Bitmap Tracer Blues

**gwpriester** · 02 February 2017, 03:00 PM

many of these steps could be effectively performed automatically and intelligently by the Xara tracer in future updates.

IMHO this is one of my biggest gripes. Features like this are added, and that is the end of it. The bitmap tracer to my knowledge has not changed at all since it was added. And there is such a demand for this and so many improvements that could be made. None the least of which is to make the process more intuitive.

**roly** · 02 February 2017, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by Xhris

Xara's tracer does a great job with simple flat-coloured logos like this as evidenced by the attached mini tutorial. In fairness, it is absolutely not intuitive how to achieve this quality of result and it could be argued that many of these steps could be effectively performed automatically and intelligently by the Xara tracer in future updates.

Thank you Xhris, very good instructions and excellent results.

Ciao

Roly

**hseiken** · 03 February 2017, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by Mark321

Wow. As much as I dislike admitting it, I suck at using the Bitmap Tracer. A client gave me a Bitmap of a hand-drawn logo. It's pretty good for hand-drawn. However, I need a vector image of it. So, I thought I would put it through the Tracer. Much to my dismay, I can't figure out HOW to use the dang thing. And I need this logo bad.

Who here knows HOW the Tracer works and how to use it to trace a logo?

Thanks for your help,

Mark

No matter what the bitmap tracer does, even a good one that's high priced or is made by an army of eggheads...it'll never look as good as tracing it yourself. I've tried them all. They all kinda suck.

**handrawn** · 03 February 2017, 11:09 AM

Thank you Xhris, very good instructions and excellent results

yes... bitmap tracing can be a great time saver...

**Albacore** · 03 February 2017, 01:15 PM

Does it really save time "handrawn"? I've never found any bitmap tracer on the market at this time to save time if it has to be placed in a doc. which has a background which differs from the background in the bitmap. I include Vector Magic, Inkscape and Illy CS5 and above they all make you have to work to get a trace which is acceptable to a professional standard. Like most folk here I think it is much more important to develop your vector drawing skills than have to rely on crappy auto-trace features.

Think of the time that you spend on preparation of the bitmap before tracing: knocking out the background, increasing the Threshold values, having the right resolution, colour sampling. conversion to grayscale/LAB, using Levels. This all adds time because you have got to place a clean doc. into your auto-trace programme.

Then you have all the hassle once you done your trace to tidy that up too: Path Fitting, stray points, too many control points, Corner Angle, converting trace for Live Paint groups and so on, and so on.

Best to just practice your speed in hand tracing using your "Shape Editor" F4. My opinion here is from experience because most of my drawings start as a sketch are scanned then brought in to Xara/Illustrator as a bitmap and I didn't want to draw the shapes out twice so I trialled out all vector auto-trace featured programmes.

**handrawn** · 03 February 2017, 01:45 PM

there again we could say it's even quicker to draw freehand in one go, with a brush tool, than it is to waste half your life pushing nodes and handles around with a shape tool - of course you will have to have spent a year or five practicing how to do this in one go, but all things require practice

I'm an artist, not a designer; it is wholly unfair to label auto-trace 'crappy' or 'sucks' just because it is not suitable for what you do, in your estimation - it saves me loads of time [but has to be said xara is not my favourite] in vectorising line art alone which is much easier to draw first in raster - in fact, drawing freehand in raster and then vectorising is way quicker than even the xara freehand drawing tools, which have a mind of their own unless you draw really slowly, and even then they still want to offer me directional options I don't need [aka wobble]

I know only too well what saves me time and I was simply thanking Xhris

**theinonen** · 07 February 2017, 10:01 AM

Autotrace can generally work very well if used properly.

There is no point to trace invidual pixels, as the file will be huge and there is no real advantage anymore for using vectors. Might just as well use bitmap program at that point. For tracing outlines autotracing works very well, and is lot faster for logos and similar than tracing those by hand.

**Egg Bramhill** · 07 February 2017, 02:18 PM

Sorry, what's autotrace?

**iamtheblues** · 07 February 2017, 02:57 PM

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Sorry, what's autotrace?

Hi Egg: http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/

**theinonen** · 07 February 2017, 04:53 PM

Originally Posted by theinonen

Autotrace can generally work very well if used properly.

There is no point to trace invidual pixels, as the file will be huge and there is no real advantage anymore for using vectors. Might just as well use bitmap program at that point. For tracing outlines autotracing works very well, and is lot faster for logos and similar than tracing those by hand.

In this case only a word to differentiate using software to automatically trace an image, instead of manually tracing by drawing curves on top of image. (English is different than my native language, as the same word can actually mean different things when used in different context. Just "trace" does not take into account, is it a man or machine doing the work.)