Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Together with Gimp by image manipulation, e a Scribus for desktop publishing happens to me sometimes to adopt the use of Inkscape. Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, a program for the picture “screen”. It can be used in various fields, there are those who use it to draw company logos, or even for the illustrations of some books. Personally, I have many skills in this area, and I find that even a pencil and paper in many cases are the most expeditious (of course, from my point of view). More than anything else I Inkscape is useful for vectorization of raster images, I know that Inkscape provides several other functions and is a little’ simplistic to use it exclusively for this, but for now I have no other duties for him to perform.

Open Inkscape and import an image jpg:

For this tutorial we will import a landscape taken from’Flickr account of a person I know very well (always take care of the licensing when the image we use do not belong to us):

Import the image will be Largest the smaller edges that Inkscape assigns default.

To adjust the edges of the project to the active object, there is a convenient feature. Let's go over “File” – “Document Properties“:

And click on the button “Fit page to selection“. In this way, the edges will be adjusted automatically:

Now we are left with transform bitmaps into vector. After you select the object go out of “Track” – “Vectorize Bitmap“:

With the following settings:

Obviously, the more the figure corresponding to the number of scans will be high, closer we will be to original quality. Consequently, the final image will heavier.

When the work is completed it will be enough to save as SVG and we're done. The following was the starting image, and at the bottom of the final result:

The advantage of vector images compared to Raster images is to be able to be enlarged without losing the quality. If I wanted to print this image on the scaffolding of the Duomo of Milan would have no losses, because the curves of raster images are not an illusion given by the pixel, but follow precise mathematical rules. Also for printing vector images I do not have to worry about the “dpi“, raster images will require 300 for printing, but vector images are printed as they are seen on the screen. The tradeoff is that we no longer have a picture but something more like a painting “electronic“.

Another advantage, essendo un software open source, and the use of open standard formats (“W3C” Scalable Vector Graphics). In this way it is ensured backward compatibility in the case of future versions. It also imports many types of formats, also of its competitors closed source as the most famous Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw and Xara X, between the standard sizes are JPG, PNG, SVG, Encapsulated PostScript (la lista è lunga, chi mi fermo). The disadvantage is that it does not always import from closed formats from the expected results. Sometimes you have to edit a file created in Illustrator that is not properly aligned. This gap does not always happen especially since the closed formats meet international standards.