Hello, I had learned of Inkscape from YouTube and I want to use it print images which I would sublimate into travel tumblers. I did succeed the first time I printed my fist image but for some reason it didn't work after. For some reason either it came out blurry like the picture was printed over itself several times or the picture was moved all the way to one side.
When the picture is moved all the way to one side it comes out clear but part of the picture gets cut off, which leads to my picture not being long enough to cover my tumbler.
The only thing I've done is to follow the steps of the people on YouTube who are using Inkscape for the same reason.
Most of them always open a new document and set the layout and size of the page, then they click on the square icon and they create a square on top of the blank page. Over that rectangle they place the image they imported. Then they usually print it after that unless there's more to add to that. Most of the time I only need I single image so I don't need to do much.
The computer I amusing is a Windows, and I downloaded the latest version of Inkscape. Neither my keyboard or my computer have modifications.
Could anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or what step I'm missing.
Unfortunately, there are many similar queries in the forum. Inkscape is well known for poor printing performance, especially on Windows. Instead try [File > Save a Copy...] and choose the pdf file type. Use your favourite pdf viewer to open and print the output.
I also have a problem printing. When printing some files it works, for other files the printer just throws out a blank page (no error message). When trying the hint of Paddy_CAD, the PDF file is also a blank page. The files it prints have less then 1 MB and no paths, the files it refuses have paths and other stuff and are more than 1 MB. I use Windows 11 and my printer is HP for just normal paper (I'm making a map, printing it in pages and glueing them together because I do not know an easier option).
I'm having the same issue. My images are printing out smaller than what they are in inkscape. I've tried saving a copy as pdf and printing that way and I still don't get the size that is on the screen. I've tried printing on both my regular printer (Canon G7000) and my sublimation printer Epson F170.
Same, I already tried saving it as a PDF and then printing it but it still doesn't print correctly. Also unfortunately when I print it from my computer's file it prints blurry, and if I print it directly from Inkscape it works better, but it's cropping my image and moving it to the side.
I am back to watching videos on YouTube to see if someone teaches it online.
I've tried printing from different programs and the same thing happens, I'm starting to think that there is a setting on my printers that I am missing. I am starting to get really frustrated. It worked perfect the first time I printed it...
@Amanda_blue. This is exceedingly mysterious, but I think I cracked it. There are two issues here so I'll split this into two comments.
When I open m_2_1.svg I see a nearly blank screen but all the map details appear when I switch to [View > Display Mode > Outline]. Layer "Ebene 1" has 5063 objects and as far as I can tell, all but 47 of these are individually clipped to a rectangle that lies in an empty space outside the drawing page. That's why the pdf is empty.
Somehow you inadvertently moved the clipping shapes, but it's not easy to move them back. Inkscape crashed for me when I tried to remove 5000 rectangle clips. Maybe I just didn't wait long enough. Instead I used a text editor.
Make a copy of the svg file. Open it in a text editor that supports regex searching. In the Find box type clip-path="url.*" and leave the replace box blank. Replace all. This should find and remove clipping from every shape in your drawing. Save. Open in Inkscape and confirm that all the shapes are visible again. [File > Clean Up Document] removes all the unused clip rectangles. [File > Save].
[File > Save a Copy...] and save as pdf. The resulting pdf is blank, which we'll tackle in part 2.
@Amanda_blue. I think we found a pdf export bug. Let me lead you through my investigation.
It seems that the pdf exporter starts at the lowest shape in the stacking order and loops through higher shapes as it builds up a pdf file. When it encounters a shape it doesn't like, it exits the loop, ignoring all higher shapes.
Next I noticed that many of your svg shapes use swatch colours, which are stored as single colour gradients in the <defs> section of the svg file. When I changed these to solid fill colours the problem disappeared. So, are gradients the issue? No, it turns out. Inkscape can export gradients with no problem.
Finally, I saw that the troublesome gradients all had a gradientTransform attribute. I used my text editor again to find and delete all of these. (I think you can still use your swatch colours.)
So, when your drawing is ready for publishing, make a copy of the svg file. Open it in a text editor that supports regex searching. In the Find box type gradientTransform=".*" and leave the replace box blank. Replace all. Save. Open in Inkscape and save as pdf.
@Paddy_CAD: Thank you very much for your help. The problem with the clipping is the following: As you can probably see, my map is much bigger than the biggest paper I can print on (the German standard format DIN A4). The method I used to print it last year was the following: I saved several copies, one for each page, in each copy I placed a clipping rectangle on the portion I wanted to print, I clipped, then I selected all and moved the whole picture so that the still visible part was on the paper (that inkscape shows on the screen). This year, with my map updated, I tried this again. m_1_2 is the smallest of those parts, so I used it for several printing experiments. On my screen, the visible part of it is clearly on the "paper", so I have some problems understanding what exactly you mean by the clipping shape being in the wrong place but maybe my description helps you understand what happened. Probably my method is not very clever but I do not know how else to do it (and I learned only recently that the parts I thought I cut off are not really gone). Can you give me some advice how to do it in a better way?
