Bitmap Tracer crashes Xara....

[RAMWolff44]

Not in the begining. but it does. Twice so far.

Here's the deal. I found that if I used 10 passes

in the Bitmap Tracer and the following settings:

1) Photographic (select)
2) Passes 10
3) Remove Noise 100
4) Minimum area 25
5) Initial Color Balance 44/55
6) Final Color Balance 0/10
7) Accuracy 100
8) Smoothing 0/10

I got a near perfect, in fact, in the case of the wooden bowl trace, it looks better!!, then I hit "insert" and it inserts it just fine.

The first time I tried to resize the page (Bitmap Tracer needs some sort of size definition added in) froze the program, had to shut it down through task manager. Second time, reduced the page size down to 10%, tiny I know, but wanted to see what would happen. Traced with the same settings and did the "insert" and it appeared fine and tiny on the page. Tried to move it, got an access exception and it shut down all by itself.

Are my settings to unreasonable for what I want? If so, what would be a high quality trace, colors and details in tact that would not crash the program? Is it the number of passes that I am asking or something else??

I don't use the BT very often, but as a suggestion I used to trace the wooden bowl and follow the instuctions to create a version on my own of it.

Thank you

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[RAMWolff44]

Not in the begining. but it does. Twice so far.

Here's the deal. I found that if I used 10 passes

in the Bitmap Tracer and the following settings:

1) Photographic (select)
2) Passes 10
3) Remove Noise 100
4) Minimum area 25
5) Initial Color Balance 44/55
6) Final Color Balance 0/10
7) Accuracy 100
8) Smoothing 0/10

I got a near perfect, in fact, in the case of the wooden bowl trace, it looks better!!, then I hit "insert" and it inserts it just fine.

The first time I tried to resize the page (Bitmap Tracer needs some sort of size definition added in) froze the program, had to shut it down through task manager. Second time, reduced the page size down to 10%, tiny I know, but wanted to see what would happen. Traced with the same settings and did the "insert" and it appeared fine and tiny on the page. Tried to move it, got an access exception and it shut down all by itself.

Are my settings to unreasonable for what I want? If so, what would be a high quality trace, colors and details in tact that would not crash the program? Is it the number of passes that I am asking or something else??

I don't use the BT very often, but as a suggestion I used to trace the wooden bowl and follow the instuctions to create a version on my own of it.

Thank you

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[RTK]

Hello RAMWolff!

First of all, do you have the latest patch installed?

I often use the bitmap tracer to get the creative juices flowing and Xara never crashes...

EXCEPT... when I do an extremely detailed trace with far more than 100,000 nodes. I think this has to do with memory limitations on my PC more than a Xara bug.

As for Xara slowing down - try to manipulate tens of thousands of shapes and nodes in Illustrator or Canvas and see what happens (or no does not happen). [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Be patient when playing around with the tracer and just be amazed that Xara can do this in the first place...

Xara IS a race-car! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

It is impossible to give you the "right" settings, as there are none. It all depends on the bitmap (e.g., colour, contrast, detail, and resolution...) and the effect you want to achieve. Have fun and experiment!

You can't create a "perfect" trace - with any bitmap tracer. Use the limitations to your advantage and create something "different" instead.

Some tips:

Instead of dragging with your mouse to move or enlarge a huge trace, try using the controls instead. Also, keep the trace grouped while moving and re-sizing, as it seems to speed up the re-draw time a little bit.

A higher value on smoothing will limit the number nodes somewhat. Lowering the quality settings just a couple of notches will also make a difference in size without really affecting the result.

Sometimes it also helps to alter the contrast, brightness and sauration of your bitmap if your traces are getting to big.

There is no need to fiddle with the size of the trace if you first re-size and crop your bitmap and create a new bitmap of it before running it through the tracer.

You can create interesting effects by layering different types of traces on-top of each other and using Xara's transparencies on the top ones to bring out the detail of the ones they are covering. I recommend removing the back most shape (which spans the whole image) of the trace you will be using a transparency on.

The link below will take you to a couple of vector-only-examples that show some effects that can be achieved by layering traces and shapes.

Note that I was not going for detail - I was going for the effect.

I have many more examples but I have been too lazy to upload them...

http://www.ristoklint.com/sketches/s.../sketches1.htm

Hope this gave you some ideas to try out!

Risto

risto@ristoklint.com

Visit my web site!

[RAMWolff44]

Went out to your site. I right clicked/saved some of your pics to study. I really like some of them. REALLY nice stuff. Food, Apple Thieves, Bird, King of the House, Monkey and Model are all keepers for me. Some more abstract but eye catching and then some fantasy realistic, like Food, were making my mouth water.

All of these were done in XARAX??? Average time to complete a project?? I know they all vary, how about this....from what you can remember. The time it took you to complete the ones that I saved.

Just curious.

Wonderful laid out site and fun too!!

RAMWolff [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Average time to complete a project?? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You forgot to ask how many colors he used and why he uses the colors he does? :-)

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[RTK]

Hello again RAMWolff,

It makes me happy that you enjoyed the visit! As to you question... hmm... it is difficult to estimate how long it takes. It is not the drawing part that takes time - working out the idea, composition and colours are the time consuming parts.

I don't always have a totally set idea when I draw; I just let things happen. Sometimes things happen faster than other times, but I would think that a ROUGH average would be around 3-4 hours from idea to finish. I'm faster when I re-create something that I have already worked out on paper.

The "bird" took about 5 hours - and it was more tedious than difficult to do. I would think that "King of the house" took about an hour, "Food" faster than that and "Apple thieves" around 4 hours because I couldn't get the colours and composition right.

All of my creations are technically very simple. If I would re-create/copy the images that you mentioned - I could it all in a couple of hours, easy (not including the bird)...

They are all 100% Xara X.

It is good that you did not repeat Gary's question/comment... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Thank you for your interest, RAMWolff!

Risto

risto@ristoklint.com

Visit my web site!