I have spent several weeks working with Inkscape and still learning. I am trying to create a svg file that will engrave and cutout the image in a photo. It is not working I can not create the “cutting” function. I have watched every youtube video I can find. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions? Maybe a different software package?
Thank you for any help I can get.
Rick
in inkscape you have to have a bitmap to do any engraving. any other SVG elements will score or cut. There will be people chiming in that are far more adept at explaining things that me. 
Thank for for your quick response. I take this to mean that i should convert the image to a bitmap file first?
Actually, you can engrave vector SVG objects as long as they are filled and complete, as in not open paths (this means it won’t engrave lines as just lines, you’d have to expand those into filled shapes)
It’s more reliable to convert something to bitmap if the goal is to engrave but not entirely necessary depending on the artwork. If you wouldn’t mind posting an example pic of your artwork we can probably get more specific.
Thank you for your help. I am trying to engrave a pic of my motorcycle and cut it out. I have uploaded the pic.
Nice!
I think Inkscape is not the right thing for this type of image, it’s strength is vectors. You’ll want a raster program like Photoshop or Gimp to cut out all the background, convert it to black/white and make contrast adjustments for engraving before attempting any kind of vector trace to get the cut line.
(alternatively phone/tablet apps like Photoroom and Adobe Capture can get you most of the way there)
I really don’t need the background. I only want my bike. I am trying to design a brochure/post card. I want to put my contact information on the back side.
I can use photoshop and remove the background giving me a clean image of just the bike. I don’t know how to create a file that will engrave the bike and cut out the outline of the bike.
Perfect, the easiest thing then would be to make a duplicate of your clean no background bike image, fill in the entire bike with black or some other solid color. Import that into Inkscape to “trace bitmap” to get the vector cutline, set that to a stroke color with no fill. Then import your clean bike image into same document, line up with the cut line and then export both of those together as one SVG or PDF.
Thank you very much for your help, I will give it a shot. I will post a pic of the finished product.
If it’s just an outline, you can also use the new outline feature in the GF app to cut around the engrave area.
yes! I totally forgot about this one.
