Ello all. I am new here and excited to ask a couple of questions. First question. My pc seems to be having a hard time with inkscape but it runs gimp 2.8, scribus, and other apps just fine. It is a dual core amd 5400 with 4 gb of ddr ram. Plenty of hdd space. It seems to run ok on normal tedt layout, but as soon as i add a jpg from my digital camera... Slooooow. I even change the width and height.in inkscape of my image and still somewhat slow. Ok now that is out of the way, here is me last question. My friend has illustraor from adobe cs6. He imports the exact same pic as the one i use that slows down inkscape, does some option that looks like it is drawing tons and tons of blue lines around the image. I asked him what he just did and he said he.converted the jpg to a vector but did not lose any quality at all. When i try to trace in inkscape with multiple scans, i did 40, it still looks weird and crazy. Im not understanding what illustrator is doing so different than inkscape.

Thanks

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

If you still have questions after reading this topic, please reply with further questions
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12160 Note that embedded raster images (JPG is raster) can bloat an Inkscape file

I didn't realize that Adobe had an auto trace feature. And I certainly haven't used it. Maybe you can ask your friend for the name of the feature -- not that we could do anything about it, since Trace Bitmap is all that Inkscape has.

Lol, I just saw some spam the other day, while doing my routine spam rounds. It was...I can't think of the right word to use, but the downloads from this site, said to be able to convert raster to vector with absolutely zero distortion, contained unsafe things (I didn't investigate further). At the time, I thought was a joke. But maybe Illustrator can do that....I just don't know?

thanks for the reply. I have sent a text to my friend and he has not responded yet. I will post as soon as he tells me what tool he was using. I read the thread you linked to, alot of those things, i have no idea how to accomplish.

here is my exact process for a 3700x 2500 photo taken with a digital camera.

file>import>

select the photo and select embed.

resized it to 600x800

path>trace

use by colors with multiple scans. i tried 8 scans but image was hardly viewable. I tried 40 scans and picture was ok. haha.

Im just trying to figure out how to use inkscape as a layout program (single page) with jpgs and allowing those jpgs to be used for professional print. I use scribus for large projects. Just watching my friend use illustrator, i hope inkscape can do just what i saw him do. his flyer he made for my wifes piano lessons was amazing. he took a royalty free photo from flckr, made it grayscale, put it into illustrator and did this cool looking pattern where it looked line sun rays starting in the bottom corner but every other one were grey and dark grey. it was awesome looking. i hope inkscape can do what im looking for it to do. But the whole jpg thing he did was awesome.

thanks

stuff like this would be fun to know. I can do it in scribus with the shapes tool but inkscape is alot different. haha

http://www.flyertutor.com/templates-default.asp

Inkscape should be able to do any of those flyers, at least on a quick glance I say that. It's just that if you want to use photos, is where the big problems start to happen. Because after all, Inkscape is not a raster editor.

I might suggest Help menu > Inkscape manual, and other info in my forum signature. I think Help menu > Tutorials, and the Quick Guide, are the best for beginners. But heck, just dive right into Inkscape! It's the only way you can learn about those things. And you will need them, if you want to work with large files

Just scaling a bitmap in Inkscape by dragging the selection arrows or typing into the Width and Height boxes won't actually reduce the number of pixels in the image, so will have little or no effect on the rendering speed. There are a few options:

1) Resize the image in The GIMP or some other bitmap editor first
2) Use Extensions > Raster > Resample to resample the image to the required pixel dimensions (which won't resize the image on the canvas, you'll still need to do that manually)
3) If you want to keep a high-res version in your file for output purposes, use Edit > Make a Bitmap Copy to create a low-res version then put the high-res copy on a hidden layer. Don't forget to hide the low-res version and show the high-res one before export.


As to converting bitmaps to vectors I would generally advise against it if all you want is something that looks just like the bitmap original. For deliberate artistic effects, or re-creating logos it can be useful, but otherwise you're always going to get an inferior result. If you have enough colour scans to accurately reproduce a high-res, high-colour-depth photographic image then the number of nodes involved will probably slow Inkscape down more than using the big bitmap image in the first place.


