Picked up vector drawing for the first time ever today. Right now I'm trying to make a vector image of our school patch (a shield shape) and I've done a bitmap trace, broke apart the paths and deleted them all except the shield outline. Then I turned off the fill for that path, increased the stroke width and tweaked the path a bit to make it fit the patch border a bit better.

Right now the issue is that at the upper left corner, a hard corner, the path curves and does not follow the hard 90 degree turn. I want to edit the path to snug up against the edge of the patch in this corner area (and while I'm at it, snugging it up to the top of the patch in the upper left area before the corner would be nice, too). Here's a screencap with my current path stroke.



What would be the best way to go about this?

Edit 03/05/2010: Here's a screencap zoomed out a bit. Unfortunately the JPEG compression seemed to make it less visible, but up in the upper left corner is the area in the previous screencap.

It's hard to tell with your bitmap zoomed in like that, but I think I understand from your description.

Using the node tool, look at the tool control bar (across the top of the canvas), just above the ruler, at the far right, I think 2nd to last, but maybe last (can't remember), there's a button called "Show handles" (hover over and wait for Tool Tip). Depending on your screen res, monitor size, etc., there may not be a button; there may be be a downward pointing triangle/arrow that reveals a dropdown menu. Either way, click Show handles.

Now when you select the node or nodes in question, you will see its handles. But first, check to see that the node is a corner or cusp node (triangle shape). If it's a square shape, change it to corner or cusp on the tool control bar (7th button from left). Next hover your mouse over the handle, and you will see its tiny circle highlighted red. While it's highlighted, hold down Ctrl key and click. That retracts the handle. You can pull it back out again, if needed, using Shift + drag.

You will find that retracting the handle completely makes the segment straight, on the same side of the node that the handle is on. But you may find that's too much for your patch/shield. In that case, pull the handle back out, and move the handle around until it fits the outline just right. Tip -- if you zoom in, like as far as in your screen shot, you can see it better, and get a more precise fit. OR, you may find that adjusting the handles of the node next to the one that you just retracted, works better than pulling back out and adjusting the handles of the node in quesiton. Sometimes if I'm having trouble getting a curve just right, I find it works better to use a node handle "next door". So just experiment and find what works best for you and this particular image (there's always Undo)

Please see the links in my signature for tutorials and manual (also found in Help menu). Look up nodes or node editing or node tool or whatever. They are some of the better instructional materials that I've seen on open source software, and are invaluable in learning Inkscape!