how would you go about this

[philstubbs 4]

someone asked me about making this, im very new to this so im not real sure where to start with this one. i have done pretty well with some logos, text and simple pictures though.

i need just the guy and horse as a one color vinyl cut decal

[mcrimm 1]

Fun, Fun,Fun

I just did a similar project for my granddaughter. Lets start with the dude and horse. First, cut the entire black background. Next cut the individual colors and overlay them on the black. I would lay this out in Coreldraw and cut with Flexistarter. The will take some time but is do-able.

Good luck, Mike

[philstubbs 4]

i really only need the outline. i dont plan to do all of the colors

[mars 45]

Maybe something like this?  Auto-traced and changed all the colors to white.

-Mike

goofyhorse.eps

goofyhorse.eps

[philstubbs 4]

Wow, that's perfect. What program are you using with this auto trace? Like I said, I am super new at this.

[mars 45]

I used a commercial program - Imagaro Professional Z.  It's pricey - but very good at taking bitmaps and turning them into cuttable vector paths.

I didn't clean up the paths (make any jagged paths smoother) - which I would do before sending it to the cutter.

Best advice I can give you is to work with the bitmap in a paint program (the Gimp is a free one) before you try and trace it - you can remove all the unwanted parts and reduce the colors of the ones you keep to make it easier to get the path you are after into the vector image.  After you get it close you can use Inkscape (also free) to either hand trace or autotrace it. 

There are lots of video tutorials on this forum showing tracing with Inkscape - it's not hard - just looks intimidating - and you will use this skill a lot so it's worth your time to learn.

_mike

[philstubbs 4]

I have been using inkscape for tracing. It seems horrible for any real editing though. It seems to do ok with the tracing, but I couldn't get it as nice as you did. I will have to see how the hand tracing works. I really haven't tried it. Thanks for the info

[mars 45]

You're welcome -- keep trying and it will come easier.

In Inkscape the autotracing always made too many paths when I tried it and working with them to make a clean vector path was difficult  - there are settings to work with and improve this aspect, but it's not as nice a ImagaroZ - but then it doesn't cost several hundred dollars either.

-Mike

[philstubbs 4]

I have a feeling I will end up doing a lot of similar work, I might look into that program if I get enough requests for things I can't handle with my current program choices.