Can't change stroke colour

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:58 pm

This should be easiest thing in the world and I can change calligraphy stroke and fill colours easily, but the bezier and freehand stroke colours won't change, shift+click has no effect.

Screenshot if there's a clue in that: http://imgur.com/LuucA

Does anyone what's wrong? You'll save a fellow human from losing his wits!

Postby **brynn** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:13 pm

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

I'm afraid you'll have to provide us the SVG file. Your screenshot does not have the problem stroke selected, so there's really no way to get a clue from it. If you don't want to provide the SVG file, at least show a screenshot of the whole entire Inkscape window, WITH the problem stroke selected. Then we might be able to see clues. No guarantees though. The SVG file would be best.

Or meanwhile, you could check to make sure that the stroke is not transparent.

BobSongs · Postby **BobSongs** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 4:33 pm

Wow, that's a tricky one...

You're obviously quite talented with Inkscape... so forgive the next question if it appears to question your understanding of the software:

Selecting the element in question followed by Ctrl+Shift+F and clicking the Stroke Paint tab is done, yes? And it has no effect on the selected object when you make adjustments to the color?

And under the Stroke Style tab the thickness of the object is set to something higher than zero?

And with all that done... the stroke color does not change?

I just want to confirm this so that we aren't at cross-purposes.

Your image doesn't distinctly show the element that isn't responding to the adjustment. If you could single it out for us, that'd be mighty kind of you.

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:19 pm

OK, thanks guys, but I'm still at a loss as to what's locking the stroke colour set. And I'm also a complete noob, no pro

the .svg: http://www.mediafire.com/?lg1ns8pm1sc2djp (mediafie link to uploaded svg)

Postby **brynn** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:47 pm

Ok, I have the SVG file, but still don't know which is the problematic part. Fortunately, it's a simple enough drawing to use a process of elimination. There is an imbedded image in it (white shield) to which you will not be able to add a stroke, because it's not a vector element. To everything else, I can add a stroke as expected.

If the white shield image is not where you're having the problem. Please let us know which object is having the problem

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 1:24 am

Aha, so no drawing on top of an embedded png, thanks for clearing that out. If you were to draw a white outline of the shield, how would you go about it? (sorry I'm so demanding with my questions)

Edit: I can still add calligraphy strokes to the shield without a problem, though, it's just bezier and freehand that won't accept stroke colour change

Postby **druban** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:36 am

When you say

bimsebasse wrote:bezier and freehand that won't accept stroke colour change

do you mean that you can't get these tools to draw new strokes in the colour that you picked?
If so, then you want to go to your inkscape preferences and change the preference for these tools to "last used style" instead of 'this tool's own style". This might also be something you have tried already, but let us know if it works...

And your other question:
For fairly simple objects like your white shield, autotracing should yield a perfect translation from raster to vector, (path menu > trace bitmap).

Later: Unfortunately your chosen bitmap is very low-res, complicating the trace function. In this case, some node editing is required. Inkscape does not currently have an easy way to make an object symmetric, so one has to create a number of guides to achieve this end, as well as using the align dialog.

The attached file was made using a filter to increase the contrast and decrease the lightness of the bitmap before tracing. Then the resulting path was duplicated, flipped horizontally and unioned, overlapping nodes were aligned etc. etc....

Postby **brynn** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:20 pm

Aha, so no drawing on top of an embedded png,

Oh no, you can draw on top of it, and you should be able to add color to a stroke on top of it. I was thinking you might have been trying to add a stroke to the white shield itself. But you can draw a shield on top of it, by tracing manually with Pen or Pencil. Or as druban suggested, using Trace Bitmap. And you should be able to add a stroke, or change the stroke color.

Unfortunately, we still don't know which part of your image is the problem (if it's not the shield).

Depending on how you have preferences set, on whatever tools you're using, your stroke may be transparent, and that's why you can't see it.

Is it something that's in the file that's not working? Or is the problem not there, because you can't see the stroke that you draw?
Ok, so I've used Shift + click to add strokes to existing objects. The stroke is added, as expected, but on one of the objects, its opacity is 8%, which means it's almost completely transparent. But that's not the case with all the objects.

OH! Are you trying to change the color of the lines around the green checkmark? You can change that stroke color all you want, and not have any effect. That's because they are not strokes, but filled shapes. It looks like possibly Stroke to Path may have been used?

We're still guessing though :roll:

Any clarity from you would be helpful

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 4:38 am

Thanks guys, very, very helpful replies - that ought to be enough for me to work it out. Thanks again.

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 10:12 am

OK, the problem was as mentioned above that my tool preferences were not set to "last used style", so that's that sorted. Thanks again for all the kind help, I'm embarrassed my beginner's stupidity has bothered several different very helpful users

bimsebasse · Postby **bimsebasse** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:27 am

druban wrote:The attached file was made using a filter to increase the contrast and decrease the lightness of the bitmap before tracing. Then the resulting path was duplicated, flipped horizontally and unioned, overlapping nodes were aligned etc. etc....

THANKS for that which helped me quickly achieve my goal, a white shield with clean and smooth outline. Now I'm puzzled by another thing (...) - drop shadows in my image are shown in inkscape only, not in file views or thumbnails outside inkscape. What idiocy am I resposible for now?

So close!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/c94a7ol2d ... plate3.svg

EDIT: nevermind, achieved the same by placing duplicated gradually more opaque black shields underneath the top white shield, finally solved something on my own in inkscape

Postby **druban** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:25 am

Drop shadows from the filter menu are filter effects and not certain to display properly in many SVG viewers. To guarantee viewability, you have to export a bitmap, but then of course you lose the scalability and filesize benefits.

achieved the same by placing duplicated gradually more opaque black shields underneath the top white shield

That's the classic, foolproof, and all vector way to achieve the effect!

You could also try the extension>generate from path>interpolate to automatically create the multiple copies. The attached file shows this effect. The two objects used to generate the group of interpolated shapes are still there for you to look at. They are copies of the shield that have been dynamically offset - this rounds the corners enough for the shadow to look soft and convincing.

: with drop shadow.png (4.89 KiB) Viewed 8873 times

Postby **brynn** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 1:33 pm

Thanks again for all the kind help, I'm embarrassed my beginner's stupidity has bothered several different very helpful users

NO worries at all!
We wouldn't be here if we didn't like to help

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