Color and old eyes

[Fish]

Getting up there in the years is a pain sometimes.  Has anyone figured out how to deal with problems cutting on black lines ? How do you change the color of the pattern in Inkscape so it's easier to see the blade and not mess up the cutting?  I'm working on the  Serenity pattern and sometimes find I'm following the white side instead and the letter ends up to big.  Working on this pattern is it possible to change the color of the all the letters at once?

[Foxfold]

It's possible to change the colour of both the background and the outline of the patterns in Inkscape,  I change all mine to  light grey with a red cutting line as I have never found following a black line easy.

which pattern are you using and what format ? jpg, pdf, svg ? 

 

[kmmcrafts]

Doesn't matter if I change the color anymore... dummy me bought a black and white laser printer.. What was I thinking, LOL

I import patterns into inkscape and use the fill and stroke function to change the colors.. 

[Scrappile]

There is an article on this in the university I think,,,, let me look..  Well check back... Can't find it right now..  See if this work,,, I saved it a while back... can't remember who provided it...:

This is the way I create a grey pattern with a red outline in Inkscape.  I have a preference for these colours as I find a black line difficult to follow with a scrollsaw blade whereas my blade stands out against a red line.  I've condensed the process into 6 stages.

1) At the Top Lefthand corner of the page there is a 'File' button.  Click on this and a box will drop down.  Click ‘Import’  button and find

the pattern you want and click on it  and that will take it to your Inkscape screen.

Click on your image so that it’s got a 'box' around it.

 

2) At the very top of the screen you will see a line of various words (File-Edit-View) etc.

Click on ‘Path’ and a box will appear, then click on ‘Trace Bitmap’  a drop box will appear on the screen and show you the pattern that you've 'outlined'

Click on ‘Live Preview’ if you don’t see it and your pattern will appear in the box 

Click on ‘OK’  

This will make an SVG copy of your pattern.

 

3) Click on and drag the copies apart. The ‘top’ copy is the one you use.

 

4) Highlight this copy and click on the ‘Grey’ paint box at the bottom of the screen and this will turn the pattern Grey and you will see that colour in the ‘Fill’ box that is at the

very bottom of the page.

 

5) While you still have your image highlighted,  Right Click on ‘Red’ paint at the bottom of the screen and a box will popup, select ‘Set Stroke’ and this will give you a Red outline, you will see this in the ‘Stroke’ box that is underneath the 'Fill' box.

You can also adjust the width of the outline by doing a  ‘right click’ on the tiny numbers next to the ‘Stroke’ box, a drop box of widths will appear

( I use 0.25 as this suits my #3 blade nicely) but you can play with the different widths until you find one that suits you.

 

6) Go to the 'File' button at the top lefthand corner and choose 'Print', this will open a 'box' so that you can chose your printer.

I then click the 'Preferences' button and it will show me whether I've chosen 'Portrait' or 'Landscape' on my Inkscape page.

I personally then have to go to 'Advanced' and choose A4 paper size as that's what we commonly use here in the UK, I'm not sure what any other country has as a default but there are a few choices.

 

You can then print your pattern.  Bear in mind that Inkscape only prints what is inside the 'page' that is shown on your screen.  

 

I then ‘save’ these changes so that if I cut the pattern again it’s already sorted and ready to print. 

 

 

Edited October 30, 2021 by Scrappile

[OCtoolguy]

Go here and watch Steve Good's video. Explains it all.

 

 

[Fish]

Thank you for helping.  I’ll give it a shot.  

[OCtoolguy]

9 minutes ago, Fish said:

Thank you for helping.  I’ll give it a shot.  

If I can do it, anybody can do it. 

[tgiro]

Easiest way to change black line to red -- Irfanview -- https://www.irfanview.com/

It's a freebie.  Once you have it installed --

1.  Open Irfanview

2. Load or copy your black line pattern into Irfanview

3. type a [shift]-[g].

4. Move the 'R' tab all the way to the right and click the OK button. Your pattern is now a red line.

5. Save it as a redline pattern and print it.

 

[Foxfold]

11 hours ago, Scrappile said:

There is an article on this in the university I think,,,, let me look..  Well check back... Can't find it right now..  See if this work,,, I saved it a while back... can't remember who provided it...:

This is the way I create a grey pattern with a red outline in Inkscape.  I have a preference for these colours as I find a black line difficult to follow with a scrollsaw blade whereas my blade stands out against a red line.  I've condensed the process into 6 stages.

 

 

 

This isn't in the 'university' Paul, it's what I did for you a while back, but happy it helped. 

[Dan]

Lots of good stuff here. The Steve Good video demonstration only works for vector objects (pdf, svg, etc). If you want to convert an image (jpg, bmp, etc.) follow Paul's (Scrappile) instructions. There are other ways but those two will get you where you want to go.

The only thing I'd add is to change the thickness of the lines to your preference. I like thin lines because I find it easier to stay truer to the pattern. This is just my preference, though.

Good luck!

[Foxfold]

11 hours ago, Dan said:

The only thing I'd add is to change the thickness of the lines to your preference. I like thin lines because I find it easier to stay truer to the pattern. This is just my preference, though.

Yep, that's what I do, I use .25 as that's as wide as my favourite blade.