Hello all,

I truly hope this has not already been covered in depth. If so, please know that I did search like heck for an answer on the internet (and from friends) before posting here.

So, here's my situation:
I have created some black and white graphics with transparent backgrounds in Gimp. I need to convert them into Vectors. A good friend of mine seems to be able to convert them very easily by using Adobe Flash (simply tells it to trace them.) The images he ends up with save out great from the vector into other formats, or even PNG again, and retain the black, the white, and the transparency.

I have been banging my head on the wall trying to get this to work in Inkscape. I have imported my PNG file, and done a "Trace bitmap" from Path. I have tried to use the brightness cutoff, colors, and grays. My issue appears to be that the white in my image looks like it is being considered transparent (at least as I move the object in Inkscape, I can see the whatever is behind the Vector "through" my "white" areas.) But when I try to save the image out from Inkscape, it appears that my whites are once again white... but so is my background. The background does not come out transparent.

As a note, I tried going back into gimp, and giving my background an actual color (blue). I then tried selecting this blue object in the inkscape XML editor and removing it (as well as tried lowering its opacity to 0). While in the Inkscape program it looks like both of these things likely work. But when I save out my image, I once again have an image on a white background. What am I doing wrong??

Any help is truly appreciated.

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

When you save the final product, are you using Save As Cairo PNG? That's not the proper method to preserve transparency. Instead, you should use File menu > Export Bitmap. It's an unfortunate choice of terminology for that dialog, and instead (imo) should be Export Raster Formats. In the future, other raster formats will be added, but for now, only PNGs can be exported.

If that's not the answer, would you please attach an SVG file showing the problem? It's hard to tell from your description, exactly what's happening. But if Export Bitmap fixes it, then no need to upload

Yes, as Brynn mentions, make sure you use export bitmap to save your PNG.

slagsmol wrote:But when I try to save the image out from Inkscape, it appears that my whites are once again white... but so is my background. The background does not come out transparent.

check your 'document properties' (file menu). The top right has a swatch for background color, which needs to be set to transparent (zero opacity) to save transparent background png's, yours may be set to white.

Thank you for the replies. I guess that there are really 2 parts to my question:
1- How to save the file out with transparencies
2- How to Trace my bitmap, and have the whites white (not transparent) and the transparency transparent.

As to the first part, Thank you both for your comments! I have been using "save as" rather than "export". I will try that (along with the background color in document properties to get the transparency. Thank you!!

As to the second part however, I'm not sure how to upload a file here, but you can see the file at this url: http://www.utahjudo.com/wp-content/uplo ... h-Text.png

The issue I am having is that when I "trace bitmap", I have tired two different ways. When I try a "brightness cutoff" it makes the whites transparent rather than white. When I try using a 3 scan gray, it appears to make the background and my whites both white, which then means that if I select and remove the background, it also removes my whites. I have also tried coloring my background a different color (blue) so I can select and remove it. but when I do this, it appears to also have a white layer under the background that still matches up with my whites (and if I remove it, I once again end up with transparency in place of my whites.) I would be happy to walk through a skype desktop share on this with anyone who would be so kind as to see what I am running into. Thank you again for any assistance. You are all so kind.

Okay, so there may be a "better" way to do this, but I'm so excited to have figured something out. here's what I did:
Instead of making my background blue, I left it transparent, and made everything white blue. Then I imported the image into Inkscape. After tracing bitmap (using color with 3 colors) I select and remove the background. Then I select the blue and change it from blue to white. Turn off boarders, export, and shazam! Woot! Thanks all for your help! (Still wish it could just make my whites white and not the same as the background, but this is a pretty easy workaround.)

Hi I had this problem when importing a bmp. Try

Select image
Object to path
Trace bitmap, selecting only colour, scans 16, remove background.
Press ok
Close window

Chris

I appreciate the tip to check the Background settings in the upper right corner of 'Document Properties' (File>Document Properties>Page tab). It solved a similar but different problem which I'll post here in case someone else has a similar issue...

I exported a bitmap of a b/w technical drawing. Objects with a white fill came out fine, but objects with no fill, and the entire background and margins, came out gray instead of white. Note the Document Background dialog has a two-part graphic that shows transparency on the left half (checkered), and background color on the right. By adjusting the checkered/Alpha/opacity slider all the way to full opacity (255) my bitmap export then had the desired white background.