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? Dave
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)
On Oct 10, 2009, at 12:16 PM, David Knecht ATT 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? Dave
Well in general SVG is vector images. There are no dots nor pixels, only mathematical curves. In essence they have infinite resolution, although individual images might be good at different sizes.
David Knecht ATT 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? Dave
I'm not sure what you mean by labelling but you can create and edit the document's meta-data with File->Doucment Metadata...
Inkscape uses SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics. It doesn't really have dpi or any fixed measurements. All measurements are only relative to itself. Dpi only becomes important when you render the image to a pixel format, like PNG or JPEG.
You can change the ruler settings with the Default units in File->Document Properties...
On Saturday 10 October 2009 16:10:33 Shawn H Corey wrote:
David Knecht ATT 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? Dave
I'm not sure what you mean by labelling but you can create and
edit the
document's meta-data with File->Doucment Metadata...
Inkscape uses SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics. It doesn't really
have dpi
or any fixed measurements. All measurements are only
relative to
itself. Dpi only becomes important when you render the image
to a pixel
format, like PNG or JPEG.
You can change the ruler settings with the Default units in File->Document Properties...
As I understand it Inkscape can indeed import and export again bitmapped images, which is what I believe the original poster is aiming at. Chapter 18 of "The Book of Inkscape" by Dimitry Kirsanov is titled "Bitmaps." But to label bitmapped images (put a name on the image?) I suggest Gimp. That is a program that deals natively with bitmaps, and bitmaps only.
Scribus deals with either, but has only a tiny fraction of the drawing capabilities of Inkscape.
"Label images for publication" confuses several of us. Do you mean put a line of description for each image below it on a printed page? Any competent DTP program (and even some incompetent ones) can do that.
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
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
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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)
On Oct 11, 2009, at 7:56 AM, David Knecht ATT wrote:
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.
Interesting. Have you perhaps looked into Scribus for at least some aspects of this? It is a good prepress application, and preparing for print is what it is focused on. At least some of the workflow might be easier in that application.
On 10/10/09 21:16, David Knecht ATT 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?
There are many web sites with archives of the mailing list:
sourceforge.net: hosts the list and its archives, often slow web interface for searches, sometimes doesn't load the page at all. http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=inkscape-user
nabble.com: often used to link to older messages here in the list. Allows posting as well (registration necessary). http://www.nabble.com/Inkscape---User-f1927.html
gmane.org: imho the leanest interface and the fastest http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.user
... besides all the others I haven't bookmarked ;-)
hth, ~suv
participants (6)
-
David Knecht ATT -
John Culleton -
Jon A. Cruz -
Shawn H Corey -
Terry Brown -
~suv