Hi

I found an SVG of a pike (the fish) which is purely black and white:
http://openclipart.org/detail/7101/pike-by-johnny_automatic-7101

I would like to give the fish a green color behind the black lines of the scales and fins etc (my plan is to place a green pike-shaped shape behind the fish consisting of black shapes).

My question is: how do I create an outline of the entire fish so that I can create the green shape?

Help will be very much appreciated!

Best,
Karsten

Welcome Karsten!

Hhm, well I tried to save the image, so that I could look at it closely with Inkscape. But whenever I try, Firefox crashes. 3 tries, 3 crashes!

There are a couple of things I was going to try. One was that I was going to try using the Paint Bucket tool. This will fill color in between all the black parts. You'll have to adjust the Threshold and grow/shrink values, probably. A Grow value of between 0.5 and 1.0 should work, but I'm not sure about the Threshold. Then you could delete the inner nodes to result in one single closed path. Or it might work for you, without deleting nodes. Be sure to lower the new green-to-be shape below the black. (http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... ucket.html)

The other thing I was going to try, was duplicate the whole thing, then Path menu > Union. I'm not sure if that would work, so I wanted to try it before suggesting it. But you can try it.

Failing all those, you'd have to use node editing. But I think one or both should work

Hi.
This might not be the most efficient way of doing this - I am still at beginner level in Inkscape and there are always more than one way to skin - a fish!

To Separate the outline of the fish:
1 Make two new Layers - (Shift - CTRL - L) - Name one "Fish" and one "Fish_Outline" or something you recognize.
2 Make the "Fish_Outline" the bottom Layer.
3 Select all - CTRL A.
4 Press Shift - PGUP to move the fish to the "Fish"Layer". The status on bottom of Inkscape window should say "209 Objects of type path in Layer Fish.
5 Clone - CTRL D
6 Move the clone down to the bottom layer - (Shift - Page Down). See the status at the bottom of the inkscape window - It should say "209 Objects of type path in Layer Fish_Outline"
7 Hide the "fish" Layer by clicking the eye beside the fish layer in the layer dialog box.
8 Break apart the Paths - (Shift - Ctrl - K)
9 Everything is now Black - Don't worry!
10 Select all (Ctrl - A)
11Set fill to "none"
12 Set Stroke to Black

You will now have this:


13 Select Edith Path By Nodes - F2
14 Move mouse pointer slowly from above fish until the outline turns red. Click Left Mouse Button. The outline is now selected.
15 Press F1 to go to Object mode.
16 Invert the selection - ( ! )
17 Press delete to delete all

Hopefully - You will now have this:


18 Set fill to your green!
19 Make the Fish layer visible.

Viola!


Good Luck!!
RGDS Ragnar

Hi

Thanks a lot to both of you for your advice!

I have tried the first two approaches suggested by brynn and managed to fill the fish with both methods - Cool!!

I have a chimp to color also and I will try Ragnar approach for that.

Again, thanks!

Karsten

Another approach that I use for things like this is as follows:

1) If there are any gaps in the perimeter of the object, draw temporary lines to close them. Pick a colour that stands out, so you can easily remove them when you're finished. In the case of the fish image this isn't necessary as there are no gaps that I can see.

2) Draw a rectangle that completely encloses the object, with some room to spare all around. Give it a fill that contrasts with the object's perimeter, and a stroke that's obvious (thick black stroke and yellow fill, for example).

3) Move the rectangle down below the fish in the z-order.

4) Use to fill the rectangle with another colour. Click on a point that's inside the rectangle, but outside the object you want. The result is effectively the inverse of the shape you're looking for - a rectangle with a fish cut out of it, in this case.

5) Use Path > Break Apart on this filled shape. Now delete the outer part, leaving you with the fish-shaped inner part.

6) Tidy up by removing the enclosing rectangle and any temporary lines you created in step (1).


As is often the case with these things, it sounds a lot more complex when written down than it is in practice.