Bear in mind that Scribus and The GIMP can both import SVG images (albeit with some limitations), so you might find it most effective to create parts of your design in Inkscape, but composite the whole thing together in another application.

ok all this info is awesome. is there a tutorial on this hiding objects on layers or by splitting the project/ogject into layers? i know of layers from PS and the gimp but not in inkscape. haha. i think from here i can practice making some flyers and see how i do. i know you guys get tons and tons of new topics each day. Is there a specific forum or place i can post on how to accomplish this with out overloading you guys? I like active forums but i understand that if to active, more simplier questions usually get put on back burner. haha.

thanks guys

Well, the forum was absolutely slammed yesterday. But today it's pretty quiet. Either way though, we're here to answer your questions. I don't know of a specific tutorial for working with layers. But again, the manual covers it, and most of the time, is easy to understand, even for beginners. Also, layers are fairly intuitive to use, right in the Inkscape window. Start with the Layers menu

brynn wrote:I don't know of a specific tutorial for working with layers.

I do!

Part 9 of my Inkscape tutorial series in "Full Circle Magazine" covers layers. It's in issue #69 available as a free download here: http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-69/

"Free Circle Magazine" is a Ubuntu/Linux mag, but the Inkscape tutorials are generally applicable to all operating systems. More information, and links to all the published copies with parts of my tutorial in, can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11981

Ello all. Ok im gonna try out the hidden layer thing tonight. If i follow you guys, i create a duplicate lowres image under edit and make sure it is on its own layer, then hide the high rez image by clicking the eye, resize the low rez to wjat i want. When ready to export, hide lowrez, and rwsize the highrez. Is this the right method?

Thanks.

LT72884 wrote:Ello all. Ok im gonna try out the hidden layer thing tonight. If i follow you guys, i create a duplicate lowres image under edit and make sure it is on its own layer, then hide the high rez image by clicking the eye, resize the low rez to wjat i want. When ready to export, hide lowrez, and rwsize the highrez. Is this the right method?

No, I don't follow what you're thinking. First, what is your ultimate goal? At one point, you said you were importing the photo, then using Trace Bitmap. But in this message, I"m not following what you mean by the low and high resolution images.

Oh, I see, you're following Xav's suggestions. Let me review his message.... Hmmm.... Well, somewhere or another, I've lost track of your goals, and I can't seem to find them by reviewing the thread. You want to use your photo for something, like a flyer? But it's slowing down Inkscape too much? So you want to try Xav's 3rd suggestion, to help the file perform better, while you work on it?

Keeping the high resolution image in the file, even on a hidden layer, will still cause the file size to be larger, and could still contribute to some performance problems. (Only if it's embedded though. But if the whole point is to save an original copy in the file, you have to embed.) However, putting it on a hidden layer will still help while you do other things on the canvas.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to let someone else answer this, because I'm thoroughly lost I guess that Xav suggests using "Make a bitmap copy" on a JPG, as a way to reduce the file size (JPG to PNG). But then when you talk about resizing this new low resolution version, that's where I get lost. I don't think that resizing the low res version will be any more successful than resizing the high res version. And then I'm lost again when the last thing you do is export the high res version. Are you exporting it to PNG? PDF? Or other??

Xav, bail me out!

Its all good byrn. im lost to. haha. Yes i am following xavs 3rd suggestion. i am working on the first two sugesstions as well. I need to learn all 3 to see the difference.

What i should have said when i mentioned to resize the low rez is this: Once i import the 3750x1700 picture taken with my canon powershot 6 mega pixle camera, i duplicate it using the 3rd sugestion, but i still have to use the grab arrows to resize a 17 inch photo to fit on the letter sized flyer. That is what i ment by resize. maybe scale was the word to use.

My goal is to make a flyer and add a nice photo from my camera. But i dont want to keep resizing it in gimp or PS until its the size i need it. I was hoping to resize it to a rough guess then use the grab arrows to scale it to the size that fits my style and layout.

how this started out was my friend took that massive photo from my camera, opened it in illustrator, used some feature that made thousands of blue lines around it and then made a kick a$$ poster with it. I dont have illustrator and so i wanted to try it out in inkscape. So i tried a trace of the image and it looked scary. haha. so im not sure what he did in illustrator to make all those blue lines apear all over the image. every time he scaled it, the main image would just be the blue lines, then it would come back. haha. i know, it sounds weird.
\
thanks

WOOT WOOT. Figured it out. I opened a large 5861x13196 size image and saved it as a svg. closed inkscape, reopened it and now i can scale the image just fine without any performance issue. I have scaled i to twice the size and shrunk it 10 times smallewr with no performance loss. all i did was import, save as svg, close the program and then reopen. inkscape now sees the image as a svg and not a jpg so it works faster. haha

however, tracing said picture using trace bitmap with colors... BAD IDEA. hahahahaha. even tracing a small file with 50 scans was a bad idea. haha

i really want to learn how to make photo realistic images in this program. haha

I'm not sure why saving the file and reopening should have had that much difference on speed, but if it works for you then that's great. To clarify, your SVG file still contains an embedded bitmap image, it hasn't been magically converted to vectors.