The problem with the swatch colours is less pressing because I can replace them by solid fill if necessary but I'm also trying to understand. I searched the website for "gradientTransform" but could not find it - probably my swatch colours do not need it and I have no idea how they got it. Could you explain or give me a link to what it means? A hint for how to find things like this would also help me.
This screenshot is an outline view of your file m_2_1.svg. The pale area is the page that will be exported to pdf. You can see two green rectangles that you used to clip your shapes. In reality these are 5044 rectangles stacked on top of each other, one for each clipped object. 47 rectangles are inside the page boundary and the remainder are on the lower left in a blank space. Any shape clipped with the lower rectangle shows nothing on screen, print or export.
Creating 5000+ identical clip paths is obviously inefficient. Instead perhaps group all the shapes and apply one clip path to the group.
Here's another method that does not require clipping. Draw a white frame representing your print area and margin. Move this over the region you want to export. Select the frame then [File > Export...] [Single File] [Selection] and choose pdf as the file type. This will export the selected frame and everything inside it, ignoring the page boundary.
@Paddy_CAD: Thank you for your help. The idea with the white frame is clearly better than clipping and I will use it. Does it also work for printing directly from inkscape without PDF (that is, if inkscape is willing to print)? Still the screenshot puzzles me. It is pretty much the contrary of what my screen shows. First I made a frame in the place of the lower left green rectangle and it *did* overlap with my myp - in fact the outlines seem to be my map *except* everything that overlaps with this frame. Then I clipped, and everything outside the rectangle was gone from my screen while the part inside was still there. Then I moved everything so the visible part was on the paper - your screenshot shows no trace of this translation except the green rectangle on the paper.
@Amanda_blue: [File > Print...] operates on page boundaries, not the current selection. Instead move the frame to the desired location then [File > Document Properties...] [Display] [Resize to content: Yes] or [shift+ctrl+r] to resize the page boundary to match your selection. Now you can [File > Print...]
I don't know why your clip paths (the green rectangles) are in their current locations, but that's the file you uploaded.
Beginners' Questions Beginner/ Printing Images
Inkscape.org
Hello, I had learned of Inkscape from YouTube and I want to use it print images which I would sublimate into travel tumblers. I did succeed the first time I printed my fist image but for some reason it didn't work after. For some reason either it came out blurry like the picture was printed over itself several times or the picture was moved all the way to one side.
When the picture is moved all the way to one side it comes out clear but part of the picture gets cut off, which leads to my picture not being long enough to cover my tumbler.
The only thing I've done is to follow the steps of the people on YouTube who are using Inkscape for the same reason.
Most of them always open a new document and set the layout and size of the page, then they click on the square icon and they create a square on top of the blank page. Over that rectangle they place the image they imported. Then they usually print it after that unless there's more to add to that. Most of the time I only need I single image so I don't need to do much.
The computer I amusing is a Windows, and I downloaded the latest version of Inkscape. Neither my keyboard or my computer have modifications.
Could anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or what step I'm missing.
Unfortunately, there are many similar queries in the forum. Inkscape is well known for poor printing performance, especially on Windows. Instead try [File > Save a Copy...] and choose the pdf file type. Use your favourite pdf viewer to open and print the output.
Okay thank you, I will try this next.
I also have a problem printing. When printing some files it works, for other files the printer just throws out a blank page (no error message). When trying the hint of Paddy_CAD, the PDF file is also a blank page. The files it prints have less then 1 MB and no paths, the files it refuses have paths and other stuff and are more than 1 MB. I use Windows 11 and my printer is HP for just normal paper (I'm making a map, printing it in pages and glueing them together because I do not know an easier option).
I'm having the same issue. My images are printing out smaller than what they are in inkscape. I've tried saving a copy as pdf and printing that way and I still don't get the size that is on the screen. I've tried printing on both my regular printer (Canon G7000) and my sublimation printer Epson F170.
Same, I already tried saving it as a PDF and then printing it but it still doesn't print correctly. Also unfortunately when I print it from my computer's file it prints blurry, and if I print it directly from Inkscape it works better, but it's cropping my image and moving it to the side.
I am back to watching videos on YouTube to see if someone teaches it online.
I've tried printing from different programs and the same thing happens, I'm starting to think that there is a setting on my printers that I am missing. I am starting to get really frustrated. It worked perfect the first time I printed it...
In the meantime, I have experimented and there seems to be a quite strong correlation between user defined color swatches and printing problems.
Personally I have found that my pdf output matches my Inkscape page, so I can't say what's causing (all of) your difficulties.
@erika97, @Amanda_blue, @Flowersns3:
If you upload your svg (before) and pdf (after) files I'll see if I can uncover a problem.
I think I figured out my problem. @Paddy_CAD
@Paddy_CAD: thank you for your offer. I'll try to upload them. m_1_2 is a part of map1 that fits on one page. m_1_2.pdf seems completely empty.
