Dear all,

I often use Inkscape to edit Screenshots. I capture them by pressing the PrntScrn button and use CTRL + V for pasting into Inkscape. After editing, I export to bitmap (.png format) and use on some website.

The result is reasonable but I feel there should be substantial room for improvement. I'm not sure where to look, though. When working, I feel as if the screenshot already loses some "sharpness" as soon as I paste it into Inkscape. I can imagine the resolution decreases in order to reduce file size. Can I prevent that? Or should I paste into Irfanview, save and import into Inkscape? Or should Inkscape be considered unsuitable for this kind of task altogether?

All suggestions appreciated.

Ruben

Inkscape really is not designed for this kind of task. It excels at vector drawings, but since you're both importing and exporting raster (i.e, pixel-based) images, an image editing tool such as GIMP would be more suited for this.

The reason the image appears to lose "sharpness" is because of scaling. When the resolution of your input image doesn't match what Inkscape is displaying, or the resolution you are exporting at, the image has to be scaled to match. To avoid ugly artifacts that can be introduced by scaling (known as aliasing), the image is blurred before scaling, which is why the image appears less sharp.

After some research, it seems that snagit is perhaps a better option here than Inkscape. Unfortunately, the editing doesn't go quite as smoothly as with Inkscape but the end result looks better.

In a previous attempt, I tried to increase the image size before importing into Inkscape which seemed to help a bit. However, after exporting and resizing back to normal dimensions, I lost quite a bit of quality so that didn't help in the end. It also doesn't seem to make a difference whether I import the screen shot or paste directly into Inkscape.

I still hope somebody can confirm that there's no hidden option or clever trick to get sharp screenshots out of Inkscape. Perhaps the SVG and Bitmap philosophies just don't make for a happy marriage by nature...

I've had a similar experience with Inkscape, and indeed it's not what Inkscape was designed to do. While Export Bitmap makes brilliant PNG versions of original vectors, it can't handle imported raster images. When you import a raster image, then ask Inkscape to convert to PNG, it doesn't just save that image. Whatever process Inkscape uses to convert vectors, Inkscape applies to something that's already a raster image. I think that's what causes the distortion. Since the pasted (imported) image is already raster, it should need no further processing. But Inkscape doesn't know that. For all Inkscape knows, you're asking it to convert a vector image.

There are many, MANY programs out there for the purpose of getting screenshots. They generally might be called snipping, clipping screen caps, screen dumps. Windows 7 has a native app for this, called Snipping Tool, and can be found in Start > All Programs > Accessories. I've found it to be quite easy to use. Or any Windows os will have MS Paint (in same Accessories folder). So Prnt Scrn can be pasted into Paint, cropped, and saved in whatever format you want.

The screenshot you put into inkscape should match the dimensions of your screen.
There is no such compression that would make it wrong.
The reason why it gets blurred after exporting, is that it will be re-rendered to a raster image
by the inkscape export option -with anti-aliasing,
and, to make it look perfect, you will have to adjust the parametres to make each of the screenshot image's pixels
aligned to the inkscape export's pixel grid.
Inkscape works with 90 dpi, so for best results,
shouldn't scale the pasted screenshot's dimensions,
you should set even numbers of positions for images,
and for the exporting area,
and use an export resolution of 90dpi, or n*90dpi.
With these options it will appear fine.

Thanks a million to everyone helping out! I'm getting perfect screenshots from Inkscape now!

The basic answer for me is: do the cropping before pasting into Inkscape (e.g. in Irfanview with shift + c). Don't edit the bitmap itself in Inkscape, just add guides and other stuff. Export drawing at 90 DPI and all will be fine.

I had no clue about these issues so this was very helpful!