ISO a video tutorial in Inkscape

[dublin2]

I have a photograph of a card front that is beautifully cut. I want to practice in inkscape with this card front but when I click on path and trace bitmap, the card is not very clear meaning that there are sections especially in the corners that aren't "clean". The bottom half of the card is dark but you can see the cutout and the left corner is dark. You can see the top half cuts but it's whited (spelling?!) out . Is there a video tutorial that shows you how to clean up and make the image clear? I hope this is making sense! Thank you for your help!

Jeanne/Dublin2

[firstcut]

Hello Jeanne,
A photo of a card is a pretty specialized case and definitely not a beginner/practice project. This type of clean up work on a photo needs to be done in a photo editing program and not in Inkscape. You would need to search for a tutorial on cleaning up the exposure of images in whatever photo edition software you have.
You might be able to hand trace over the photo in Inkscape with the Bezier tool, and there is a tutorial on that here http://www.learndigitaldesign.com/watch ... p?video=19. Either way, unless the photo is exactly head on (like from a scanner) neither of these techniques is likely to produce a workable card design because of the keystoning effect from the angle of the photo.

Why not start with a line art card template or pagemap from a stamping site or something like that? I would hate for your early experiences with Inkscape to be frustrating ones because you are choosing such an ambitious project.

[firstcut]

I added a new page to my blog that lists a bunch of tutorials on image tracing, categorized by image type and degree of difficulty
http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/images-to-svg/

[dublin2]

Thank you so much for the help! I like to watch the tutorials b/c I learn better watching and then doing than I do from a page/book. I will definately be checking them out. I really appreciate all the help.

Jeanne/Dublin2

[TOASTER]

One of the members on the Cricut mb posted a video that is very straight forward and easy to understand. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF_XJW3ZAes