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for my mopar friends

The image opens with Gimp, Inkscape and Corel. It appears to be a sample of some car detailing as one would show someone in prelude to selling them a higher quality one or a vector version. It is 72 dpi, 595x525 pixels, or 8.2 x 7.3 inches. I am not sure what you want to do with it. It is such a low resolution to be poor for printing. To be used to cut vinyl it would have to be traced. Using auto trace is going to give poor results. I'll attach an image of what a quick auto trace gives a hint as to the complications. It would have to be manual traced or recreated from scratch to produce something usable I think. The best option would be to find the creators and purchase the vector version. It would satisfy legality as well. If it is the case that the creators of the graphic are gone, or if this is the only surviving file, then some time with a bezier tool, coffee, and some patience are all that will win through. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/34207516/layout5.svg

The latest versions of Inkscape have the plot extension built in. You can find it under Extensions>Export>Plot in 0.91. It only supports a few languages, HPGL being one. It only works with a com/serial port and will not work on cutters that use a LPT port. The com port must be functioning, cables, bios, irq's, usb adapters and all. It is not as robust as commercial software. As it stands there are limited open sources options for cutters. There are variations like TuxPlot and Inkcut, but those are probably going to fail if the Plot Extension fails. One method of testing your environment would be to download a trial of commercial cutting software, with limited ability, such as SignCut Pro. It will only let you do a few things, but if you can not get a trial version to do anything, it says something about your set up being wrong or some equipment/cable failure. If you get a trial to work, you can often take those same settings and try them with Inkscape's Plot Extension. Back in the day when com ports were it, the best piece of gear I had for testing if a com port was alive was a serial modem. You could use a terminal program to access the port an enter AT commands. If you got a response, the com port was alive. Somewhere along the line I lost my serial modem.

I have a friend who works for a company called Everything But The House. They are a online estate sale company. They have approx 25 locations right now and will have another 20-25 next year. I was originally asked back in March to make their company logo into a decal for Macbook's so that it would fit over the apple symbol. Their logo is a antique key hole cover. He ordered 2 to start with. Then the president of the company saw his and wanted one for every computer at the company so he came back and ordered 100 then 250 then another 100 last weekend. They are so easy to weed and prep I charge $1 each for them. Then last week he asked me if I could do 25 door signs for them. Basic lettering and their logo. 20" x 10". Being a easy job and repeat customer I charged them $20 each for the door logos. My work will be going all across the country which feels great! I've got like $45 in materials for this last order that was $600! That job alone just paid for 1/2 my Graphtec! By early next year they will be ordering more stuff that will pay off the Graptech in just their jobs!

Your 2x2 upright you use to register the screen would work better if you slightly miter the top to guide to help guide the arm into alignment. It may fit perfectly right not but that arm will get slightly loos with age and having them mitered will make your life easier.

I hate wearing HTV Shirts with a lot on it..

ahh Thank you Sign This. Appreciate the help

My vector bookmarks: http://raindrop.io/collection/194167

Signchicken has good products.....His site is www.blankswarehouse.com

add heat

big thanks to Tom Lockhart the USC tech guru - John Williams and Noah Holland for getting it all worked out

Gonna have to coat those edges. Poly, or thick coat of paint. The MDF will still grab the fabric, even after ya rout, and sand. For one color starter, good job.

I don't really care about the disk. If they say up front in the promotional material it's a download, and the activation code will be sent via eMail, THAT would make sense. What I object to is USCUTTER customers being charged $9.99 shipping fee for a card. At this point, I would like to see their promotional material and description changed to reflect reality. Get rid of the photos of a physical disk and retail packaging. Make a reference to the download and the need for an internet connection on the computer that's going to be cutting (the activation requires internet). Stop charging $9.99 for sending a card -- provide the activation # via eMail

Just a quickie... (Why do I use Photoshop, bevins?... 'cause I can. ...and for many projects, It already does what other software wishes it could do and because of that, and most importantly, it sells jobs. This file I created in Ps at 600 dpi at 28,000 pixels wide. It is ready to print without pixelation or the sacrafices vectors would force on the veggies and bread. This is , for obvious reasons, a low-res version.)

I love this place...A LOT right now.

LOL mark-s

maybe this will help took all of 10 min to build a-frame.EPS

Forum ire is up kemosabe

Made me 7 Different sizes .

I don't get it either, they signed up August 2009, and haven't learned the basics in 6 years.? .. My opinion, they don't want to learn it.. They want everybody to do it for them... and as they stated they want it "done asap" "Quickly" That sounds like hop. hop, forum members, do my job for me..!!! And it has been posted over and over and over, you do not vectorize text. only as a last resort. No where did they ask HOW to do it...just get it done "asap" "Quickly"

If you can't manage something as simple as an outline you are in the wrong business. A simple YouTube search should yield several videos on the subject.

I like mine - it is more fun

What about this?

When I ETS'ed from the Army in <cough, cough> 1987, the first job I got was as a typesetter for the county newspaper. Myself and one other person would take hand written notes and scribbles and convert them into an HTML type code and a typesetting machine would flash the design onto a roll of photographic paper that, when developed, would come out with very fine detail and very high contrast. That's it - 8 hours a day typing in code and laying out ads that we couldn't see on screen (at this time the newspaper still did everything on text-only terminals) and had to visualize how it was going to look. During the interview for the job we were shown a list of about 6 fonts and told that we were being asked to layout an ad for a tire company and which font would we choose for the large text at the top of the ad. The person I was up against picked "Times" because she thought it was a good newspaper font. I picked Cooper Black and said it was because the type was large, bold and looked like it was inflated - like a tire. I got the job. I am not an artist, not by any means, but I do have a passion for different fonts. I routinely have to purge my machine of extraneous fonts because I just can't help installing every "cool" font I see, yet seldom use. I just checked - I have 1,478 .TTF files in my Windows/Fonts folder - looks like I need to do another purge. I use an app called Printer's Assistant that allows me to quickly catalog my fonts and print sample font catalogs. I keep an up to date catalog printed, along with my stock vinyl color choices, and once I get it made, my rhinestone color chart, in a binder that I can show to clients. I actually have two different font catalogs - I've gone through and picked out only the fonts that can be easily cut and weeded for the vinyl catalog and then a more complete list for the print/dye sub catalog. I've discovered the hard way that if you show people stuff they can't have, that will be what they want, so I just don't let them see it...

Typography is all about making the words fit the feel of the message you are trying to convey. It's one of the facets of advertising that separates the men from the boys. Someone gives you the "surprise me", there is a creative opportunity there for you to dazzle them. Find out as much as you can about what might satisfy them and do just that. If you are into signs or advertising, you should strive to master the many nuances of type .