Hi,
My friends have drawn some characters in Mypaint, and GIMP and Photoshop, without any colors.
I need the characters as vector drawings, but when I trace the image (with any kind of options), it gives me a result which is consisted of areas as borders. And I need the borders of the shape to be lines, not areas!
Is there anyway to convert those areas to lines?
Or is there any way I trace the image directly into lines?
Thanks,
Caesar

Welcome to InkscapeForum, Caesar!
It's hard to say exactly what needs to be done, without seeing your result. But it sounds like what you are looking for are Strokes. Select each area (called an Object in Inkscape terms), open Object menu > Fill and Stroke > Stroke Paint tab and click the 2nd box from the left. If you want to change the style of the stroke (like make it wider, narrower, dotted lines, rounded corners, etc.) click the Stroke Style tab.

Depending on your results and what you need, you might get better results by not using Trace Bitmap, and instead this: Import the drawings, place in Layer 1, reduce opacity to your liking, add another layer, and "mouse trace" the drawing. Even though it sounds a bit time-consuming to do it this way, if you use Snap, it goes pretty fast. But again, if you like the results of the automated Trace Bitmap, then no need to do this. Just a quick tip.

Also, please see the links in my signature for some excellent instuctional material

Hi,
Thanks for answering!
About Snap you mentioned, what kind of snap you mean!
I don't get if you mean snapping to the background image or the snap between the curves!
Thanks,
Caesar

I could have sworn I replied to this.....
Anyway, by Snapping, I mean this: http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL ... pping.html
And in this case, I'm suggesting that you use your original images on a lower layer that is partially transparent. Then draw on a layer above it, like with the old fashioned tracing paper. You would be snapping the nodes of the new lines that you draw to the lines of the original image that lies on a lower layer with reduced opacity. After you're finished, of course, you would either delete the original, or hide that layer.

As I said, it might work better to use Trace Bitmap. Since I haven't seen what you're trying to reproduce, I can't say for sure.

Hi Caesar (Hail? )

I am assuming you are trying to use the built in tracer in Inkscape and trying to get the lines in your source raster image to be translated into vector as stroked lines and not filled objects. i don't think that even the most current inkscape lets you do this. You can try the 'stacked scans' option and then manually convert each object into a stroked -and- not- filled object using the fill and stroke dialog, and then move it to the top of the stack manually.... Or you can do the conversion to vector outside Inkscape. An online approach is Vectormagic - you only get two free scans without a subscription though, so I don't know if that's a real solution.
I use the free Wintopo application that gives you a 'centerline trace' option that usually works well.
There is also a command line application (potrace? autotrace?) and a linux application. Others here may be able to tell you more about those.

druban wrote:Hi Caesar (Hail? )
...
I use the free Wintopo application that gives you a 'centerline trace' option that usually works well.
There is also a command line application (potrace? autotrace?) and a linux application. Others here may be able to tell you more about those.

Hi( no need to say "Hail", but it gives me self-confidence ),
I exactly need something like "centerline trace"! But how can I do that with Potrace or Autotrace?!
Thanks,
Caesar

Someone else is going to have to give you the potrace and autotrace advice. Have you tried the Wintopo free app? you can have it running at the same time as Inkscape and just copy and paste the paths or save as eps and open in inkscape...

I am curious about this topic as I have always found most of the tracing output I have experienced to be unsatisfactory. In the end, I usually trace everything by hand. It's time consuming but takes the place of solitaire often enough that the projects get done that way. I have converted some of my favorite bitmapped wallpaper images to SVG for reasons of scalability and clarity as I have displays ranging in size from 1920x1200 down to 1024x600. And since I run Linux on most of my machines, setting an SVG as my wallpaper is trivial.

Would you be interested in posting a sample of the bitmap images here to I can see what we are working with?

Hand tracing of course is the best if you have the time budgeted for that image... If you want to upload a PNG that gave unsatisfactory results or needs a centerline trace I can run it - or maybe just a section of it through WT- and you can see how you like it or not.

Thanks!
I just found the way!

It works very well!
And if I wanna do hand tracing, I can use snapping to it!