Terry has clarified what I want.  In the past, we have used Canvas to prepare figures for publication.  They are usually mixed bitmaps and vector graphics on a letter sized page format.  Thus a pure painting program will not work.   We take images from our microscope in a bitmap tiff format and use a drawing program to lay out multiple images, then add labels like arrows, scale bars, descriptive text etc.  Then the whole thing is saved as a tiff or jpeg at 300 dpi and sent to the journal for publication (hopefully).  On the Mac, Canvas was always our first choice for this, and then Deneba decided to stop supporting the Mac version of their software.  Corel got out of hte business years ago, so there are really no good commercial drawing/painting programs left for the Mac.  You can do it with Photoshop, but it is much easier to use a vector drawing program that can handle images than a painting program that can add objects.  Also, that program is a confusing mess to teach to new students in the lab.  That is why I am turning to open source to see if I can get the job done that way.  The reason I asked for resolution, is that the images we use are often much larger (at 72 dpi) than we need so you have to rescale them to the 4" column size of the journal and it is often easier to specify a resolution to resize all images to the same size than to drag the corners to resize. Also, it clarifies that you are actually increasing the resolution rather than down sampling (as Powerpoint often seems to do).  How would I ask the developers to add a box in Object Properties that reads out the resolution of a bitmapped image? It would be very useful for people like me.   Dave

On Oct 10, 2009, at 9:59 PM, Terry Brown wrote:

On Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:16:13 -0400
David Knecht ATT <david.knecht@...2671...> wrote:

I am new to Inkscape and trying it out as a way of labeling images
for publication.  First, is there a way to search the archives for  
answers?  Second, is there a way to get Inkscape to display the  
resolution of an image in dpi or ppi? Also, where do you adjust the  
ruler settings?

Inkscape can be a good choice for adding labels on top of images,
particularly if you're going to export the image in a format which
combines bitmap and vector, like .pdf or .eps.  I'm assuming you want
to add labels / scale bars / arrows pointing to features on top of a
photograph.

If you're publishing say a 300x300 pixel crop from micrograph of
something, and it's going to be printed about 3 inches across on a
2400 dpi output device (i.e. a journal), creating a .pdf or .eps this
way gives you nice sharp edges on the labels you add on top of the
image, even though the image itself is going to be a little coarse.

You don't really need to worry about resolution until you export the
image, the export image dialog shows you both the size in pixels and
the dpi of the export you're creating.  As long as the export is
as large or slightly larger, pixel wise, than the photograph you're
labeling, you won't be losing resolution, but there will probably be
some resampling of the image, so it won't be pixel identical with the
input photo.

I think the ruler uses the "default units" setting from the document
settings dialog (far right of the top tool bar).  If you want to make
the change permanent you need to edit and save the default template in
the templates directory, e.g. /usr/share/inkscape/templates.  Seems
there should be a user local path for this, but I don't know it.

Cheers -Terry


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay
ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
_______________________________________________
Inkscape-user mailing list
Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user

Dr. David Knecht    
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
Co-head Flow Cytometry and Confocal Microscopy Facility
U-3125
91 N. Eagleville Rd.
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269
860-486-2200
860-486-4331 (fax)