Inkscape Tutorial: How to Remove Background from Image

i'm rick johansen and this is the iron echo design channel today we're going to work on removing the background out of an image using inkscape and there's two methods we're going to use the quick and simple way using a built-in tool and then the more traditional way so let's start with this is the aston martin logo you can tell here it's a there's a white background and let's say you just want to remove the white background so it's transparent there's a tool for that make sure it's selected go to path trace bitmap and this will pull up a menu so there's a lot going on here but single scan brightness cut off and then .45 that might even be the default that will be pretty close because just for black and white watch what happens click update and it gives you a little preview so push ok and if you pull it out let's see which is which zoom in the top one is actually that is the original as you can see it pixelates a little bit and the bottom one is the new vector we made and you made that in like one second let's close out let's say it's a little bit more complicated than just black and white for the next example we'll go with a simple color logo like fedex here see the white background same tool though so make sure it's selected choose path trace bitmap and in this case we'll choose multiple scans colors and i think the default is eight i have it set to four smooth stack remove background click all those update and then ok and you've got yourself your fedex vector but in some cases you know the simple stuff is easy for trace bitmap i also like to use it sometimes for photographs if it's still like an easy non-complicated part like this is the asset i want i want this lifeguard tower so i'm going to make sure it's selected go back to the same old tool trace bitmap and it's all messed up so in this case i can't use the colors if i just want this silhouette i'll go back to single scan brightness cutoff and 0.25 i preset this before the video so that i think it's normally 0.45 but .25 update and that's what i want and you'll want to play with it based on the photograph that you're using if you want to try this actual one i'll put it in the description click ok and now i have a vector of a lifeguard tower that i wanted to make this complete i have to clip out this this nonsense on the bottom and the side so there is a way to do that you want to choose the bezier tool and then if you hold ctrl you can make straight lines just i'm going to take out there i selected the part that i want choose the selection tool shift hold the rest of the part that you don't want then you want to go to path sorry object clip set that's like a different tutorial but you need that so that way you can actually take a photograph that we had over here get get this out of here you can remove the background and you're left with the vector that you can use for your projects and that's what the trace that's the first way that's the easy way with trace bitmap but what if you have a more complicated image in this case we've got this elephant with a very busy background you can still do it with inkscape and we'll try the bezier pen the default setting are these three squares you want to choose the one that has the right angle and the curve and you can go as fast or as slow as you want and trace the perimeter of this pachyderm and actually i want to change the lines you can see it a little bit better you can also take breaks there so you can you can come back to the line you were building so let's go to stroke we'll choose like an orange actually we'll do like a green and we'll make it a little bit wider so you don't have to do this part but if it helps you to see your perimeter you definitely can zoom in and if you hover over the last node it'll turn red you can continue and through the magic of editing i'm going to make it all the way around to the other side actually i want to pause here for two quick bezier pen tips when you take a break or if you zoom out or you click off and you try to continue but then your line it's not connected to your original trace you need them to connect don't worry about it just delete that new one just make sure you keep the line that you're tracing the perimeter with selected if it if you select off of it the program thinks you're making a new line so go make sure it's selected then choose your bezier pen you can even zoom in hover to make it red and then you can keep going and the second tip is on the setting we have it kind of like default to making a little bit of a curve which is really helpful but if you do want to make a hard angle just hold shift and then it'll start making straight lines it's all up to you actually one more tip about the bezier pen while you're doing your trace if you make a mistake like on the ear here of the elephant i messed up i just got distracted you can go to edit paths by node and then pull that node back in it's very forgiving okay we're coming up on the very end of the trace and then just connect the two dots at the end we'll zoom out and we have a rough perimeter we could have done a little bit nicer but then to actually take the background out the whole point of this video you've selected your trace choose the selection tool then shift choose the background and you're going to go to object clip set and you've got your elephant you can do all sorts of stuff with him now you can put him on a nice fancy white background like he's the subject of some type of campaign you can put him in new york city do anything you want with your elephant now that you pulled the background out you just have a nice elephant and that's it so you got trace bitmap or your trace bitmap or trace it yourself thanks

Channel: IronEcho Design

Views: 9,827

Keywords: Graphic Design, Inkscape, Affinity, Photoshop, Startup, Design, Tutorials, Tips, Logo, Remove, background, image, transparent, png, jpeg, Rick Johanson, vector, How to

Id: zLuQSBXWpt0

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021