Hi, I want to be able to take my paper sewing patterns and bring them into Inkscape and then just redraw over the picture to scale.
What I did was I took a pic with my cell phone, used a board with measurements on it in inches as my background to show scale. I then place my paper pattern on the board and took a picture. I then imported this pic into Inkscape. Now I made a 1 inch square to the right in red to try and scale this picture to size of a one inch, not sure if this was the best way to do this exercise.
See attachment
Any suggestions would be great thanks Carol
I am trying to send an attachment but it will not let me attach? help
That might not be very precise, due to the lens of the camera having distortion/bending, particularly at the corners.
I'd try using a cutting mat that has a grid: tape the paper to the grid, and draw light pencil lines on the pattern to match the grid. Every two inches might be fine.
Then I'd take the picture using the highest resolution the camera has, as square-on to the pattern.
I'd set up a 2" x 2" grid in Inkscape, then import the picture and scale it to match the grid, as close as possible.
After tracing the pattern, any severe lens distortion can be adjusted using path effects.
I don't think taking pictures is at all viable. It's extremely difficult to position a phone camera perpendicular to the board with your hands, and like @TylerDurden noted, the lens will also introduce some distortion.
The ideal tool for this job is a large format scanner. Ones large enough for sewing patterns will cost thousands of USD, but depending on where you are and what your budget is you may be able to engage a local business who will scan your patterns for you at an affordable price.
Another possibility, and this is cheap but tedious, is to gently affix your pattern to the board and manually record coordinates of its outline that you can then enter, again manually, into Inkscape (or perhaps actually faster, by manually typing a <path>'s d attribute in your text editor of preference). You'll want to affix your pattern because if it moves at all while you're recording points all your measurements will be invalidated and you'll have to start over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperweights exist for exactly this kind of use, though.
Another option is to put the photo image (with traced grid lines) into GIMP and use the effects in GIMP to reduce any lens distortions, then export a corrected copy that can be used in Inkscape.
Beyond the Basics How to scale an imported pic
Inkscape.org
Hi, I want to be able to take my paper sewing patterns and bring them into Inkscape and then just redraw over the picture to scale.
What I did was I took a pic with my cell phone, used a board with measurements on it in inches as my background to show scale. I then place my paper pattern on the board and took a picture. I then imported this pic into Inkscape. Now I made a 1 inch square to the right in red to try and scale this picture to size of a one inch, not sure if this was the best way to do this exercise.
See attachment
Any suggestions would be great thanks Carol
I am trying to send an attachment but it will not let me attach? help
That might not be very precise, due to the lens of the camera having distortion/bending, particularly at the corners.
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Snapping.html#Snapping-Grid
Example cutting mat :
I don't think taking pictures is at all viable. It's extremely difficult to position a phone camera perpendicular to the board with your hands, and like @TylerDurden noted, the lens will also introduce some distortion.
The ideal tool for this job is a large format scanner. Ones large enough for sewing patterns will cost thousands of USD, but depending on where you are and what your budget is you may be able to engage a local business who will scan your patterns for you at an affordable price.
Another possibility, and this is cheap but tedious, is to gently affix your pattern to the board and manually record coordinates of its outline that you can then enter, again manually, into Inkscape (or perhaps actually faster, by manually typing a <path>'s d attribute in your text editor of preference). You'll want to affix your pattern because if it moves at all while you're recording points all your measurements will be invalidated and you'll have to start over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperweights exist for exactly this kind of use, though.
Another option is to put the photo image (with traced grid lines) into GIMP and use the effects in GIMP to reduce any lens distortions, then export a corrected copy that can be used in Inkscape.