Brynn, what I was trying to suggest was a way to speed up Inkscape's drawing routines. Resizing such a huge image on the canvas still results in just as many pixels in the bitmap. If you think of each pixel as being a small square in the vector drawing space, then resizing results in just as many squares, but each one is smaller. That can have an impact on redraw speed, especially when zoomed in. So what I was trying (badly) to suggest was something like the following:

1) Load the massive image on its own layer.
2) Resize and reposition the massive file to the right size for the flyer.
3) Use Edit > Make a Bitmap Copy to create a low-res version of the image (the exact resolution depends on the setting in Inkscape Prefs > Bitmaps)
4) Put the copy on another layer, and hide the first one (with the high res image).
5) Draw the rest of the flyer. Redraws should be a lot faster because Inkscape is drawing a much smaller number of pixels.
6) When everything's finished, unhide the high-res layer and hide the low-res one for export.

This approach is far from perfect - it doesn't play well if you need to mask or clip the image, for example, as that still needs to be done on the high-res image. It also makes the file size even larger, as there's now a second bitmap being stored. But it should lead to faster rendering for the main editing part of the job, which was all I was trying to address.

I hope that makes my suggestion a bit clearer.

Interesting. See thats what i thought. It is still an embeded bitmap. Just the file ext is svg with an embeded bitmap. Haha.

So i need to learn how to work with jpgs and other images in inkscape, especially when they are really high detail with many ppi. Resizing in gimp just resizes the dims and does not take away pixle count, i will still have same amount of pixles as before.

Thanks guys

LT72884 wrote: Resizing in gimp just resizes the dims and does not take away pixle count, i will still have same amount of pixles as before.

Oh dear. After all that explanation this is wrong.

Resizing in GIMP in the height and width fields in the scale image dialog changes the pixel dimensions. Changing the resolution fields does not. The dialog will tell you in small type what is going on. It is an informative dialog.

Transforms applied to an image - scaling, rotating, skewing - in Inkscape does not edit, i.e. change the image pixels in any way.

Opps. Lol. I get what you mean now. I opened up gimp and found the scale feature under image tab and noticed i could resize the dims and also change the pixle count. Haha. In inkscape it is called re sampling. Didnt know the diff between terminology. In inkscape i can resample a large photo to 300 by 300 dpi which is perfect for print and then scale it using the arrow handles and what not. I also noticed in gimp that if you just use the scale tool from the left hand side box, it doesnt bringz up the dialog box to control dpi and what not. I think it might be a bug. That window only opens if i go under the image tab. Haha.

Anyway i think i am begining to understand the diff between resize and resample. Next i want to learn how to make great flyers and how to handle raster imagez in my projects.

A somewhat better option (and the one I use to make large-scale projects, like convention wall graphics), is to output low-res versions of your high-res graphics in a program like GIMP, and save them along side your full-res graphics. For example, if my full-res 3mx3m (150dpi) raster wall graphic is wallgraphic.jpg, then I may save a file at half resolution: wallgraphic_small.jpg. I'd then use wallgraphic_small.jpg (link, not embed) to compose my .svg file, and before I output the pdf for printing, ***I SAVE MY FILE***, then right-click my wallgraphic_small.jpg graphic, go to "image properties", and take the "_small" out of the URL file name (be sure to save your work before you do this in case of crash from large file). Inkscape will immediately replace your low-res version with the high-res version, masks and all.

Hope this helps.

-C

Also, keep in mind when working with large format graphics that they are not printed magazine quality (300dpi). They usually are not even printed at screen resolution (75dpi) because they are meant to be seen from a distance. As a general rule, if you can see the whole of your printed image in your field of view, and you can not see the dots, that is the proper dpi resolution for your file.
You can save yourself a lot of disk space and upload time by knowing what resolutions work for what you are designing. I usually export to 72 DPI for convention walls/large displays and 30dpi billboards, even though some would argue that's excessively high quality for reasons I mentioned before.

Good luck!