Shane Quale

Cleaning up edges...

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Zoom in on the image to delete the nodes you do not need or download the free program inkscape to edit the nodes. Inkscape is easier to use for node editing than Sure Cuts A Lot.

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If it's something that matters I always hand trace it. Auto trace never gets it close enough for me. (I am rather picky) I spend more time trying to clean something up than just drawing it out from scratch in 95% of the cases. If you happen to have a pure black and white image that is high resolution then you can get a nice trace but more often than not this isn't the case. Now, I will admit that it takes a while to become proficient at hand tracing and I have not used SCALP since it was in it's beta stage and I didn't like the manual tracing within that program. I use Illustrator but like mentioned Inkscape is a great free alternative that will probably produce better results for you. 

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If it's something that matters I always hand trace it. Auto trace never gets it close enough for me. (I am rather picky) I spend more time trying to clean something up than just drawing it out from scratch in 95% of the cases. If you happen to have a pure black and white image that is high resolution then you can get a nice trace but more often than not this isn't the case. Now, I will admit that it takes a while to become proficient at hand tracing and I have not used SCALP since it was in it's beta stage and I didn't like the manual tracing within that program. I use Illustrator but like mentioned Inkscape is a great free alternative that will probably produce better results for you. 

Tracing looks pretty cool,just started with hand tracing and ummmm , i need practice and or a few pointers lol..... i might be missing something ,but not sure what it is..lol

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I'm not the greatest at it, or very quick but I've been pleased with my results. I mostly use the Bezier tool and drop nodes at key points of the design to get an initial ruff shape. Then I go back and drag the edges of the design to the desired location and add additional nodes as necessary. I do all this with the fill set to an odd color, usually an ugly yellow or green, and with 50% transparency so that I can see the image I'm trying to trace.

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In AI I trace with no fill or stroke most of the time. Using the reduced transparency is also a great way to do it and still see what you are working on. With practice you won't have to go back and edit much. I'm not schooled on tracing with Inkscape and it IS different than in AI. I have heard AI is difficult to learn to trace with but it's what I started out with. All vector programs do the same thing but with different methods so it's a matter of figuring out a workflow that makes sense to you. As stated above I have rarely found an auto scan that has turned out clean enough for my taste regardless of the program so I stopped messing with it and got better at manual tracing. 

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Ouch yeah those are lousy. You know those are stroked paths right? Just checking. Maybe you left them stroked to be able to see them.

 

Anyway, I use a plug-in for Illustrator called the Smart Removal Brush tool which is one of several I have from Astute Graphics that will smooth some of that out but you have to be careful or you can easily lose the overall integrity of your design. This doesn't help you a whole lot since you are using SCALP but at least you know there are alternatives out there. 

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You got a graphic, can't find the font, have a deadline and trace gives you a jagged lump of stuff.  It sucks.

 

One thing that sometimes can work is to convert it to a bitmap, apply a gausian blur to it and re-run the auto trace.  You end up with something smooth, that will cut cleaner, but stands to lose the crisp angles.  Restoring those crisp angles can sometimes be done manually in an easier manner via this method.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34207516/blursharpen.svg

 

If you have a raster editor, blurring, feathering, then sharpening can give other results.  It takes much experimenting.  Some raster editors have a mode when converting to black and white to render as line art instead of halftones that can improve things before re-tracing.

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In AI I trace with no fill or stroke most of the time. Using the reduced transparency is also a great way to do it and still see what you are working on. With practice you won't have to go back and edit much. I'm not schooled on tracing with Inkscape and it IS different than in AI. I have heard AI is difficult to learn to trace with but it's what I started out with. All vector programs do the same thing but with different methods so it's a matter of figuring out a workflow that makes sense to you. As stated above I have rarely found an auto scan that has turned out clean enough for my taste regardless of the program so I stopped messing with it and got better at manual tracing. 

Dang goose i like that , since im still learning alot in Ai and teaching myself as i gom that was an great pointer and advice,Im doing it on my next project for a friend of a simple tattoo they want into a decal, I tried once but it didnt work out yet for me , i still need to figure out one issue with tracing .

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