I am scanning detailed hard line black and white pen drawings. no shading and once i do,

i am trying to trace them to have vector images i can manipulate, but every type of TRACE ruins the drawings. Is there a better way i can go about scanning my drawings or TRACING them for manipulation and clean up

Also how can i have the "black" in the images to be recognized as borders to manipulate.

Thank you for your time.

_andrew

Please just let me know the steps to cure my ignorance in this aspect of the corel software.

Parents

TheForeverTruth over 9 years ago

they are all completely full 8.5 x 11 computer paper with designs and this is a half scaled down so they would allow me to upload it all this is a simple pattern sheet but basically they are all like this but are darker and more scenic, Also i have tried the scan in grey scale and black and white only i was reading that i should be using gray scale but even then when it came time to do trace, it ruined the image.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel

Reply

Graewerld over 9 years ago in reply to TheForeverTruth

I will take a gander at this Monday when I get back to work. I am wondering how large you are making the image when you attempt the trace. As well, are you converting the image to a black and white bitmap prior to your trace?
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel

Children

TheForeverTruth over 9 years ago in reply to Graewerld

Thankyou and this is actually a cropped half of the 8.5x11 standard printer paper. and then resized down to get under the 512kb upload limit. and i was doing the aquire" image step and scanning straight into black and white (some grey scale), but also the images all are all drawn black pen on white paper.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel
hywelharris over 9 years ago in reply to TheForeverTruth

I tried to Trace it but you will find it problematic. If you keep enough detail in the image you will end up with far too many objects and nodes in Draw and it will slow to a crawl. If you reduce the image detail then you will lose fidelity.

The attached Draw file was processed thus

I opened the file in PS cropped to the important bit, and upscaled it to 4000px high in three or 4 steps, changed the file to monochrome. Saved it

I then opened the file in Corel Trace 12 (yes I know this is 10 year old technology, but it does not have the stupid file size limitation that Power(hah!)Trace has) and did a max detail outline trace.

You still lose a load of detail, of the greyscale parts of the drawing.

So what I suggest you do is scan at the highest res you can muster. The clean it up in PP, try saving it as a png with say, 8 greyscale colours or possibly 4 if you can manage. Then import into Draw and try Power Trace on it if you cant lay your hands on Trace12.

Trace 12 is plenty capable of tracing way more levels of greyscale and pixels, but what you end up with is a 80,000+ object count which will be completely unuesable in Draw, it will slow to a crawl, so what you are trying to achieve is the mimimum detail that will work for you.

Trace.cdr
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel
TheForeverTruth over 9 years ago in reply to hywelharris

wow you did a really great job that is amazing it just seems like i have alot of hoops to jump through to make this happen. Damn it makes me sad to think about. I have one drawing that was over a total of 144 pages of copy paper. I always thought i would be able to scan and link together on the computer to have the entire thing on my computer. wheeww EVEREST

Anyway thankyou really I was just hoping this would be easier for these single pages so I could prepare them for screenprinting.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel
hywelharris over 9 years ago in reply to TheForeverTruth

OK, so they're going to screen print. Therefore I presume you will want a monochrome bitmap. That makes it easier.

I would scan at very high res, greyscale, then clean up (get the white to be really white i.e. R255G255B255). Experiment with a Threshold process on the greyscale. Save as a monochrome bitmap, anything up to about 20k px is finefor Trace12.If going to Import into Draw you'll want it smaller. Not sure of the stupid file size limit but it will resample at trace time anyway.

If you are going to use PowerTrace, you might get what you need. Personally if you've got a lot to do I would find a copy of CDGS12 and install just Trace12. (it works on Win7 but is a bit flaky, install with Admin priveleges, run as Admin and set compatability to XP) If you have an XP machine I'd install it on that.

If you go that route, PM me and I'll give you some detailed info on how to set it for tracing. It is very quick especially if you want to trace lots of files.
Cancel
Up 0 Down

Reply

Cancel