advice needed please with psd to vector files

[Martin Pearson]

Depends what software you are using but most will have some sort of auto trace or vectorising feature. Depending on software some are better than others but most will require some sort of manual editing to tidy them up for cutting.
What software are you using at the moment.

[paul beedham]

i used photoshop cs5 to make the design i also have illustrator cs5 aswell

[Martin Pearson]

Well you would need to use Illustrator as that’s a vector based program, should be an auto trace on it somewhere for converting bitmaps to vectors.
I do pretty much all my design work in a vector based program, makes it easier to scale plus I am a lot more familiar with that software. I only import into photoshop if I need to add effects that I don’t have in the other program

[Colin Crabb]

Yup Martins spot on, Use Illustator CS4:
‘Object – Live Trace – Tracing options’
In tracing options you can adjust to give best possible reslut, don’t forget to ‘expand’ afterward for ‘vectored’ image.

If you have CS4 Suite, try to use Illustator for creating Logos etc, avoid Photoshop as this will create future problems and time wasted recreating previous work.

[Neil Davey]

Be careful out there, I’m sure I saw the punctuation Police earlier!!!! 😉

[Harry Cleary]

quote Neil Davey:

Be careful out there, I’m sure I saw the punctuation Police earlier!!!! 😉

😀 😀
We’ll have a whip round and buy him a bag of commas?

[Neil Davey]

quote Harry Cleary:

quote Neil Davey:

Be careful out there, I’m sure I saw the punctuation Police earlier!!!! 😉

😀 😀
We’ll have a whip round and buy him a bag of commas?

😀 😀

[Chris Windebank]

you can print and cut a photoshop file, no need for vectorising. Your machine will print any image its the cutting path you need.

What machine do you have?

[Nick Eccles]

is it just an outline cut you need ?

We have a Roland VS using versaworks, the way we do it is create a vector mask in Photoshop.
Load the file into AI and set the stroke of the Vector Mask to the Contour cut spot colour, save as EPS then load into Versaworks and it prints and cuts fine.

[Martin Pearson]

Having read the post again Chris I think your right, poster is just looking to put a cut path around a printer image, he would still need to do that in illustrator though wouldn’t he??

[Chris Wool]

quote :

printing the company said it had to be vectorized they did this within 10mins

you have a vector image already so use the objects to create the outline

or have i missed something

[Simon Worrall]

quote Neil Davey:

Be careful out there, I’m sure I saw the punctuation Police earlier!!!! 😉

We are watching….

Anyway. Back to the subject in hand. I have never had a usable result from a trace. Since you can very accurately vectorise most logos from scratch in less time than it takes to clean up the result of a trace, I don’t really see the point of them.
Simon.

[Nick Eccles]

quote Simon Worrall:

Anyway. Back to the subject in hand. I have never had a usable result from a trace. Since you can very accurately vectorise most logos from scratch in less time than it takes to clean up the result of a trace, I don’t really see the point of them.
Simon.

I’m getting to a similar conclusion….. a way I’ve used quite a bit now is using the magic wand tool on Photoshop to create a path, create a vector mask from the path then load into AI very successful