because it's up to you to play with them and do your own experiment.
I usually leave this on because they are helping with later editing.
So everything is set up my to update my preview looks great, I hit OK.
Let's see, I close this little window now, seemingly nothing happened, but.
Tara, this is my traced back to part, and this is this is my bitmap image.
If I zoom in in my bed, my image, you can see the texture of the paper shining through the ink here
and there.
There are little lines and dirty, uh, speckles and dots on the drawing, which are natural for a paper
drawing.
And it looks nice.
But now here it is raised.
The edges are following the curves, I drew on the paper very nicely, but it is black and it is.
Victor, as you can see, I can't I can click on it with the no to it's editable, it's vector based,
I can print it, I can use it for later on.
Uh, I will give you this image as well.
You can get it with the court and you can try tracing it and play with it so you can get the same same
results as me or different.
Have your experiments, but I highly encourage you and I know this is why you are in the course to try
it and play with your drawings and have your own results in the next lecture.
I will talk about a bit more today about tracing and why I use it and why I don't use it.