Well, it was to my sad disappointment this week to find my scanner will not budge when I want it to scan anything, so I have been sticky-taping my sketches to the laptop monitor to use the paths tool behind the sketch. It is a pain! The issue I am having is when I do the path. I would love for it to flow smoothly and solidly, but I get all of these straight lines. I have tried curving some of them, but then it deforms at the anchors and just messes the whole thing up. Is there an easier way? I am about to pull my hair out over this. It's not that I am not patient, I have that, I just can't fix those straight little places easily with my mouse. (I have a touchpad mouse, even less control IMHO than a regular mouse...) And considering the little problems and bugs in the new Gimp, I guess I better stick with my 2.6 until those are ironed out. :S

Thanks in Advance,
Meg

try holding shift when you're making a curve.

Keep in mind that if you hold the SHIFT key while moving a path's control handle, the complementary control handle will "mirror" your movement, producing a smooth line through the path's anchor point.

I just tried to do some line art. Never done it before so still debating whether to post the result.

What I ended up doing most was click and drag to make a curved line, and when you have and want to make the next curve/line but it goes in the wrong direction, hold shift+ctrl and delete the handle on the side where you want the new line to be. Also handy to know that you can delete a node by clicking on it while holding down ctrl+shift.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I will try those. I did not know I could delete the nodes either, and I was wondering about that. Is there a way to add a node in the middle of a line, by any chance?

Y'all are the awesome-est.

AHA! I figured out how to add an extra node! I learn something new every day... (Not awake yet... still on first cup of coffee...)

Well you may try a different start

1 )Simply select by color the white (or the black )...you may lower the "tolerance slider to get a good selection

2) click the tiny square in the lower left corner of image windows, is the Quickmask and will show you the selection as a red overlay, switching between the normal and quickmask display will help to check if the selection need some correction ...
(in quickmask you may correct with any brush tool and with the eraser...using black and white to remove or add )

3 if the selection is fine Selection/Selection to path if you want have a path to edit ...but to work with path will be better export the path in Inkscape

4 if you want your lineart on transparency..first go to layer/transparency add a alpha channel so you may have transparency
then just invert the selection and clear


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2 may be not needed but in case here it is


2) click the tiny square in the lower left corner of image windows, is the Quickmask and will show you the selection as a red overlay, switching between the normal and quickmask display will help to check if the selection need some correction ...
(in quickmask you may correct with any brush tool and with the eraser using black and white to remove or add ..is even possible use on the mask filters as to sharpen or blur )
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And as for the scanner, there is a travel/shipping lock that may need to switched off. If it's on the scanner can't budge.

I find doing line art is easiest if you create your curve duplicate the layer and flip it either horizontally or vertically. =)
You can create some real nice symmetrical designs that way.

Then you can either merge the layers to form one image and duplicate it again, and flip, or just keep duplicating each side (both layers),and flipping them too.