Hello All,
I'm using the bitmap trace function to bring in some line art drawings and have a question. Some of the drawings are reading each side of the drawn line as a separate path. Is there a way of combining those paths or making the bitmap trace "see" the line as a single path instead of two?

What I've been doing to overcome it is just use the pen tool to manually trace the lines. This gets me what I want, but it's a bit slower than the "trace bitmap" function.

Any help is appreciated and thanks in advance,
Michael

Have you tried with the Stack scans option off?

No, haven't tried that yet. Honestly I'm pretty new to it all and wasn't sure what that was. I'll go read the manual and play with it some more.

I have to say, I am amazed at what I've been able to do with Inkscape already. I'm an woodworking hobbiest and this is making templates soooooooooooo easy. It's great!

Thanks for the tip.
Michael

You want a line a line in your drawing to be traced as a single path with a stroke? This isn't possible sorry. Inkscape will only create a filled object. Unfortunately you've already found the only work around

Although, if you're doing this professionally and you can afford to spend a little money, you may find using a graphics tablet a lot more effecient for redrawing your lines--I can't promise it'll be ideal so try before you buy . At the same time perhaps it doesn't matter so much that the lines aren't a single stroke? I know I sometimes get caught up in the detail, when it doesn't really matter so long as the end product looks the same.

It's sloppy but on a lot of the outlines generated by trace, you can make a path from a filled object. Take the trace path do a Break Apart under that path menu. You'll get two paths -- an inner and out one. Keep the better path, delete the other one. Then inset or outset the path you kept to get closer to original lines. Or a do a dynamic offset on it. About half the time it's faster to trace it again by hand.

Over Kill Illustration:


It'll work on fairly simple paths. If the lines are about even width, you can save time by using inset or outset instead of dynamic offset. Set the number of pixels to move under File -->Inkscape Preferences --> Steps to 1/2 the width of the line.

Good tip, EarlyBlake. I didn't think of that.

EarlyBlake, thank you for the fine example. I actually tried something similar using inset/outset, but didn't get nearly the results you did. I'll have to remember those steps for my workflow.

Thank you to all,
Michael