Creating a tree silhouette

[David Rust]

Hi all.... looking for a little advice on how to create a tree silhouette for laser cutting (not rastering). I have found a lot of tree silhouettes online that raster fine, but not really that great for cutting out of paper or wood...
My idea is to import a photograph and painstakingly trace every detail... however i think this could take a very long time... maybe too long!
How would you recommend going about creating a nice clean tree vector graphic for cutting (not rastering)? Any tricks??
I have some nice sunset pictures with trees in the foreground, the branches and leaves are so detailed I don't think I could recreate it in vector form by tracing unless I had a month straight to work it!

Thanks!

[David Somers]

David,

Pick a somewhat simpler tree photo. Not too complicated. Good contrast, simple background or clear sky for a background will make it easier. Then use Corel Trace. There are a lot of trace options available so you may have to play to find what works. And there will undoubtedly be a fair amount of clean up, making sure you have closed lines for clean cutting. But that is likely your best option beyond a painstakingly slow manual trace.

Dave

[Bert Kemp]

In coreldraw I find using the bspline tool for manual tracing makes it pretty easy and fast. By fast I mean a hour or so pending on the complexity of the drawing. A tree with lots of branches and leaves might take 2 or 3 hours. pending on how exact you want to be.
Could you post one of the pictures your looking at to give us an idea of what your trying to do?

[David Somers]

Bert,

Which Corel are you working with? Just curious.
Hadn't thought of using the Bspline.

I take it that is from the old I Love Lucy Shows? Ricky would say "Spline Lucy...Spline!"

Sorry....been in the hot sun all day! I am losing it! <grin>

[Glen Monaghan]

I think it may have been more like, "Lucy, you have a lot of splining to do..."

[Dee Gallo]

If you have a good B&W silhouette you like, trace it as line art in CorelDraw. Ungroup it and remove the white background piece which you will not see but it's there. Click on a white part of the picture and you will see it move. Once you have the part you want separated, make the outline hairline and delete the fill. Done!

[Mike Audleman]

If you have a good B&W silhouette you like, trace it as line art in CorelDraw. Ungroup it and remove the white background piece which you will not see but it's there. Click on a white part of the picture and you will see it move. Once you have the part you want separated, make the outline hairline and delete the fill. Done!

Not quite done but well on the way.

I would process the image in photoshop first using curves adjustment layer. Get it to near black and white (not grayscale) using contrast and the curves.

Then as Dee suggests, us the auto trace feature in Corel.

Once you have that and separated as Dee describes, you will need to cut support material out to make sure every interior piece has enough material to support it. You can't have pieces floating in mid air. Well, unless you intend to glue it all on another support sheet that is. This is the tedious part. I have done this many a time on patterns for cutting pumpkins. Miss one piece and things fall apart Not fun.

[Ruben Salcedo]

Not quite done but well on the way.

I would process the image in photoshop first using curves adjustment layer. Get it to near black and white (not grayscale) using contrast and the curves.

If using Photoshop there is a way to have good outlines from Photoshop without the need of tracing it in Coreldraw, after you do the above procedure you point out you just remove the background if need it leaving just tree by itself, create a selection of it, then make a path from the section, then export the path as illustrator, now import it into Coreldraw give it a color and voila! is done. Here is a video that will give you more details.

[David Rust]

I have been experimenting with a different approach... It worked out okay, however not what I initially wanted.
I made an assortment of trunks, limbs, and branches, probably a total of 15... Then I started with a trunk, duplicated the limbs/branches and welded together as I built up the tree. They came out okay I think, good enough to vector cut out on black cardstock and mount against another color... Initially I wanted to do the trees in a photograph, but it has way too much detail.
There are no leaves on my trees, but it's a start. Not sure how to add the leaves... any ideas?
Tree_1.jpg

[Mayo Pardo]

A search on Google Images for Tree Clip Art yields a lot of good ideas...

[Mike Audleman]

I have been experimenting with a different approach... It worked out okay, however not what I initially wanted.
I made an assortment of trunks, limbs, and branches, probably a total of 15... Then I started with a trunk, duplicated the limbs/branches and welded together as I built up the tree. They came out okay I think, good enough to vector cut out on black cardstock and mount against another color... Initially I wanted to do the trees in a photograph, but it has way too much detail.
There are no leaves on my trees, but it's a start. Not sure how to add the leaves... any ideas?
Tree_1.jpg

Natural sponge and dark green poster paint?

[Mike vonBuelow]

Maybe this will help you save a few hours ?? PM me