Vector Magic Full Version Free Download
Francisca Revelo
This tutorial describes how to convert a digitally rasterized bitmap image into vector art. This process is called tracing or vectorization, and can either be done manually or using an automatic tool. In this tutorial, we explain how to use Vector Magic to perform this conversion quickly and easily.
This tutorial applies only to bitmaps arising from the digital rasterization of a vector art original. This comes up when the original vector art has been lost or is inconvenient or time-consuming to retrieve. In this tutorial, I go through the process of re-vectorizing such an image.
Just like many other image viewers and editors, VM uses a checkerboard pattern to indicate the background (behind the image). So if an image contains transparent sections, as this one does, they will show through as the checkerboard. Transparency is supported by VM Desktop Edition but not the online version. This does require the user to make a choice. If the transparency is alpha-blended at the boundary (as is typically the case with PNG images), then the user should leave the transparency alone. If the transparency is implemented as a 1-bit transparency mask (as with GIF), but the rest of the image has anti-aliasing, then it is necessary to flatten the image to a suitable background color. This page (shown below) lets the user make this selection. In this case, the transparency is alpha-blended and we want to preserve the transparency in the vector result, so we will select 'Leave Transparent.'
The next option is the quality of the source image. The algorithm needs to know this so that, in the case of a noisy image, it doesn't mistake compression noise or other imperfections in the image as representing actual features to be reproduced in the vector image. In this case, the input image is a very clean, crisp PNG, with no noise. It is definitely a high quality image, so we will select that choice (see below). But be sure to zoom in on any given image to take a close look. Sometimes an image can appear clean and crisp when zoomed out, but defects become apparent when inspecting it in detail.
The next choice determines how the colors to be used in the vectorized result are selected. "Custom colors" means that you can select the exact set of colors to be used, while "unlimited colors" mean that the algorithm will pick them automatically. In general, one should pick "unlimited colors" when there are lots of colors in the image, and "custom colors" when there are very few. But it is also sometimes sensible to pick "unlimited colors" even when there are very few color because that option takes less time. In this case, I'd like to demonstrate the process of picking the "custom colors," so I'll make that choice (see below).
For the "custom colors" mode, the user must select the specific set of colors that he/she wishes to have included in the vectorized result. On this page, several "Quick palettes" are shown that the user can select from. Selecting a quick palette causes that palette to show up in the box at the top of the page. Individual colors in the selected palette may be edited or deleted by clicking on them, and additional colors may be added by clicking the "+" icon. In this case, the seven-color quick palette is the correct choice (see below), so we select it and move on. The arrows to the left of each quick palette indicate whether the program thinks it is a likely candidate. The double arrow is the program's best guess. In this case, the best guess (nine colors) was not correct, but it was just a matter of one click of the mouse to correct that mistake. After selecting the correct palette, we hit "Next" to move on to start the vectorization job.
The vectorization process takes a minute or two, depending on how fast your processor is. Once it is done, you will find yourself on the "Review result" page. On this page, you can quickly reprocess the image with slightly changed settings, or you can edit it manually. Though the result looks good when viewed zoomed out (see below), there are a couple minor defects. I will explain how to fix those defects in the coming few screen shots.
The segmentation editor works much like Microsoft paint, or any other simple bitmap editor. It allows the user to make manual edits to a coarse, pixel-aligned version of the vector image. This is particularly useful for correcting mistakes like this one, where the wrong shapes are connected. In this case, the top black shape and the bottom black should should not be connected but are connected. The first screen shot below shows the segmentation as it originally was computed by the program.
Now, let's just look at a couple other spots in the image to see how things turned out. The two screen shots below show the original bitmap image (first screen shot) compared to the corresponding vector image (second screen shot). As you can see, the program did a nice job of reconstructing the underlying vector image. Corners are sharp where they should be and curves are smooth where they should be.
Here is another view that shows the outlines from the vector image superimposed over the original bitmap image. As you can see, nodes are generally placed in very sensible locations, and the vector image very closely follows the actual shape boundaries in the original bitmap. That the edges in the vector image slice right through the anti-aliasing in the original bitmap is one of the best features of Vector Magic in comparison to other auto-tracing tools.
That takes you to the page for saving your vectorized result to the hard disk, or dragging and dropping it on another program. In this case, I've elected to use the "Quick Save" feature. Quick save allows you to save the vectorized result to the specified directory and using the specified file format with a single click. The directory defaults to the same directory that the source image came from and the file format is a sticky setting, which means it will be whatever you last chose. The filename defaults to be the same as the bitmap name.
After you've saved the image to disk, you can load it up in your favorite vector editor. I like Inkscape because it is free and has most of the features that Adobe Illustrator has. In the screen shot below, I've loaded my SVG file up in Inkscape and am using the magnifying glass zoom tool to zoom in on the small highlights on the helmet.
And that's it! This tutorial was intentionally written to be very thorough, so it is a bit long-winded at times. Once you get the hang of this, it will become very quick and easy to convert bitmap images into vector art. While the algorithm built into Vector Magic is state of the art, it is not perfect, so we have included a manual editing feature. Even that feature won't let you fix everything, so I've also explained how you can use a regular vector editor to help clean things up after the fact.
The purpose of this page is to let you manually correct segmentation mistakes made by Vector Magic. The segmentation is the crude partitioning of the image into pieces that are then smoothed to produce the final vector art.
I usually use the PSD format between painting applications, layers and all. I usually use an export format that retains layers and what not with vector editing applications, which may mean exporting to the native format of the receiving application, an intermediary format or a PDF.
+1 for the tracing feature (or converting to vector). I did use -vectorizer.com/ and it work very well indeed. I'd rather have it included in the cost of Affinity though as $9.95 can mount up... Throw another $30-50 on affinity instead!
I also needed to convert a simple pixel-graphic into a vector graphic. This Youtube video made this pretty easy in Affinity Designer. A bit of work, and you have to be as exact as you could, but it works!
Sometimes we have to work with graphics we get from outside organizations, and we have no control over quality. Like right now, I have a logo I need to put on a vehicle wrap that's simply a JPG file with a white background. I need to vectorize it and make the whole thing white, so it pops against the colored wrap. And I can't, because this software suite is missing this, IMO, core functionality.
I have now put the logo through vectorize it and convertio and neither can convert it. Which is ironic, because the logo was clearly designed in Illustrator using default brushes. So I can't even re-create it, because I don't have those brushes, either.
Illustrator was so much better in this space, and had the tools needed to get this work done. In an ideal world, you'd be able to get usable vector files from everyone, but that's isn't reality. And Affinity is making this very, very difficult.
For a logo is highly recommended to trace manually (if all the legal grounds are covered, as is a no-way in many cases). As for such thing an auto tracer will require such heavy nodes cleaning that the work for that is more time consuming than just tracing over manually. And the latter is always more optimized and accurate. Provided there are legal permissions to produce such a version of the logo, I'd manually do the vectors. An usual logo will be about 10 -30 nodes, or the like. Quite fast. If is for dirty and even faster works and tasks, you're even better just doing some selection to eliminate the white, and then apply whatever the hue or fill to the layer transparency selection, or as a layer effect, etc. In photo, maybe using its "vector " tools to trace over the logo, then fill with the color, or etc
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