Decent trace tool

NCC1966

NCC1966

New Member
I would like to share this for whose that are not already aware of.

Several years ago the only trace tool I have tried was Corel Trace and it was pure crap then. I never bothered again to try it; instead I just vectored manually anything I needed using the shape tool. A pain in the neck but certainly the best result you can get.

Recently I found out a tool called "Vector Magic" that really does a decent job. Yet it doesn't deliver ALL the job done it turns a 45 minutes task in a single minute where you will have to open the SVG file in your favorite vector program (mine is Corel Draw), break the file into pieces, delete a few noise and recombine it as you wish. The vector job is really quite decent though.

I am using it in a bunch of old school black and white cliparts that I have to vector in no time and the result is surprisingly good. The downside is the price (a licence of $295 for the desktop version is very expensive IMO for a tool that does just that) but they have the option where you can subscribe for their online service for $7.95 per month that gets affordable for all pockets. Not the best solution for whose need to vector heavy files but...

:)
 
You're much better off doing these by hand. Those programs tend to give very bad edges, curves, and create unnecessary clipping masks around simple objects, that can cause havoc.
 
hankscorpio said:
You're much better off doing these by hand. Those programs tend to give very bad edges, curves, and create unnecessary clipping masks around simple objects, that can cause havoc.
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If you have told it to me till yesterday (when I just knew Corel Trace) I would agree totally. After to meet this program I may have changed my opinion. One of the things I liked more is the small number of objects it generates. I tried Corel Trace vs. 11 and to achieve a decent result it generated me a HUGE and complicated file with over eight thousand objects. This Magic stuff did it better with around 40 objects.

That's why I shared this program. It is really good. You should try it. But, of course that's your call!

;)

In my case I wouldn't bother even try it if I had only one and important illustration to trace. But having a bunch of small B&W cliparts that will have no more than 1 cm tall on paper I feel really happy to have a program to do it for me. And the only reason I am tracing such small pictures is because I am experiencing problems printing my arts in a laser printer because they are "black composite" and this was the only way I found to repaint them nicely in CMYK 100% black...

:whistle:

Jimlad said:
Or there's always Illustrator.
Click to expand...

Tried it a couple times but I really don't feel comfortable using it. Perhaps because I do my stuff with Corel for over 20 years and am so used to it.

(y)
 
There is a reluctance for Corel users to use Illy and vice versa, I guess it's down to how comfortable you are.

One sticking point with Corel is that it's for Windows only (no Mac version) probably why a lot of designers don't use it.

I gave up on live trace years ago. But maybe it's time to revisit it...
 
I use "live trace" in Ai quite a bit for vectorising raster images when we do murals.
Sometimes it's for making stencils on the plotter and sometimes it's to simplify something like a portrait down into a few colours to be used as a guide.

It can be really quite a good tool but it does take some experimentation with the settings to get right.
It's often better to adjust the levels of an image first in Photoshop and then run a trace.

When you find the settings that work well you can save them as a custom pre-sets which makes it much quicker and easier when you come to doing a similar thing.
 
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