Tracing a simple template – Paint Bucket Mini Tutorial

Want a quick and easy way to autotrace a simple line art shape in Inkscape without the pesky double line problem? Well, once you have your defaults set, all it takes is one click with the paint bucket tool.

The steps above work for any fairly crisp line art you can open or import into Inkscape. Zoom in so that the shape you want to vectorize fits on the screen and is as large as possible without the “jaggies.” Clicking the plus and minus keys is helpful for finding the right zoom level. Then simply follow the steps on the screen shot above, which is from this file if you want to follow along. (Note: I set my paint bucket fill to none and its stroke to hot pink for high visibility, but remember, colors, line styles, etc. don’t matter to SCAL.)
Some other notes:

• If nothing happens when the paint bucket is clicked, try again and see if the infobar gives you an error message.
• If you do not see an outline appear, but a dotted rectangle appears around the shape, you need to set the stroke (outline color/thickness/transparency) so it is visible. This can be done with the Object>Fill and Stroke pallette.
• You can also switch to outline mode to see your new vector View>Display mode>Outline. The red X is your original image, which doesn’t display in outline mode since it is a bitmap.
• If your template’s shape is not completely closed like the one above, use the “Close Gaps” adjustment to the right of the other settings before you click with the paint bucket.
• If your template’s lines are not crisp like the one above or it has many levels of gray, turn the threshold level up and try again. If you do not like the result, just backspace, change the threshold setting and try again.
• When you are done tracing, you may want to press control-L one or more times to simplify the trace before you cut it. Set the simplification threshold in your Inkscape Preferences>Misc to .0005 for best results.
• If your template consists of multiple shapes, you can hold down the shift key as you click the paint bucket to automatically union each piece to the last.

60 Free Vector Packs and how to use them

From Smashing Magazine comes this awesome listing of some of the best free vector packs available.

The Ultimate Collection Of Free Vector Packs

While the images are beautiful and many are suitable for cutting, few of them are in SVG format. Most are in EPS, PDF or AI format. Newer AI files, as well as PDFs will import directly into Inkscape. When you double click on an EPS file on a Macintosh, it will be converted to PDF automatically and open in Preview. From there all you have to do is save it and Inkscape will make it into an SVG.

Once you have imported an AI or PDF into Inkscape, click on the vector pack and begin ungrouping until you see dotted rectangles around each individual image. To work on an image, drag it off by itself or save it to a new document to do any necessary simplification, color separation or whatever. Once it has been saved in Inkscape you can then import it into SCAL for cutting.

Here’s an example, starting with one of the free vector packs from Designious.com

We open up the EPS version and save it as PDF in Preview, then open it in Inkscape and Ungroup

Then delete everything but the dolphin we were after and saved under a new name.

Free SVGs from DragonArtz Designs

There are many sites where you can get free vector art and I’ll be profiling some of them in the coming days. The freebies at DragonArtz are beautiful, abundant and best of all, come in SVG format.

Now just because something is in SVG doesn’t mean it is ready to cut, or even cuttable at all. To use these with your cutter, open them in Inkscape, select object>ungroup as necessary, delete unwanted items, and then recombine elements with appropriate path commands, separate colors, etc. Then save your edited version and import into SCAL.