Hello,

I am struggling with this picture of which I want to keep just the blue frame and get a transparent rectangular area inside. In this case, I am dealing with a single object, there are no other / hidden objects / layers, etc.

First I open or import the .png image, then I have tried drawing a rectangle with the Bezier curve tool inside of the blue frame, Select all, Object / Clip / Set (or even Set inverse), it got me rid of the blue frame instead. Alternatively, I tried to make use of the Path / Difference or Path / Cut path commands, yet the white area inside the frame did not disappear.

I hope in reality this is something really easy and obvious and someone experienced would write the few steps I need to follow so that I can export a .png file with the blue frame alone and a transparent area inside. Many thanks

Is the reason why you don't simply use the rectangle tool the uneven thickness of the frame? Very simple solution would be: draw a rectangle with thickness of that blue stroke - no fill color - go Path-> Stroke to Path -take the Node-tool and select nodes you want to shift with the arrow key for instance.

If I understand correctly, consider this,

A clipping area is constrained by the outer and inner bounds of the, yada yada... 

Screw that , let's try this.

Import Image

Create two rectangles, one inside (one smaller that the other) same fill color.

Select both, then Path-> Exclusion.  This should create an outline square object with a void in the middle.  (think square do-nut).  This is your frame.

Drag that object over the image.  Select the image and the object (object on top)

Then  Object -> Clip -> Set

This should just fill the outer frame

hth,

R

Thanks for both suggestions. I am trying to learn how things work a little bit more in general, so I went with the solution of RockMo, rectangular doughnut frame over image, clip.

The solution worked for me, though (being absolutely new to Inkscape) I do not quite understand why. As one of my own attempts before having posted the question here, I tried to create a rectangle, drag it over the image and use whatever Path operations I could imagine (Difference, Exclusion, ...) For the case someone else will struggle with something similar, I add that I was not able of reproducing the simple example in this video tutorial which I would assert deals with something similar. Cut Shape Out of Text - Inkscape Tutorial - YouTube

Maybe the same fill colour plays a role here (my real image behind this post, unlike the demo, contains many colours / my text and object to imitate the tutorial example were of different colours) and whatever else... Maybe I also should pay attention to the solution of Polygon to try out and understand, but have no room for that now.

Anyway the doughnut solution was written in a clear and sufficient way for my purpose and I was able of reproducing it. Thank you again.