Inkscape

Problems working with PDFs opened in Inkscape

Asked by Kate Dubiel

I am trying to extract parts of a vector drawing contained in a PDF I'm opening in Inkscape and copy them into my drawings. But when it opens, I can only select the entire drawing, or nothing at all. There doesn't seem to be a way to separate out parts of it.

I'm new with Inkscape - trying to find something to replace Illustrator - so I'm pretty sure I'm just doing something wrong. I've tried ungrouping it, many times. I made sure the layer is unlocked.

When I try to select a group of nodes/paths with the edit paths tool, I can usually drag a bounding box around the paths I want and move or copy them to wherever I need. The status bar confirms I should be able to do this, but with this PDF, the dragged box just disappears after I release the mouse button, and nothing is selected. If I try to click on a single path, all the nodes in the entire drawing become selected.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If I can get this figured out, I say goodbye to AI. :-)

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Edouard (edouardst) said : 		#1

Hi,

It looks like it's a problem with your PDF. Try to zoom in a lot in Inkscape : do you see the pixels ? If so then your pdf encapsulate a bitmap drawing which inkscape cannot work with, like a photo. If not then its vector and Inkscape should be able to manage it. In this case, try to select all (CTRL + A), because maybe the part you see is a masked part of a bigger drawing, then ungroup it.

If it's bitmap, you are (as in Illustrator) left with no choice but to trace the bitmap (under the Path menu).

Regards

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