The Book of Inkscape

18.2 Linking vs. Embedding

By default, any bitmap you import into Inkscape is linked to the document. This means that the actual content of the bitmap is taken from the original bitmap file; what the SVG document contains is just a reference to that file—its filename, including path. This way, the SVG file size is kept to a minimum, and multiple SVG documents can reuse the same bitmap file. The status bar description of a linked bitmap object reports its filename (Figure 18-1).

This also means that any changes you do to that linked bitmap file outside of Inkscape (for example, color correction or cropping) will be immediately reflected in the Inkscape document. Moreover, you can run an external editor (such as GIMP or Photoshop) on your linked ...