Hi,

I've been doodling for a while now, and mainly use fineliners with lots of line detail (see attached). For ages I've wanted to make prints, tshirts, etc, but have been putting it off. I've decided to bite the bullet and I recently installed Inkscape. I was under the impression I needed to vectorize to get the finished result I'm after, but after playing around with 'trace bitmap' and getting very clipart looking results, I am now wondering if it's something else I need to do instead.

Basically, I want to smarten up my images and make sure all the black is at the same level and there's no white bits coming through where I haven't shaded thoroughly enough, but I want it still retain an organic vibe and I don't want to make it look too comic/cartoony. So the question is: do I vectorize, and if so, is anyone able to help with what options I need to be using in the trace bitmap feature, and how much of them? Or is there a different technique I need to be using?

Also, does anyone know how I can isolate the image, so there's no background, so I can put the image on a tshirt, for example?

Here's a couple of examples of the end result I'm after:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/627883272/lion-artwork-poster-and-print-hand-drawn?ref=related-1
https://www.sloclo.com/listing/26328573 ... ie-t-shirt

I've attached a couple of examples of my drawings.

I would scan the artwork at very high resolution before running the trace bitmap.

While the conversion won't necessarily capture the variation in line density, vector conversion could still be very helpful for output to merch where the density would be likely lost.

There are settings in the trace bitmap dialog to remove the background, and the scans can also be split up. The trace bitmap dialog will not remove the original image, which can be deleted or hidden after tracing.

After doing some level correction about the first image to get rid of the greyness the default autotrace settings doing a pretty well job:




Cheers
P.

Thanks both for your tips.

Polygon, the result you achieved was what I was achieving, but I'm looking to create something which is more natural to the original, but just 'solidifying' my lines, if you like. Thanks for playing around with it.

tylerdurden, those images were taken with my camera so I could just have a play. I originally scanned the 'heart on head' image using a Canon Lide 200, but it was coming out a lot worse quality. I'm wondering whether I need a better scanner, or whether that won't affect the result Polygon got anyway?

Also, do you mean that it's a 'must' that I vectorize an image if I plan to put it on merch?

Cheers.

richpip wrote:...
tylerdurden, those images were taken with my camera so I could just have a play. I originally scanned the 'heart on head' image using a Canon Lide 200, but it was coming out a lot worse quality. I'm wondering whether I need a better scanner, or whether that won't affect the result Polygon got anyway?

Also, do you mean that it's a 'must' that I vectorize an image if I plan to put it on merch?

I might use a higher rez scanner.

You don't need to use vector for merch, but vector does offer the scalability that bitmaps don't.