Inkscape Tutorial: Vectorize Your Drawing

As this previous post discussed some great open source programs that I have used - I wanted to show you how to take a drawing you have and turn it into an SVG. Useful for many reasons - but if you're into logo design or will need to reproduce your graphic at several different sizes (particularly large ones) then converting your art into SVG format is hugely appealing. If you have a JPG file you're working with, it has a finite resolution. You can't endlessly enlarge it without seeing serious decline in the quality of image. SVGs take care of that problem - they are infinitely resizable and lossless. So not only can you change the size of your image as much as you like, you can save it, and resave it without losing image quality.

Now, onto the important bit for this tutorial. I wanted to make an image for a poster, and prefer to sketch out my ideas in pencil and then turn them into vectorized images. Gather your materials: a drawing in any medium, computer, scanner, Photoshop (or GIMP), and Inkscape (or Illustrator).

1. Sketch your image in pencil. Erase any stray marks.

2. Outline your image in any color marker (makes the trace more solid). I outlined mine in the colors I planned on adding with Photoshop. You don't have to do this.

> Scan your image and save as JPG.

3. Open Inkscape.

4. Open your new JPG in Inkscape. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT YOUR IMAGE BY CLICKING ON IT before you do the next step.

5. Go to Path > Trace Bitmap

6. The Trace Bitmap window will open. This is where you can play with the type of trace that will occur. I chose Colors, Scans (5), and checked Smooth/Stack Scans/Remove Background. If you click on "Update" you will see a preview of your image. If all is well, click "OK."

7. Close the Trace Bitmap window. Select your image and drag it off to the right side. You will see that you now have two images. KEEP THE ONE YOU MOVED! The original JPG image is left in the canvas area, select it and delete. Move the SVG image back into the canvas area.

8. Save the image as a .svg so that you always have the vectorized version. The last step I take is to export the image as a PNG so that can have a transparent background and a file I can further edit. Go to File > Export Bitmap > Browse. Type the name of your new image here and add ".png" to the end of the file name. Click Save. That window will close and you will be left with the Export window. Click Export. Your image will be saved as a .png. You can now open it in a program like Photoshop to add your color layers and further edit.

 

Before                                                                         After further edit in PSE