Hello everyone. I like to toy around with Inkscape and have been teaching myself Inkscape for a few years essentially, and still have a lot to learn. At the moment I have a problem with a few files I've created.

Most I think are ones that include color. My usual method is to trace bitmap in Inkscape, export it to PNG, make final edits in Photoshop, resave the edited PNG and then bitmap trace THAT result in Inkscape, then save that as an SVG.

I try to keep SVG images at about 1000 px and 300 dpi or less and 3-6 MB. Although some files look fine in Inkscape, I've noticed they seem to load a lot slower and in most of the things I have that view thumbnails or previews, including Irfanview, Adobe Bridge and the Renesis XP explorer extension, these few files are unpreviewable, and I also can't upload these to the Open Clip Art Library.

My Question: Is there a way to refine, reduce or somehow otherwise "fix" these files, so they're "valid"? I know there is a Simplify option in the Inkscape menu but it almost never results in something acceptable (turns things into sketchy lines or blotches). What am I missing? Thank you in advance for any replies.

-JP

This is a link to my box.com account with 3 of my files:
File 1: https://app.box.com/s/zhqun2axudodh84myq06
File 2: https://app.box.com/s/v7eadypdgxy6vty70j7v
File 3: https://app.box.com/s/1hwcnyk4f7tkdg29v8xt

Hi.

They all seem valid to me, each of them opens fine.
But graphically the auto-trace option looks plain horrible.
Your black outlines are made up by dozens of different coloured paths, resulting in a blurred look.
It would look much better if there were much less paths involved, and such parallel edges were avoided.

Maybe check these topics:
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=16457
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16514

Those were extremely helpful and I feel like an idiot to some extent. By NOT merging my lines layer and colors layer before saving a PNG to load into Inkscape and doing trace bitmap, I get a MUCH crisper lined and colored image. I still can't upload it to OCAL for some reason but here is my wrestler guy SVG and PNG. Thanks so much!

SVG: https://app.box.com/s/e9uwrcn7pomscl14qmov

PNG of above:

Here is how it would work graphically:


Only 10 shades were used. In the original, there were 20?
And many of them were used to soften those outlines. For what end?
This one was manually coloured with the pen tool, in a rough way. Just for showing the basic idea, but I'm sure you can do better than that.

Wow, interesting. Clearly I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn - I didn't intentionally soften any lines - I just did a trace bitmap on a png I made and it comes out blurry. I have no idea how many 'shades' were used or any of that.

I guess I'm kind of a hack, artistically. I've scanned in things I've drawn, and do rotoscoping (tracing images and modifying them) to get lineart and understand the basics of most graphics stuff but only in the past couple years have I gotten comfortable with using layers and paths.

Thanks a lot for your tips and ideas. =)