Graphic Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for Graphic Design professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I have a drawing using Adobe Ideas app in iPad, then export it to PDF to open it with Inkscape. It is a vector image since I can enlarge it as much as I want. However the width of the stroke too big when I enlarge so I want to reduce it. When I double click on it, the result appears as the picture below and I don't know how to resize it. Do you know how to achieve my purpose? Thank you.
Beside Inkscape, I can use Illustrator.
Here are my file and my screen shot of the top bar:
When you double click on a path in Inkscape, you enter in node editing mode and you can edit the path.
You can return to select mode by clicking the arrow in the toolbar on the left (or by hitting the keyboard shortcut, usually F1):
In select mode you can resize or rotate your shape.
You can change the stroke attributes using the button on the top toolbar.
The behaviour of the stroke while resizing depends from the status of the buttons on the top toolbar (see above and give a look here).
Postil
Regarding your file, after the import in Inkscape you see the structure of your image by changing the Display Mode to outline:
The contour is made by the difference of two closed paths, each eye is a closed path, the smile is a closed path and there is an open path (perhaps a test?):
Let's return to Normal mode. Select the object and ungroup it by clicking Shift-Ctrl-G until you got a message of no more groups to ungroup.
Select just the "cloud" (the contour of your face) and change fill and stroke, e.g. with a blue fill and a black stroke of 5 px:
As you see, in this way you have evidence that the "cloud" is not a path with a heavy stroke, but is a composition of an internal and an external path.
In order to have a single path, you must select your "cloud" and Break Apart them with Shift-Ctrl-K:
Now, delete one of the paths (the internal, in my example) and change stroke and fill as desired.
A similar operation should be made on the mouth (you can cut the path and keep an open path). And perhaps to the eyes.
In this way, you can scale the image maintaining the stroke attributes:
Conclusions
In my opinion, such an operation (doodle with a tablet, export and import in a vector graphics editing program) is possible, but you need a bit of work to adapt the result to your specific needs.
It could be simpler if you have in advance an idea of the desired result: you can choose the proper tool from the beginning.
Adobe Ideas essentially uses the Blob Brush to draw. This means it expands artwork and nothing remains as a stroke. Everything becomes a shape.
In Illustrator...
An easy way to reduce the width of a shape, especially in a black and white image, is to add a white stroke to the shape.
Then select the shape and choose Object > Expand.
Then click the Merge button on the Pathfinder Panel
And lastly, select the white shapes and delete them.
Object > Expand, which box should I choose? Fill and Stroke boxes are available.