Best program for tracing

[Bruce Dorworth]

I have several scrollsaw magazines. These all have full size template in them. Most of the files will work great on the laser. I tried scanning some and then tried tracing with Corel and Vectric's Aspire. Both programs worked but were far from being usable. What do you guys use to trace?

Bruce

[Dan Hintz]

I prefer InkScape... free, and it's better than Corel at tracing.

[Dee Gallo]

Bruce, you will always get better results if you trace by hand instead of relying on a program to do it for you. It's harder to do at first, but you will get faster and better quickly. Also, you will waste more time and energy trying to clean up a tracing done by Corel than if you just sit down and do it yourself. I trace scans of my pencil drawings almost every day while watching TV, it takes that little grey matter to trace once you get the hang of it.

However, if you have a clean and clear image, convert it to black and white line art before tracing for better results. It will work fine for that kind of thing.

cheers, dee

[Bruce Dorworth]

See, that is part of the problem. Most of these templates are printed on a grey paper, so when you scan and try to trace them the gray paper shows up as vectors. (I THINK)

Bruce

[Dan Hintz]

See, that is part of the problem. Most of these templates are printed on a grey paper, so when you scan and try to trace them the gray paper shows up as vectors. (I THINK)

Bruce
Spend a minute or so tweaking the contrast once scanned in. You can also tweak the black levels to remove the grey altogether, and this is probably the route I would take as it's a slider that can be adjusted in 15 seconds.

[Mark Ross]

I'm with Dan on this one. The trace functions in Inkscape are great.

[John Frazee]

I am with Dan and Mark as well. My wife does like Dee said.

[matthew knott]

I use a program called vector magic and it is bloody magic, with a half decent jpeg you get results that are as good as tracing by hand, i know it sounds hard to beleive as i have used corel x5 trace, streamline, ect but it really is very good! you can upload an image on their site and it will trace it for you and show you the output. check out some examples here
http://vectormagic.com/online/sample
And the result ARE that good, i have tried all their examples in our copy and get the same results!!
to be fair havent tried inkscape so cant compare but i will download it and give it a try!!

[matthew knott]

Tried it, its actually not bad for a freebe !! :) but vectormagic does give better results, guess it depends how fussy you are !
If you send me your image i can trace it and sent it back to you so you can see the results !!