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Inkscape Tutorial

Getting Started With Tracing

One of the useful tools in Inkscape
is for tracing a bitmap
(photo - scanned image - etc.)
into a <path> element for an SVG drawing.

Tracer's purpose is not to reproduce an
exact duplicate of an original image,
instead it produces a set of curves as a
resource for a drawing.

For this demo, I am using the Botticelli Venus:

Load or import
An image.
select it.
Click on
Path -> Trace Bitmap
(Shift-Alt-B Also
works here)
The window will
be similar to
what you see
below.

This shows the result
of choosing
Brightness Threshold

This shows the result
of choosing
Optimal Edge Detection

This shows the result
of choosing
Color Quantization

Changing the numbers in the
value boxes will vary the results.

After tracing, the image
will have a large
number of nodes.
Path -> Simplify
(or Control-L)
will reduce the
number of nodes,
and simplify the
appearance of the
tracing somewhat.