Hi,

I'm new to Inkscape and new to design.

I'm designing a t-shirt for use on zazzle. They use the .png format.

I exported my file as bitmap and it saved with the png extension. Good.

Now I want to change design, but when I open it, it opens as a png file and I can't edit the design.

Can I easily change it back to svg? Should I have first saved it as an svg and then exported it as a bitmap?

I can start the design over. No big deal. It would be a lot easier to just convert it back, but I also need to know for the future.

THANK YOU!

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Yes, if you think you might need to edit again in the future, you should definitely save as SVG before exporting. I only very rarely export a PNG without saving an SVG first. Even just to make examples for a forum topic, I save an SVG. So if you plan to do this very often in the future, definitely I would suggest saving SVGs almost always.

It can be converted back using Path menu > Trace Bitmap, but it will probably be harder to edit than the original. That's because Trace Bitmap does something similar to the Stroke to Path command. For example, what originally was a simple straight segment with 2 nodes will be changed to a closed path with 4 nodes -- a very skinny rectangle. (If it was say 3 nodes and a bezier curve, it might end up with 8 to 12 nodes, closed path.) But you could experiment with the various settings, and try for an acceptable conversion. But you might end up having to draw it again this time.

At least you know for next time, though

Hi.

Sometime ago I filed this bug at launchpad.

It basically says that when opening a png file directly in Inkscaping (espechially when manually tracing/redrawing), then you must be extremely carefully to use SAVE AS to save the svg graphic. If use SAVE (Ctrl+S) directly, most versions of Inkscape then just owerwrite the original raster file, and your work is just lost.

This bug has bothered me some times.