Rdaniel 1 Posted April 8, 2014 I have a photo that I have turned into a vector to use as a basic stencil for an airbrush painting I am going to do. I have cleaned up the smaller whit dots and circles in the dark area because that I what will be cut out and they will be useless there. I am trying to preserve some of the larger paths inside the black and connect them to the main stencil. ( white part). I have tried almost everything and can't seem to modify the existing shapes so they will connect. I'm sure it's a simple process so I will try to attach my original and the SVG copy I am working on. Any advice would be appreciated. I am using the trace function to get to the SVG and it just doesn't seem that accurate. Can any of you experts help me with this? desert skeleton.svg Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darcshadow 1,625 Posted April 8, 2014 Your best bet to start it to edit the original image. Make it black and white, or at the very least gray scale then adjust contrast and brightness to get closer to what you want the final to look like then try the auto trace. To join two objects there are several ways of doing that. If you want to go the node edit route you need select two nodes of one object and do a delete segment between two non end points. Do that again for the second object, then join the newly created end points of the two objects. It's much easier to see what you are doing if you work in outline mode for this type of editing. There are youtube vids and tones of toutorials out there to help you along. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darcshadow 1,625 Posted April 8, 2014 Here's a quick trace after playing with the image a little. I changed it to gray scale, then adjusted contrast, did some burning and dodging, adjusted contrast a little more then finally imported it to Inkscape and did a trace. DS2.svg Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
skarekrow 1,842 Posted April 8, 2014 If I were planning to airbrush this piece, stencils would more trouble than they are worth. I would paint the background then freehand (or opaque projector) to get the main subject sketched on and render and detail that skeleton with sheilds & freehand. Working with your reference photo, Here's what I come up with in 3 color to produce a stencil from. You're gonna wanna do some more work to it cause razoring &/or weeding all those tiny spots is gonna bite. I suggest doing the edits in raster, then re-vectoring. (Too much node work) desert skeleton_3color.svg desert skeleton_3color.eps Not the greatest of reference photos to produce stencils from... low contrast way too much detail. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rdaniel 1 Posted April 9, 2014 Thanks so much for what you have done. I had planned on not weeding all the small spots and just leaving them in. The one that darcshadow did is very close to what I need because the stencil is going to be used to lay out the main features very lightly and then I'll free hand the rest. I probably didn't explain it very well but what I am after is an outline with the major features in it that I can cut. I'm not after the detail and textures because I can do those by hand. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites