Inkscape Tutorial Create Vector Silhouettes from Any Image Video Lecture

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and
in today's tutorial I'll be showing you
how you can create a vector silhouette
out of any image using Inkscape and at
any point in this tutorial you could
look down at the bottom left hand side
of my screen to see which mouse clicks
and keystrokes I'm using so to get this
started I'm going to use this image here
for this tutorial as an example of
headphones and I'll have a link to that
in the description just go ahead and
download that image and I'm going to
minimize this and I'm going to have
Inkscape open and I'm going to minimize
Inkscape and I'm going to click and drag
this file and drag it into Inkscape and
it's going to ask if you want to embed
or link it I'm just going to go ahead
and embed it we can maximize this back
up again and there we have our image so
now that we have that in Inkscape let's
go to view make sure you have it set to
custom we're going to zoom in at a
hundred percent and let me open up the
align and distribute menu with this
button right here make sure you have
last selected shows from that drop-down
and then we'll go to the edit objects
colors gratings and Stroke menu so to
create a silhouette from this image a
technique you may be familiar with is
using trace bitmap but that doesn't
always work and let me show you why
we'll go to path trace bitmap and what
this does if you don't know is it pretty
much just traces it traces a black and
white of vector outline over whatever
rest or image you have selected so I'm
going to come down to color quantization
I'm going to drop the colors down to two
and click update and it's going to see
what it looks like here in the menu so
I'm going to click OK to render that
just to show you now this looks pretty
it looks like a silhouette of the image
but it's not very it's not very crisp or
clear it's a little sloppy and it
wouldn't be very good to use and the
reason why we get that with this program
is because this program takes an image
and separates it it takes all the colors
and separates it into black either black
or white and if there's not enough
contrast between the subject and the
background the bitmap function in
Inkscape is not going to grab it all the
way so how I like to work around
this is there's actually several ways
you can do this but I'm going to show
you the way that I like to use because I
think it's the quickest I'm just gonna
go ahead and delete that I'm going to do
is I'm going to click on this image and
I'm going to right click it and go to
copy and then I'm going to open up GIMP
if you don't have GIMP I would suggest
downloading and installing it it's it's
an open source raster image manipulation
program similar to photoshop and it's
free to download just go to gimp.org and
the reason why my window looks like this
and not in three panels GIMP open three
panels by default is because I went to
Windows and we're to go to single window
mode I just like that mode better and
once we're in GIMP I'm just going to go
to edit paste and there's our image
right there so what I'm going to do now
is in order to make the the bitmap
function in Inkscape work better we need
to further separate the the subject from
the background and we're going to do
that by coloring in the subject black
we're going to use the paintbrush and
I'm going to use from this brush I'm
going to use a more solid brush and for
the size let's bring this up to I'm
going to bring this up to 30 and I'm
going to zoom in on this image by just
holding ctrl and rolling up on the mouse
wheel and you could Pan the page around
by pressing down on the mouse wheel and
moving the mouse what I'm going to do is
I'm going to go along the edges and
color them in like that
and I'm going to cut I'm going to do
this a little a little quick not to
waste your time with this video too much
but so you know the edges aren't going
to be as clear and crisp as they could
be if you really took your time with
this but I'm just going to go ahead and
color this all in just to show you how
it works going to color in all of the
edges and then for the wires this brush
is a little too big so I'm going to
bring the size down to 10 see how that
works
oops you just which is right in 10
and we can just go along the wires and
color that in as well just like that and
we're going to do this with the whole
image we're going to color the whole
thing in we're going to make it so the
whole image is painted in black and what
I'm going to do is I'm going to finish
coloring this in and I'm going to hit
pause on the video while I continue
doing that and then once I'm done
coloring it in we'll take it from there
okay so I finished coloring in the the
the subject here in this image and as
you can see this is not the the best job
I've ever done tracing over something
this is a little on the sloppy side but
I just did this really quickly just to
illustrate how to do this with Inkscape
so once you're finished coloring it in
like that hopefully yours came out a lot
nicer than I did then minded once you're
done we're going to go to colors and
then go to threshold and what that's
going to do is it's going to separate
every color into either black or white
and as you can see here I'm going to
zoom in on this a little bit there's a
little bit showing through right there
you can adjust that by playing with this
slider yeah that's pretty good you can
slide that left to right to you know
just to control how much comes through
and once you're done you just go ahead
and click OK and then we're going to
take that image we're gonna go to edit
copy we'll go back to Inkscape and let
me zoom out I'm going to hold ctrl on
the mouse we're going to hold ctrl and
roll down on the mouse wheel to zoom out
and I'm just going to right click on the
canvas and go to paste and there's our
image right there and now let's try to
run the trace bitmap on that path trace
bitmap and we'll do color quantization
we'll start out at colors being - oh we
start out at the lowest go to update and
in the preview window we have nothing so
nothing registered in that one so let me
try using let me bump that up to 3 see
how that works ok there we have
something but the problem is the the
background is dark and the the subject
is transparent we want the opposite so
we're just going to click on the invert
button and then click update and see how
that looks and that's pretty good we can
go ahead and click OK and close out of
this and as you can see here I went and
created a vector tracing of that sloppy
drawing that I made in
and this will now function just like a
vector you can change the colors you can
edit the nodes individually like that or
you can run paths you can run path
functions on it
and that's pretty much it that is one
way you can do that using Inkscape
there's also other ways like I mentioned
um you could you can mean an Inkscape
you could use the Bezier pen and just
trace over the whole thing but that I
think that would take a lot more time or
you could also use the calligraphy pen
and just color it in like that but again
that's um just like you wouldn't GIMP
but with that the problem with that is
you're creating all those additional
pads and I've run into problems with
system memory when I've done that but
with kit with GIMP when we're doing this
with pixels it just seems to work a lot
easier so if you have any questions let
me know and as always thank you for
watching