Coloring Book Publishing PDF File
Woot, you are now on step three. This part is easy! I will show you how to create a PDF file of your inked artwork. A good PDF file is important. You might have noticed that jpeg files are fuzzy and do not print well. This is due to them being rasterized. I will show you how to create a smoother PDF file of your drawing. It will leave you breathless. This step took me 12 minutes.
You will need the Inkscape and Win2PDF for this step. They are both free and you may download Inkscape here and Win2PDF here.
In case you missed it, here is part one and part two.
Coloring Book Publishing PDF in Inkscape
Remember last time when I had you save a file that was 300dpi and should contain the word “original” in the name? Open it in Inkscape. I will keep these steps simple with few screen caps:
1. File > Document Properties. I select US Letter 8.5 by 11 inches since that is what most people will print as.
2. Click on your image. Object > Transform. Select the Scale tab, then check the Scale Proportionally box. Scale your image in increments (say, 80% to 95%) until it fits nicely on the page. You may want to fiddle with this step more later.
3. With your image selected, Path > Trace Bitmap. Click OK in the box. Now move the object over to the side and you should see TWO of your images. Press shift and select both objects. The one with the lines that touches your drawing will be the Bitmap. Delete the other one. Here is a picture of both together, the bitmap has smooth lines where the jpeg is fuzzy.
4. Object > Align and Distribute. Click on the Center buttons for both vertical and horizontal. This will center your drawing on the page.
The Border
5. On your left sidebar you will see the following going from top to bottom: selection arrow, path editor, sculpting tool, zoom, ruler, and finally a square box. Select this. We will use this to create a border around your image.
Drag a box around your image and on the page. Don’t worry if it covers your image with a solid color! With the box selected, go Object > Fill and Stroke. For the first tab, Fill, select the X for no fill. In the second tab you can choose the color for the border. For the third tab, adjust the size you want the border. I usually go around 5 pixels wide.
6. Select the Text tool in your tool bar. Outside your border on the upper left, I like to write “colored by: _____________” for the colorists to put their info. The on the bottom of the page, outside the border, I put “Copyright 2017 Colleen Wright www.root-inspirations.com all rights reserved please do not remove copyright text”. This info is to protect my work and also let folks know where to find my work so they can color it themselves if they saw their friend color it.
7. Now we will save as a PDF. File > Print. Select Win2PDF as your printer and Print. Name it aptly, then click save.
8. You are done!
Next Time on Publishing a Coloring Book
Woohoo! Give yourself another pat on the back; making a PDF was the most intimidating step I learned for my coloring pages. Come back next week for step 4: publishing!
Call to Action
I hope you are finding value in this ongoing series. If you are, please consider purchasing a coloring page from our store here, or our redbubble here, or our gumroad here. As well, you can consider a monthly subscription support on our patreon here. Your support in any way means we can keep creating works and blogs to bring to you right here on Root Inspirations.
