AboveCreations

VM Pro - Letter vs Graphics - Newbie Q

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Hi.  I am a newbie at both cutter and VM, so please be gentle.  I tried to read thru these threads to find something close to my issue, but my eyes are popping out and nothing is close.  Most conversations are way above me skill level right now.  I watched dozens of youtube videos on VM and still nothing is answering a simple issue I have.

I am using VM Pro and a Titan 2 cutter.  I made my first sign that had letters and then I imported a tree graphic.  I vectorized it (I think that is what it is called) and replaced it with a trace.  I wanted the tree sitting right before the letters start....  all is well until I send it to the cutter... it puts the tree on one page and the letters on another page.  I don't want that.  I want the cut to do it all on the same page.

Can someone please tell me what am I doing wrong?  It would also be an extreme waste of vinyl to be cutting stuff separate when in fact I built the sign on one page.  Why is it separating the letters from the traced graphic?.  If I can't cut a sign the way I design it, then I think I need to find another program.  Please help or some advice? 

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They are same color... black.  The letters are black and the traced tree is black... I send it to a Cut File and it looks ok... but when I send it to the cutter after that it breaks the tree into a separate page.  See my vdoc and vcut attachments.  How can I get VM Pro to cut the tree with the letters, like I first designed it.  This is driving me crazy.

pgp.vDoc

pgp.vCut

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On 10/15/2016 at 6:52 AM, Signs and Designs said:

Are they the same color?, is it bigger then your page set in VM?. Never had that kind of problem

That was my problem, different shades of black, I just couldn't tell it on my laptop. I selected both my graphic and the name I had added to it and choose black again to make sure they was the same color and my problem was solved. AboveCreations, the file you posted is the same way, two different shades of black.

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19 hours ago, crome said:

That was my problem, different shades of black, I just couldn't tell it on my laptop. I selected both my graphic and the name I had added to it and choose black again to make sure they was the same color and my problem was solved. AboveCreations, the file you posted is the same way, two different shades of black.

Yep!  That done it!  Thanks crome.  I was pulling my hair out trying to understand why it was splitting them out at the cut file.  Of course I didn't think of the shades of colors (black).  Thanks again....     'baby steps'.... 'baby steps'     lol.

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Ok, I need more help with vectorizing graphics with VM Pro.  Again, I am new to this and I've tried watching videos, reading threads and I even attended a VM online seminar last month.  Although the seminar was great, it went way too fast for me with what I am trying to do.  I spend a lot of time just trying to FIND the clicks and areas where they focus sometimes.

I have a possible new client that had suggestion for a organization shirt.  It is a moose lodge and I am trying to create a simple emblem for the shirt.  I scour the google pics and found some decent quality ideas.  But the one I am stuck on just is too much.  It is the moose.  Attached the quality jpg or the moose.  I pull it into VM Pro and vectorize it and trace...  unfortunately it comes out terrible.  Too many details and not a very good trace.  See my .eps that I done.  Can someone tell me how on earth I can get a decent trace in VM Pro. I know I can go into the details of the points, but there are thousands.  Beyond my capability.  I want to make this trace perhaps only one color (black or brown) trace.  Can someone help or assist me please?

Here are the jpg and the traced .eps

 

Moose.jpg

Moose.eps

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I would import the moose image you posted and instead of trying to vectorize the low quality image, choose the drawing tool, set it to curve (the pencil on the left) and manually trace the image. just zoom in a little and trace away. I been practicing manually tracing low quality images like that, it's a little slow going at first, but once you start to get the hang of it, it goes pretty quick and turns out nice. 

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This would be a simple enough image to get your feet wet on doing a manual trace as suggested. Another option if you are more comfortable working with raster images, edit the image cleaning it up much as possible and make it a simple black and white image, then import it into VM to be vectored. Will likely still need to do some node editing, but the better the source image, the better the trace will be.

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In the last webinar we did this issue came up and one method to deal with this is to use the Silhouette tool in the Vectorizer. I'll find the link and post it here. 

This is also discussed in the manual.

To find this click the Help (menu) > Help Topics > Vectorizing (Tracing Images) > Working with the Image Vectorizer > Preparing the Image (Pretrace) 

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IMO if you plan to be a long term cutter you should spend a little time when you can and learn to manual trace as crome suggested. It takes a little practice but once you learn it you will end up with far superior work compared to using the auto trace functions. If you have a nice crisp black on white they easy button does good but otherwise it's just too much for a computer to figure out where your brain can easily decide where to draw the line. 

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Thanks everyone for your replies and comments.  I did do as Crome suggested.  However, I used layers and paths.  It worked very well.  And thanks for sharing the moose.eps sliceNdice.  I know I could have searched for one.  But I really wanted to get more familiar with vectorizing.  Because I am sure there will be things I need that isn't in google land.  I am glad I learned the trace because it will come in handy in the future.

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