Hi from the Space Coast

[marvkaye 1]

Just thought I'd introduce myself and start making some new friends whom I can lean on once my new cutter arrives.  I purchased a 24" Refine and expect to have it in hand by this time next week.  I've been fiddling with computers probably longer than many of you have been alive, but contrary to popular belief, us old dogs can actually learn some new tricks 

I've got several different systems running, all PC based, and have been fighting with Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS3, and SignBlazer/06 on my latest laptop, a dual core AMD with 6GB RAM running Vista Home Premium.  I used to be pretty fluent with all the Adobe apps, but it's been so long since I've used them with any regularity that I'm looking at the lower edge of a very steep learning curve.  They're coming back slowly, but there have been lots of refinements to these programs over the years, and they have very little similarity to their earlier legacy versions, that's for sure.  Anyway, I'll probably fade all this stuff back to my XP Pro machine with a bit less memory and dedicate it to the cutting operation, at least until all the other apps start running stably on Vista.

I didn't buy the cutter to actually do any direct sign work, rather I'm intending to use it to cut freehand airbrushing stencils.  I'll probably cut some masks from thinner, low tack vinyls to use as paint masks around my business, and can already see that doing that with SignBlazer directly will probably be the best approach for that... based on the little that I've fiddled with the demo it's apparent to me that its text-handling capabilities will be more than adequate to that task.  It's the other stuff that seems to be giving me the hardest time... I've got a number of imported (JPG) images of various airbrush masks that I'm trying to convert into appropriate art for use in SignBlazer, but the process seems so convoluted that I really haven't nailed down all the operations to actually get from image to cutting path, but I am getting close, I can smell it.

For example, I've figured out that getting a nice smooth path in Photoshop can only be done with really large, hi-res images, so I'm converting the little scans (say 400x600 pixels @ 72ppi) to images that are 8-10 times that size at 300ppi before converting to black and white... that way the gaussian blur tends to really smooth out the jaggies and I wind up with a very smooth outline.  Once that's done I don't have a problem turning the image into a duotone (ie, black and white) in preparation for sending to Illustrator, but once there the process breaks down for me and I can't seem to get a decent image loaded into SignBlazer... I've tried multiple formats (WMF, EMF, legacy illustrator (v8 or v10), and even .ai files with workpaths) and it seems like no matter what I do the images either show up black in SB or don't want to cooperate with the rest of the process.  Fortunately I've got a week befor the cutter gets here to figure this out, so I'm not too concerned.

That's way too much info for my introductory post, so I"ll shut up now.  Nice to be aboard.

    <marv>

[kenimes 42]

Welcome to our forums!

I have seen where the preview of the import image in SBE is blacked out, but once you bring it in to SBE, it should no longer be black. I am still learning SBE myself, so I will be learning right along with everyone else. We do have a SignBlazer Elements category that one of the SBE techs visits, so maybe some direct questions should be posted there for assistance.

[marvkaye 1]

Thanks for the welcome.  I can tell already this is a place I'll likely visit regularly.

You mentioned SBE (Elements?).... the demo version from the chrome-whatever website is v5.5.62 and includes 3 different levels of software... SB06Pro, SB06Express, and SB06HotShot.  Are any of those the same as "elements" or is that a different piece of software.  I'm only fiddling with the demo because the full-blown version that comes with my cutter simply hasn't arrived as yet.  Perhaps things will be different with the latest, non-demo version.  We'll see, I guess.  I also haven't checked to see if I get different results when importing based on whether the program line says pro, express, or hotshot... something else to test.

BTW, I mentioned that I'm planning on cutting paint masks... I've already got some 7-mil mylar especially for that purpose.  I'm assuming that material is either thick enough to think about using 60-degree knives, or that I might be ok with the 45-degree ones that are included... any thoughts on that maatter?    The mylar has no adhesive of any kind... can I simply use transfer tape to hold it together during cutting or do I need to do something different?  I suppose I could modify the artwork to keep some bridges that would hold the finished shapes in place for later removal with a scalpel.  Lots to learn, I think.

[vectorman 0]

hello to space coast i hpe u got your plotter and having a fresh fun with it.

i just wantet to add that therer many many ways to vector a bitmap image,one of the ways that i use to improve the rastar befor vector it is to play white the cut uot filter in fhotoshop and then add a poster end filter