I need to know if there is a way to put an outline to a photo? I do laser engraving and I would like to make the laser cut around the form of a picture. To do so I need to put a red line around the area I want cute out. I went to edit bitmap and the went to cutout lab and cut the background of the picture out. Now I want to apply a outline to the area I have left. I hope I am explaining this good enough so someone can help.
Thanks Courtney
Go up top to bitmap and go under mode and choose black and white, under black and white turn it into line art, then run a trace on your image, outline it and delete the fill.
ok I have tried that but there is no outline showing up? I need to get rid of the square it is the imaginary outline.
Here's my way.
Ted
i thought i had it? that is great help but I dont know much about this program yet. How do you make the picture black? do not know how to mask background?
Hello,
You mentioned earlier in the thread that you've already done a cutout of the image. In PAINT, click the tab for WINDOWS>Dockers>Objects. This will give you a visual "list" of where/what is going on each step of the way.
sample: 1 -Open the file with the cutout image in Paint. Image will have a checkerboard or white background. Click "Combine all objects with Background"
2- Using the "Magic Wand", click on white the white background (if more than one click is necessary, hold the "Shift" key while clicking). You
can also use the "Colour Mask" option and select white but I did not do this because of the white on the players' uniform. Use the "Brush Mask
tool (holding Shift or Ctrl button at the same time so you can add or take away from the masked area).
3- Invert Mask. Now the picture is visable and the background is masked.
4 / 5- Feather the mask to help obscure any edge imperfection.
6- Select the "Art Brush" and Black (or any other colour...doesn't matter)
7- Paint over the image. The "paint" will not stick to the masked areas.
8- Click "Remove Mask"
9- Image is ready to be sent back to DRAW
From there, do the tracing as I described in my last post. (Hope the samples 1-9) come out ok...had to really compress the jpeg to meet the max size for uploading)
I'm sorry but why would you feather the edge when we are trying to give him a vector image for a plotter, this man needs a vector so he can cut the image on a machine, this is fine if your trying to cut a girl out of a picture and use as a simple picture to put into a different background, but if he is trying to send it to a plotter then he needs line art, and to make the image of the girl black, it's faster to just go to mode and choose black and white then line art and just slide the bar all the way to the right and if anything is left which chances are it wont then you can color in the rest you don't want outlined. But after you get the cutout all black you need to either run a trace and start messing with the nodes and creating smooth lines or run with your bezier tool and trace it out.
Hello Michael,
The TRACE is not a Bitmap. I feather the original Bitmap because, try as I may, I've never had a cut-out that did not have some "extra" outside of the cut out image itself (check the "dancing ants" around a cut-out). If you feather the cutout, most of the "extra" is obscured / removed and the "dancing ants" edge is closer to the wanted image. Feathering will just give the image a smoother edge and when using TRACE in Draw, the smoother the original image, the better the trace. Removing the unwanted node groups (11 in all) took less than a minute.
That said, I tried it your way. Cleaning up the unwanted "extras" was easier as all I did was add contrast (+40). That saved a few minutes. My way has about 120 less nodes, but given the easier cleaning (bumping the contrast...5 sec vs mask brush cleaning....3-5 minutes, what can I say ? Live 'n Learn. They both work but I'll give yours' the 2 points.