Inkscape

Selecting certain areas

Asked by James

I'm having a pixelation problem. I'm using a font called Obstacle Lines BRK. I have two layers. One is the background image, and the other is the type. I need to cut out the type while retaining the fill of the background layer. This is easy in Gimp with the selection tool, but it is ruined by pixelation. I can't get anywhere near the clean resolution that vector provides.

I have no idea how to do this in Inkscape, and making the image in Gimp and then using bitmap trace is getting me no where.

Can someone please point to a tutorial on how to do this or help me directly?

Thanks.

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TylerDurden (8thrule) said : 		#1

Hi,

Is the background image a bitmap (png/jpg/etc)?

Do you want to cut the letters out of the image, or do you want to fill the thin lines of the letters to be filled with the image, or ... something else?

TD

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James (jmh72) said : 		#2

Hi. Thanks for responding. If you've looked at the font, you'll see that the center is hollow in each letter. I need the background image to fill in those hollow spaces in the letters. So I'm trying to extract the type and the background image within the hollow spaces of the type. (I can't post an example here, but a similar one is: https://goo.gl/WdGKgY)

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James (jmh72) said : 		#3

The background image is png, and the type is svg. (The type is made in Inkscape - vector.) I'd prefer svg for the resolution. As soon as I take anything into Gimp is just gets crunched into near garbage.

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TylerDurden (8thrule) said : 		#4

If this were a typical font, it would be straightforward... just convert the font to path and use it as a clip on the image.
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Clip.html

But what is needed here may be to make paths that are the shape of the letters without the spaces inside and use those paths for the clip and put a copy of the original text on top.

TD

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James (jmh72) said : 		#5

Thanks, but I'm not really sure I understand that. I'm still a bit of a beginner...

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TylerDurden (8thrule) said : 		#6

Here's a snippet to watch:
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/9foaedn81q0wdjm/2017-08-17_16-57-10.gif

I downloaded the plain and lines versions of the Obstacle font to use for this.

TD

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James (jmh72) said : 		#7

Wow! That was brilliant! Thank you very much...