Tracing a bitmap -- quality terrible...what am I doing wrong?

**Glenoran1** · 07 October 2006, 05:19 PM

I have hundreds of bitmapped scans of hand-drawn designs I'd love to trace, but the quality comes out like this (or variations of this, as I tweak the options). The first is the original bitmap, the second is the traced version.

Can anyone please tell me how to get a 'clean' tracing? It becomes even worse when I have a coloured (filled) design.

Many thanks for any advice you can offer.

Regards,

Glenoran1

**Glenoran1** · 07 October 2006, 05:23 PM

Oops, sorry ...

My e-mail is gprobert@shaw.ca.

Regards,

Glenoran1

**Intbel** · 07 October 2006, 05:37 PM

A manual trace using either the shape editor tool or the pen tool is your best option for those sort of designs.

**Albacore** · 07 October 2006, 08:08 PM

Have a really good look here, its the best views I ahve read on the subject by the looks of what you are trying to do. : http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest62/

**Glenoran1** · 07 October 2006, 08:30 PM

Thank you very much, Intbel and Albacore. Albacore, I'll print out this tutorial and use it to work on my drawings.

All the best,

Glenoran1

**WolfMoonHP** · 08 October 2006, 04:50 AM

The bitmap tracer is the fastest I have ever seen, but unless the raster image is razor sharp, even the maximum smoothness will leave a huge number of unnecessary points. To get a good result, I tried a combination of re-drawing the simpler shapes, using the brush tool, and for other sections, deleting some of the superfluous points.