@Amanda_blue. This is exceedingly mysterious, but I think I cracked it. There are two issues here so I'll split this into two comments.
When I open m_2_1.svg I see a nearly blank screen but all the map details appear when I switch to [View > Display Mode > Outline]. Layer "Ebene 1" has 5063 objects and as far as I can tell, all but 47 of these are individually clipped to a rectangle that lies in an empty space outside the drawing page. That's why the pdf is empty.
Somehow you inadvertently moved the clipping shapes, but it's not easy to move them back. Inkscape crashed for me when I tried to remove 5000 rectangle clips. Maybe I just didn't wait long enough. Instead I used a text editor.
Make a copy of the svg file. Open it in a text editor that supports regex searching. In the Find box type
clip-path="url.*"and leave the replace box blank. Replace all. This should find and remove clipping from every shape in your drawing. Save. Open in Inkscape and confirm that all the shapes are visible again. [File > Clean Up Document] removes all the unused clip rectangles. [File > Save].[File > Save a Copy...] and save as pdf. The resulting pdf is blank, which we'll tackle in part 2.
@Amanda_blue. I think we found a pdf export bug. Let me lead you through my investigation.
It seems that the pdf exporter starts at the lowest shape in the stacking order and loops through higher shapes as it builds up a pdf file. When it encounters a shape it doesn't like, it exits the loop, ignoring all higher shapes.
Next I noticed that many of your svg shapes use swatch colours, which are stored as single colour gradients in the <defs> section of the svg file. When I changed these to solid fill colours the problem disappeared. So, are gradients the issue? No, it turns out. Inkscape can export gradients with no problem.
Finally, I saw that the troublesome gradients all had a gradientTransform attribute. I used my text editor again to find and delete all of these. (I think you can still use your swatch colours.)
So, when your drawing is ready for publishing, make a copy of the svg file. Open it in a text editor that supports regex searching. In the Find box type
gradientTransform=".*"and leave the replace box blank. Replace all. Save. Open in Inkscape and save as pdf.@Paddy_CAD: Thank you very much for your help. The problem with the clipping is the following: As you can probably see, my map is much bigger than the biggest paper I can print on (the German standard format DIN A4). The method I used to print it last year was the following: I saved several copies, one for each page, in each copy I placed a clipping rectangle on the portion I wanted to print, I clipped, then I selected all and moved the whole picture so that the still visible part was on the paper (that inkscape shows on the screen). This year, with my map updated, I tried this again. m_1_2 is the smallest of those parts, so I used it for several printing experiments. On my screen, the visible part of it is clearly on the "paper", so I have some problems understanding what exactly you mean by the clipping shape being in the wrong place but maybe my description helps you understand what happened. Probably my method is not very clever but I do not know how else to do it (and I learned only recently that the parts I thought I cut off are not really gone). Can you give me some advice how to do it in a better way?
The problem with the swatch colours is less pressing because I can replace them by solid fill if necessary but I'm also trying to understand. I searched the website for "gradientTransform" but could not find it - probably my swatch colours do not need it and I have no idea how they got it. Could you explain or give me a link to what it means? A hint for how to find things like this would also help me.
This screenshot is an outline view of your file m_2_1.svg. The pale area is the page that will be exported to pdf. You can see two green rectangles that you used to clip your shapes. In reality these are 5044 rectangles stacked on top of each other, one for each clipped object. 47 rectangles are inside the page boundary and the remainder are on the lower left in a blank space. Any shape clipped with the lower rectangle shows nothing on screen, print or export.
Creating 5000+ identical clip paths is obviously inefficient. Instead perhaps group all the shapes and apply one clip path to the group.
Here's another method that does not require clipping. Draw a white frame representing your print area and margin. Move this over the region you want to export. Select the frame then [File > Export...] [Single File] [Selection] and choose pdf as the file type. This will export the selected frame and everything inside it, ignoring the page boundary.
@Paddy_CAD: Thank you for your help. The idea with the white frame is clearly better than clipping and I will use it. Does it also work for printing directly from inkscape without PDF (that is, if inkscape is willing to print)? Still the screenshot puzzles me. It is pretty much the contrary of what my screen shows. First I made a frame in the place of the lower left green rectangle and it *did* overlap with my myp - in fact the outlines seem to be my map *except* everything that overlaps with this frame. Then I clipped, and everything outside the rectangle was gone from my screen while the part inside was still there. Then I moved everything so the visible part was on the paper - your screenshot shows no trace of this translation except the green rectangle on the paper.
@Amanda_blue: [File > Print...] operates on page boundaries, not the current selection. Instead move the frame to the desired location then [File > Document Properties...] [Display] [Resize to content: Yes] or [shift+ctrl+r] to resize the page boundary to match your selection. Now you can [File > Print...]
I don't know why your clip paths (the green rectangles) are in their current locations, but that's the file you uploaded.