There IS a way to reduce the number of nodes - Path menu > Simplify. I am now thinking unless I can find a way of automatically reducing the number of nodes while preserving rendition quality, maybe the 'Carbon trace' method suggested before is more efficient ? As this is 2-black&white line-drawing, any suggestions for alternate settings in the Trace Bitmap dialog ? However, when I used Irfanview to reduce the default 16k colours in the 'black&white' greyscale source to 2 colours, sharp then blur, remove dithering Inkscape then produced 12.391 nodes - bigger than before, so that did nt help.Īnother thought: I used the Default Single scan parameters, and default option values. It also occured to me now, maybe I should have tried preprocessing the source JPG to present an easier task for Trace Bitmap to use. I am also thinking even if this also results in a perfect rendition, the possible 10,312 objects produced, may be too big a job to edit to reduce the 10,000 objects down the few hundred buildings shown on the Street Plan ? I was thinking the next step is a further conversion, from a single 10,312 node object down to a few hundred separate objects. convert text to the more efficient SVG Text object type, convert some buildings to simple rectangle objects, perhaps add fill colours to some buildings. However, as a step 2, I want to be able to edit the logical objects (5 streets containing a few hundred buildings) in the SVG version, eg. The SVG version is also black lines on white background and visually is near perfect reproduction of the 170KB JPG source. Over the weekend made progress using your suggested 'Trace bitmap' using the defaults (Single scan) which successfully converted my simple streetplan to a SVG that was a big 1.2MB file containing 1 object of 10312 nodes. My facilities are limited to source streetplan on paper and a digital camera I used to get a digital copy. I see since my logon last Friday some further input.

Sorry, I am a long way from internet access, so prepared this reply at base and took it to a cybercafe for upload. Or Mediterranian.? (My brain seems to be much older than the rest of me, lol ) But if you search with 'map' you should find it quickly.or.rats, I can't remember.I think it might have been a map of Tanzania, if the 'map' search returns too many results.

And there's another very recent one, but I can't remember the title. One recent topic is entitled 'Carbon Paper'.

Usually folks who do this (again including me) prefer to reduce the opacity of the layer with the original, and so it's just like tracing the map on tracing paper (except the Inkscape pen takes some practice.however for me, much less than with Trace bitmap).Īnd as druban suggested, you can find more detailed tips by searching the forum. You would open Inkscape, import the map, add a new layer, and draw on the new layer, directly over the map. So if time is a factor, you might want to go with the other approachĪnd the other way is to trace it by hand. There is quite a learning curve, it seems, for most users, including me. One would be to use Path menu > Trace bitmap. In general, there are a couple of ways to approach it.

Vectorizing an image in inkscape