Horvath Andras wrote:
[ ... ] I'm newby at Inkscape too, i had been using CorelDRAW till now. I just came to love Inkscape. (I also think it's very easy to use and i like the roadmap of the development where it's heading..)
I have been using CorelDRAW in the past, too (v7), but I find Inkscape much easier to use.
As i noticed, a lot of people compare Gimp with Inkscape. I don't understand this. Gimp is a pixel graphic software, while Inkscape's a vector graphic one. Each of them has different special functions for their specialized tasks.
Basically you're right, of course, but you can import a bitmap into Inkscape and then "paint over" it. Finally, you can export this edited bitmap ("Select all") as a PNG again.
You mentioned "isolate bitmap object against the background". Did you mean cutting it out so to have it separate from its background?
Actually I'm not "cutting" anything out. I import the bitmap (usually as PNG, since it is lossless) into Inkscape and "paint over" the areas I want to remove with the spline tool. After I am finished with a certain section, I set both "Stroke" and "Fill" to white (or whatever color). The quality of the result is surprisingly good. (I've tried "Feather" in the Gimp as well, but the anti-aliasing of the Gimp is unfortunately not the best.)
Here's an example of a similar approach, where I removed a reflection using Inkscape (and, for "fine-tuning", CinePaint). The red triangle was basically done in Inkscape as well:
http://static.twoday.net/grafomatic01/images/before_after.jpg
Greetings,
Claus