pete8314 3 Posted February 24, 2018 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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bikemike 711 Posted February 24, 2018 Scan the phone. Leave the paper part out of it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pete8314 3 Posted February 25, 2018 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? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
haumana 1,220 Posted February 25, 2018 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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bikemike 711 Posted February 25, 2018 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. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darcshadow 1,625 Posted February 26, 2018 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. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites