How does everyone convert bitmaps to vectors? I notice in the current A & E magazine that Louie Alvarez suggests doing it all by hand. Aren’t there reasonably priced software programs that are worth using? What about Corel Trace? I’ve never used it. Is it worth learning? Thanks.
Corel Trace works well. I’ve been using Trace from an old (V.8) version and it works very well, and is easy. There’s also Adobe Streamline, which also works quite well. Nearly zero learning curve, too.
The method I’ll use depends on the object… I won’t bother converting a continuous-tone image such as a photograph (you’ll wind up with thousands of individual objects and the result won’t look that good anyway). If it’s a reasonably simple b/w or color logo like, say, the Louisville Cardinals logo, I’ll do it by hand. If it’s a bit more complex b/w logo or a color one that you can use a photo-editing program to convert to line art first, such as a school crest, it’s usually faster to let Trace or Streamline do it. You’ll get the best results if you can remove all the colors first in a photo-editing program and just leave the outlines - it’s simple enough to add the colors back in later to the vectored version.
The thing to remember is that no such software is 100% perfect - they’ll usually create far more nodes than if you do it by hand, and in most cases you’ll be tweaking the trace result anyway - straightening lines, removing nodes, sharpening corners, connecting shapes, or sometimes simply going back and typesetting the text that was traced because the trace looks sloppy by comparison to the real thing (a frequent occurrence). Also, the higher the resolution of the image you’re tracing the better, as the final trace needs less work from a high-res image than from a low-res one.
Both Streamline and Trace are pretty easy to figure out; Streamline gives you a bit more control but as it works the best with line art anyway (as does Trace), you can ignore a good many settings. Trace has hardly any settings, and essentially the Outlines mode works the best (as opposed to centerline, for example).
You can look at http://www.raster-vector.com.. It does a pretty good job but… I too would like to find something with a bit more flexibility.
I very recently, as in last Saturday, tried using Corel Trace an a fairly simple bmp file and came out with over 95,000, yes 95 THOUSAND individual lines. If I try knocking down the accuracy percentage then I lose a lot of the lines. What I am doing now is a lot of manual tracing. It works but is pretty much like doing manual past-up via computer - i.e. very primitive.
I hope that others have found some good alternatives.
There are a number of programs out there (freeware and commercial) that do raster-to-vector tracing, but very frankly none are perfect (I’ve tried several myself). I’ve been told by several people that Flash does a very, very good job of this type of conversion, but it’s an expensive purchase if used for just that :)
Illustrator’s CS2 also now incorporates an updated trace engine as part of the program (they improved Streamline and blended the program into Illustrator), it’s called LiveTrace and I’ve heard it works very well also, within the limitations of this type of work.
You can check out this page: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/bitmaptovector/ for a listing of some of the programs available, but the bottom line is that raster-to-vector works best on line-art images only. Anything else will get you those thousands of lines Thomas mentioned.
I use the magic wand tool in photoshop to make a selection, then right click to “make working path”, then in the file menu, saves paths to illustrator. When you open the file in illustrator, do a select all, then set the stroke weight to .001″.
I’ve found the magic wand tool of photoshop to be my best trace tool. For example, you can open up vector art at a very large size and reduce the artwork to simple outlines rather than the complex paths of the drawing. Because photoshop can open vector art at very large sizes (100 meg+), the trace errors become minimal.
For raster files, tools such as posterize and posterize edges combined with the magic wand tool, its not hard to trace out many halftones.
It works really well to convert printed black and white clip art into into something which can cut on a vinyl cutter.
Another tool in photoshop is the magnetic pen. When the pen tool is in magnetic mode, it will want to follow edges where there is the most contrast. So its fairly easy to trace the edge of a car from the rest of the photo.
Anything you can select in photoshop can become a path.