pete8314

What's the correct technique to convert a trace to a vector?

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I suspect this is a really simple question, but I've watched hours of USCutter videos, and tried searching, but I must not be using the correct terms, as nothing is coming up.

So lets say I want to make a skin for an iPhone X. I trace the edges of the phone screen on transfer paper, but how to I magically convert that trace into a vector, without losing the scale? Do I literally scan it in, tidy it up in Illustrator, and just trial and error until it's perfect? 

The actual application is for car emblems/badges, so some of the designs are relatively intricate. In the past I've traced them out using a pencil & transfer paper, then sent them to a vinyl cutting company to turn into a vinyl decal, but that's the part of the process I want to take over.

 

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Thanks. But, if the emblem is attached to a car, then that's a bit tricky :-)

In that case, the process is trace -> scan -> tidy & vectorize -> cut?

Is there a preferred scanner that people use, or will any recent scanner be good enough?

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Not going to go into copyright issues ... what emblem is it? Most auto emblems can be found via Google. Sometimes you can already find it in vector format.

I would typically get the graphic (or create the graphic), convert it to a single color (black), then use inkscape to vectorize it. From there I would use Sign Blazer to tweak where I needed via node edit (if it only had some fine tuning to do).

Any scanner will do, it's just a matter of dpi you scan it in at, and how much noise is in the scan. That can be worked out with Photoshop.

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If it is flat, put a 1" piece of tape or a ruler and take a pic of it, then scale the know size. Then vector it.

 

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That's the key, having something in the trace that is a known size then it's a simple matter of scaling the vector. SB has a great feature for this where you draw a line on the portion of the graphic that you know the size of, enter the size and bam, you've got your image sized correctly.

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