Hello,
Let me start by saying I apologize if this question has been asked before I have searched but couldn't find anything. I'm an airbrush artist looking to create a stencil of a persons face. Individually the eyes, ears, jawline, mouth you get the picture. I have the pic I plan to use loaded in Inkscape but keep getting frustrated trying to trace the eyes and lashes. Im new to this so any help is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Steve

Which part of the tracing process do you find frustrating?
Should be easy - Pen tool, click, move mouse/cursor, click... end so on.

Are you thinking of using Inkscape to create images which look like they are airbrushed? Or maybe you just meant that part as an introduction, and what you want to do has nothing to do with airbrushing?

Hhm, well no, I don't really get the picture. Do you mean you have an image that you want to use like a stencil, and then as if it were a real stencil, you want to drag your pen around the edges of the stencil? Or you want to fill in the stencil with an airbrush effect? Well, then that would not look airbrushed at all. It would have a hard edge because of the stencil?

Can you show some kind of example of what you want to do? Or share your SVG file, so we can see what you've started?

Sorry I guess I was a little vague. What I'd like to do is create a traced image of a face then put it in a plotter/cutter to create a pyshical hard edge stencil.
I haven't worked much with the pen tool Maestal but I'm worried I may miss some minor detail. Is there a setting that could trace a selected area? I will play with it some more today and let you know how it goes!
Thank you both!

Might be useful to check these chapters of Manual as well

Oooohh, you're making the physical stencils. Ok!

In addition to the manual info which Maestral provided, I think there's a brief tutorial in the Help menu > Tutorials > Tracing. It's for auto-tracing, and as I recall, it's fairly cursory.

I've written a series of tutorials about how to convert a raster image to vector paths, because there's a lot of information to consider, in various different situations. I'll put the link below. But basically, you have a choice of either "manually" tracing, using Inkscape's Pen/Bezeir tool, or auto-tracing using Path menu > Trace Bitmap (or some other auto-trace engine). I would say for this project, the deciding factor will be how much detail you want in the result.

Start with this tutorial, which I hope can help people to make a decision on their own, for which is the best way for their particular situation:
https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/ind ... article=52

And it will guide you to instructions for whichever way you decide to use. Please feel free to ask questions, if something isn't clear.