I'm preparing a paper for a professional journal amd the editor wants my sketchmaps to be provided as SVG files at 1200 dpi. When I STFW I find that (a) I need to increase the resolution of my .bmp file before importing it to Inkscape (b) The maximum resution of Microsoft Paint, where the files were prepared, is 96 dpi and (c) one of the answers to an earlier question is that when using vector graphics, the resolution doesn't matter. Can someone please offer an alternative to my telling the editor to go and boil his head?

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Maybe you could find some kind of formal explanation of vector graphics which talks about the resolution, or the lack of need for resolution. I often give this link to people to learn more about vector graphics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics. I don't think it specifically says anything about resolution, but I haven't read it through in quite a while. But really, once you get the idea of vectors, it's quite clear how resolution is irrelevant. Maybe if you just simplify it for him. (In raster graphics, the color is mapped to pixels. In vector graphics, there is no mapping to pixels. Therefore, resolution is irrelevant!)

However, if the vector file contains any raster content, then resolution will still be important. That's because the file is not 100% vector. Since it contains some raster elements, you still need to pay attention to resolution. Maybe you could open the raster content that was prepared in MS Paint in an other raster editor which offers higher resolution. Save or export (however the other raster editor works) at the higher resolution. Then import that file into Inkscape. Do whatever else you need to do, then save as SVG. (The GIMP is a good, free, and open source raster editor http://www.gimp.org/)

I guess that if the vector file contains raster elements, it will not be scalable without distortion, as it would be if it were 100% vector. When you have the discussion about resolution with your editor, you might ask if he plans to scale it, and explain why that might not work.

Hi Raggy,

Added note: I noticed that Brynn had answered your post while I was typing this, and mentioned raster content in a vector image.
I had assumed you meant to convert your bitmaps to Vector, which is what you should do. This is because imported
raster elements will continue to be raster (raster=bitmap) elements and you will lose the advantages of using a vector format.
If your already familiar with Inkscape, and working with vector images,then you know all this and I'm wasting a perfectly good explanation.
If not, then you may need to consider using bitmap trace, or manual tracing to make your existing bitmaps into new Vectors (svg images).
This is very easy to do in Inkscape, and will produce sharp images that scale beautifully.

Because your original Bitmaps were created at 92 dpi,
simply scaling the bitmaps to 1200 and importing them, unchanged into an svg image wont produce desirable results.

My original message:
You could just rebuild your sketchmaps in Inkscape, at their current size and save the resulting SVG files.
Then export a png at 1200 dpi, and submit both.
If the sketches are simple, redrawing may work better, and be easier than doing a bitmap trace, but either way
the size of the SVG image wont matter. dpi only matters for the bitmap, since the vector can be faithfully scaled to whatever is required.
(You can resize the svg image to of course, but I really can't imagine why he would want that. )

p.s. Just for fun, tell him to go boil his head anyway.

Thanks, Brynn and Inkspots. Because I'm actually old enough to be Gandalf's grandpa, it takes me a while to learn new tricks. Of course I'll study your input, and read the recommended Wiki article, but it's just possible that I'll be back with further wittering in a week or two.

I don't think the editor can be completely uninformed about this problem -- he's been in post for some years. I'll e-mail him and see if I've misunderstood his instructions.

Thanks again.

raggy wrote:I'm preparing a paper for a professional journal amd the editor wants my sketchmaps to be provided as SVG files at 1200 dpi. When I STFW I find that (a) I need to increase the resolution of my .bmp file before importing it to Inkscape (b) The maximum resution of Microsoft Paint, where the files were prepared, is 96 dpi and (c) one of the answers to an earlier question is that when using vector graphics, the resolution doesn't matter. Can someone please offer an alternative to my telling the editor to go and boil his head?

AFAICT from your question your editor is right insofar as you are probably importing a BMP file into Inkscape, and then thinking that this makes it a vector graphic, but this is not the case. This is still a bitmap embedded in a format (SVG) that can contain both vector and bitmap content. As such, the bitmap part of the file retains its original resolution, although this can be effectively increased or decreased by scaling it in Inkscape - which means (before you get all happy about it) that you can increase the resolution by shrinking the bitmap. So you can make your 96 PPI bitmap into a 1200 PPI bitmap, but only at the cost of making it 1/12th the size. The solution is to initially draw the graphic in your 96 PPI program at 12 times the intended size and then scale it down by a factor of 12 after importing into Inkscape.

The underlying problem may well be that Microsoft Paint is not the most professional application to prepare graphics for publication. Just a suggestion, since i don't know what a sketchmap is. have you considerd the GIMP?