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Best software for vectorising images?
Hey guys, new question for ya’ll. At work we’ve just got a new GlassJet digital printer. We’re very new to this technology, and still unsure how we’re going to market it. We still need to figure out what it can do, and what form our customers will need to supply artwork in. Essentially the Ripping software accepts EPS, but what I need is a package that will let us be able to take an image from say a digital photograph, or scan and trace it’s outlines so it can be node edited, vectorised in Illustrator. I know this software exists as I have used a package bundled with my signwriting package VinylMaster Pro , and it is a lot quicker than using the image as a background and re-drawing it from scratch. What I want to know is if anyone can recommend any other software packages that can do this, possibly better? Thank you in advance!
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5 Replies
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Owen,
It’s not a new question. 🙂 If you do a search you will find that this subject has been discussed quite a bit in the past.
However, if you are going to edit in Illustrator, why not use Illustrator’s Live Trace facility? That is a development of the old Adobe Streamline and is probably as good a vectorising tool as you will find.
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CorelDraw has it’s own bimap to vector converter which does a good job. A stand-alone program called SmartVectorPro is supposed to also do a good job, but I’ve never had reason to try it.
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I agree with John, although I am a Corel man and Corel X3 now does an excellent job with PowerTrace from what I understand Illustrators Live trace is also an excellent converter and if you already have it I would experiment more with that.
Alan D -
Hi Owen,
I’ve just had a look at that machine…that is one serious bit of kit 🙂
I just don’t understand why you would need to convert to vector format if it is a digital printer…most recent rips would accept PDF’s & Jpegs etc which would allow you to print bitmaps direct
my apologies if I’m on the wrong track but it seems a whole load of hassle if you have to vectorise bitmaps just to get them to print
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Cool thanks guys. I didn’t even know Illustrator had this facility. It’s all new to me. I’ll have a look at it when I’m back at work next week.
Oh and Alan, you’re right that I wont need it for digital photographs, but I mean if a customer wanted a pattern of solid objects done, and all they could provide in the way of artwork is a digital photograph of what it should look like. Then I would need it vectorised to print it solidly, otherwise the image would just look all pixelated and grainy like the digital picture. Thanks though, to you all 🙂
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