Hello, I'm new and have been using GIMP and Inkscape to create vector clipart for various purposes, and uploading most to the OpenClipArtLibrary, most of it black and white. I've colored a few in GIMP and vectorized them with GIMP and they've done well, but others seem to "fuzz" really badly, looking blurry and "out of focus", even though the b&w version looks fine, and I can't figure out why. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

My OCAL gallery: http://www.openclipart.org/user-cliparts/jpneok
example blurry pic (caution: large target pic): http://www.openclipart.org/detail/14173 ... -by-jpneok

Is it my "pen size", which I have set at about 10? I tried 5-8 to begin with, and I use the "line" method, as the bezier curve thing in GIMP doesn't seem to work for me, I find it much more intuitive to just trace one segment to another and Inkscape smooths things out to the point that I'm satisfied, and I can't figure out how to use tracing and curves in Inkscape itself. I realize you all can't advise me on the GIMP pixel size but does that look like the problem? I changed it to a larger size because when vectorizing, Inkscape was cutting out a bit and I was losing line, getting white space.

Thanks for any feedback or advice. -JP

Not really an answer, but have you seen http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery ... comics.png and http://inkscape.org/screenshots/gallery ... bucket.png on how to use the paint bucket tool within Inscape - partially the use of a second layer under the outline layer for the filling (in combination with the grow command)

I had not seen these, thank you. This is not exactly what I am having trouble with specifically, but can help for looking at coloring my b&w vectors in Inkscape, so thank you for that!

I've had that issue too, not exactly sure why, so can't really answer it, but, for me, I'm wondering if it's because sometimes I use the blur tool, then later group objects and it becomes fuzzy, or, at other times, then ungroup them and try to remove the blur. In both cases they turn fuzzy just a bit. Does this sound familiar to you?

So you draw it with GIMP and then use Inkscape's Trace Bitmap?
I know that's not what you said, but I downloaded your sample image, and it looks like it has been vectorized with Trace Bitmap. I know that GIMP's handling of vectors is very poor in comparison to Inkscape, and that might be how GIMP vectorized it??

I know it's hard for an artist to use Inkscape's Pen/Bezier tool in anything resembling an intuitive manner. If you were willing to invest in a graphics tablet, you could use Inkscape, and then draw natively directly into Inkscape, and avoid this fuzzy thing entirely.

I'm not really an artist, although Inkscape allows me to pretend to be . So I often trace things by hand using the Pen tool. And I realize this is still less than satisfactory as well, but just to mention it. I put the image I'm tracing on a layer by itself, and make it partially transparent. Then I turn on snapping and use the Pen tool to set nodes around the outline. That gives me a clean path, that can be filled perfectly, using Fill or Paint Bucket.

Oh, ok I just re-read your message. I think you'd have much better luck using GIMP to draw just the paths. The paths can be easily vectorized with Trace Bitmap, and then you can color with Inkscape's Paint Bucket, and retain crisp, clean lines. I think coloring it in GIMP is what's causing the trouble. It has to do with the way raster graphics is different from vector graphics, and how either GIMP or Inkscape converts it.