I Heart Dragons

[wizard509]

we discussed way back the way to do it in xara by converting line to shape and breaking shape - sure it is complicated compared to PS

if you create line art in PS and want sharp vector though, you can export your line art layer and vectorise [auto-trace] it

so the steps would be:

create art in PS on separate layers for line art and colour at say 300 dpi
create a copy file to use and merge any clipping layers which xara does not support
make sure there is a background [bottom] layer that is filled with white and nothing else
hide all layers except line art and the white background - save this as a PNG
in inkscape [free] import the PNG and use the path menu > trace bitmap function to automatically trace the art work to vector - inkscape places the trace directly over the bitmap and so makes replacement practical; xara bitmap trace does not do this and in this respect is a total pita
without moving either save your lineart and vector from inkscape as SVG
in PS hide only the line art - save all the rest including the white background as PSD
import the PSD into xara - at the correct dpi aand as objects not layers
import the SVG into xara
group all the imported PSD
the SVG shoud be imported as a group, if it is not, group it
select both groups and use xara's alignment tool to place the SVG import over he PSD import - use horizontal: align left and vertical: align top settings - the two groups should align to the white backgrounds and therefore the vectored art should be placed directly over the coloured art - you won't see this though until you go into the page and layer gallery and hide/delete the background in the SVG import group and in the PSD import group if you don't need it

simple eh? - well I do it a lot so I can then export as PDF and import into TB Harmony therefore I might be biased [ I use Painttool SAI not photoshop - I prefer raster brushes to vector brushes for cartooning]

Good description handrawn.

[handrawn]

thanks Larry - it's a pity inkscape does not import PSD, although the inkscape Ui is very clunky compared to xara, but it would align juat as well; if you only have a single layer of colour though you could import that into inkscape as another PNG of course