Printing Inkscape images - problems

[Benevolance]

I downloaded Inkscape. Fantastic program. Loved using it. I got my fancy control panel image all done up nice and fancy. I emailed a few photo places about printing...and none have ever heard of the .svg file format. I've sent the image off as a PDF file, but a PDF isn't a vector image anymore, is it? I had to shrink my 34" wide control panel down to 11" just to size it for export.

I know others on the boards have used Inkscape, but how have you handled getting your image printed?

[zorg]

if the source for making a pdf is vector then pdf is vector
pdf is some postscript language nonetheless vector definition of the stuff to print.

what I can't answer is the necessary shrinking ? I dunon why you have to do that. anyway send me your svg file and I save it as pdf, you can use the illustrator demo to do the ask.

[TheShanMan]

I was able to convert mine using inkscape, but I found that the resulting conversion wasn't identical to the svg. I found out that Scott at MameMarquees.com would have converted to raster anyway, so I did that myself so that I could be confident that the conversion was done correctly. If your printing service ultimately converts to raster, I would suggest doing the same. Find out what dpi they work with and convert it on your own. It'll be a slightly bigger file though.

[Benevolance]

Zorg, when I saved the file as a PDF, it only saved the part of the image that was in the physical page boundaries for Inkscape. So I just shrunk the image down to fit the 8.5" x 11" landscape page and sent that off, so that the print shop could at least give me a quote.

Shanman, I was checking out Mamemarquees, too. What file format did you output to? Did you use Inkscape to do the conversion from vector to raster?

[TheShanMan]

I just exported to png using inkscape at 300dpi.

[zorg]

Zorg, when I saved the file as a PDF, it only saved the part of the image that was in the physical page boundaries for Inkscape.

here is the problem, go to the document // page setting and set the size to be the same than the whole size of the CPO.

then export as pdf, it should be OK

[Benevolance]

D'oh! I should have thought of that. Zorg, you are awesome. That solved the problem.