Hello, I am trying to design a t shirt and need to print different colors on separate layers. Is this possible with Inkscape?

If so how do I do it? Thanks in advance... Billy

Not with Inkscape itself at the moment. There is an extension to separate different colors into separate drawings (at least that's how I interpret the drawings on that page - I don't speak Brazilian Portuguese ;-), but I don't know how well it would work for your purpose:
<http://www.colivre.coop.br/Aurium/InkscapeCMYKSeparator>

Jumping in without being sure what I'm talking about:


I don't think its CMYK separation that the Billy's after. He (probably) wants to separate an image with a low number colours such that each layer holds all the objects of that colour. Does anyone know of an extension that does that?



Non-automatic but low manual labour version:
Export the image (as png)
Re-import it
Trace the bitmap; Use "Colour Quantisation" with Desired Colours+1, Untick "Stack Scans"
Ungroup the scan. Throw away the background, and separate each layer of the scan to a new Inkscape Layer.

You could use the 'Find…' dialog to select all objects with a certain color, and then move the selected objects to another layer.

How to use the 'Find…' dialog with style attributes as e.g. color?
See the topic 'finding similar objects' in this forum and another detailed description in a wishlist report (Bug #170378 “Select All by Stroke or Fill Color”) on the Inkscape bug tracker.

Slow dog, I tried what you suggested. Export.png, inport, trace bitmap, color Quantisation, but the desired colors will only go down to 2.

But I noticed that when I exorted then imported to bitmap it permanently grouped my designs. I like that cause I had white text that wouln't show up without a black background.

meagain75 wrote: but the desired colors will only go down to 2.

I probably wasn't clear with my "Desired Colours+1". If you wanted to print one colour, you'd quantise at two colours (foreground and background); if you really wanted two colours, you quantise at three. I'm assuming in all cases you throw the generated background away and use the T-Shirt as real background.

But I noticed that when I exorted then imported to bitmap it permanently grouped my designs. I like that cause I had white text that wouln't show up without a black background.

I've never actually done what you're trying do, so was just trying to suggest something that I thought would work. You might need to add an extra background layer before you start. Just play around with it, and if you find something you think works, come back and tell us.

try adobe illustrator..

thanks for the very helpful comment cs but exactly how do you do it in illustator?! I've been trying for days and thought maybe inkscape would have the answer. seems like a pretty basic task.

If i understand this problem correctly you are trying to make a stencil for each colour in the future t shirt.
if you are looking for Inkscape to something like color separation i.e. take a blue fill and separate it into a cyan and magenta fill or set up a custom separation scheme so orange in your drawing is broken up in to red and yellow, well forget it!

If you were careful to make your drawing using only a few fill colours with no over lapping gradients (inkscape will not rotate screen angles!) You might get the best results this way:
1.make x number of copies of your file where x is the number of colours you want to print and name them accordingly e.g. filename red.svg, filenameblue.svg.
2.select all of the objects with the color specified in the filename (use find command for this), hide them, delete everything else, save the file, repeat with each file.
3.open each file, show everything, change all fills and strokes to black, print your film/plate/separation, repeat for each colour.

If this is too complicated or not what you wanted sorry to hijack your thread!

Try printing four color for your t-shirt design its so cool especially in summer season.