I know about upping the dpi by just entering it, I have one customer who insists on sending me thumbnails sized pics, like 75 x 75 pixels--I just engrave them direct in halftone, and the engraving area for them is only about 10x10mm, and just raising the DPI does help!
Before I go further, just want to reiterate that 99% of my work is 2 colors- actually, more accurately would be ONE color, BLACK, since the other color is "nothing". So while I give props to PowerTRACE for tracing colors, that doesn't help me much, especially since I just cannot get a satisfactory simple black outline trace unless the original is pristine and large.
This is from an actual job last week. It's not pristine OR large. My customer sends me sayings and names and such to put on SIC cups. This is one from last week, a name and a date. I chopped off most of the name for this test...
First, I copied this into Corel directly from the email.
Just to make a liar out of me, note the DPI. I haven't touched it!
Also note the size, pretty small at 2.53" across...
trace1.jpg
So I throw it into Trace, and proceed to try and get a decent result.
I tried a few options but went 'line art', and spent quite a bit of time moving sliders trying to get it to look good.
Every time I moved a slider I had to go into 'settings' and change the colors back to 2. Irritating...
But this was almost the best I could muster. I did get it a little better but not much...
If I went more detail, the hard lines got harder. Less and the holes would fill in.
trace2.jpg
--Changing smoothing would make some areas smoother but others flatter...?? Why can't it just outline what it sees?
So I copied it into Corel Paint, changed it to grayscale, and exported it as a TIF, then imported into Casmate...
trace3.jpg
This is a zoom-in... note it's major pixelated, and I've done nothing to help that, it's still as-is from the email.
trace5.jpg
So I clicked "vectorize", and in less than one second- no kidding- done! --check out the lines, very smooth, no choppy edges...
Casmate doesn't try to guess at corners or curves or smoothing or detail, it just simply outlines dark, and does a great job.
Now, Casmate DOES have a secondary option called 'enhanced corners', where I can choose smoothing and detail settings, just like Trace-
and guess what? The results are a lot like Trace, rounded corners and squared off round edges. Nah, I'll just use one click and done
trace6.jpg
Below is a screenshot of the Corel job in the link below, with the original emailed image on top, middle is Corel Trace's version, bottom is Casmate.
I removed the name pieces from the vectors...
trace7.jpg
For simple black/white tracing from user file to laser, there's no contest. I did zero editing to any of this, other than the grayscale change necessary for Casmate.
Oh, and to pull out all the second holes from the Trace version. All inner holes were doubled up...
The Corel file below is a version 10, feel free to open and check it all out. If someone can figure out how to make a decent Corel Trace from the original, I'd love to know how! While I love Casmate, it's just another step I'd just as soon avoid if I can get Trace to work!
TraceTest.cdr
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