• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

tracing/ font id software

petepaz

New Member
i saw imagaro z at the show last year and it looked amazing
saw the price and was turned off
but i just got a special deal in the mail so i checked the threads and it doesn't look like too many of you are impressed by it

what do you use for tracing/bitmap to vector and font identification?
 

petepaz

New Member
we have illustr. cs2 and i use the trace and expand
it's ok
i don't think it does that great of a job
is there an update to that
that is better
is the corel version better
 

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
I bought a copy of the Imagaro Z on their special. I won't put the product down but it gets rarely used and has serious shortcomings.

To expand however, I should point out that I am evidently more concerned about accuracy and precision than any autotracing application alone can ever satisfy. I have at my disposal, Imagaro Z, Corel X3, Illustrator CS2, Gerber Omega 2.1, Adobe Streamline and FlexiSign Pro 7.6.2.

Out of all that I use Flexi 99% of the time but rarely stop at just a trace. In fact, more often than not, I find it faster to draw with the Bezier pen and use geometric shapes where appropriate along with Flexi's excellent weld and cutout tools. When I do trace, Flexi has a number of different tracing applications included which is helpful for different types and conditions of artwork. Once traced, I use the path cleanup tools in Flexi for graphic cleanup. I rarely will keep traced text which is where autotracing has always come up short. Instead I will identify the font(s) and typeset it over the image. When I can't then I pick something similar and node edit the text to match the image.

As far as identifying type, this has been discussed to death in other posts. The short answer for identifying type is to read about type and learn something about it. Only then will using Imagaro Z or FontExpert be of any real help in DIY identification. I use a font manager for visual comparison, FontExpert in tandem with Photoshop for automated ID's, and Imagaro Z when all else fails (which has yet to ID something in that situation).

There's nothing wrong with using What the Font? except that it is like giving a man a fish instead of teaching a man to fish. It solves your immediate problem but you don't come away any better at your craft.
 

GK

New Member
Live trace in CS2 is not as good as the CS3 version. They made a few small tweaks that produced big results. Checkout lynda.com for the tutorial on Live Trace that will really show you all the little techniques to make the most of this feature.
 
Top