What Would Be The Best Way To Trace This For cut?

[jlalasvt]

I am trying to make a "fat-head" wall vinyl print of this engine cutaway design. But my mimaki fine cut AI plugin just outlines the box and not the contour of the image. What can I do to get a nice clean contour line on this image?

Thanks guys!

 

[LeLuni]

You'll have to bite the bullet and do it in Illustrator.
It is about a 10 minute job and will get you the cleanest outline.
Edit: if you're really trying to hug the lines of the engine exactly, it is more like a 30 minute job.

 

[Billct2]

If it is a onesy I would hand cut it, if it's multiples I'd hand trace it in Omega, but Corel or Adobe would also be fine.

 

[jlalasvt]

You'll have to bite the bullet and do it in Illustrator.
It is about a 10 minute job and will get you the cleanest outline.
Edit: if you're really trying to hug the lines of the engine exactly, it is more like a 30 minute job.

What tools? any video tutorials ?

 

[Techman]

pen tool.

 

[LeLuni]

What tools? any video tutorials ?

Ok, make that 2 hours then

Go to Lynda.com and sign up for a free trial. Your looking to learn about the pen tool and how to manipulate anchors/handles.

Good luck, it's not too hard, really.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

No sound but this video shows basically what you would do. In this video I am tracing some eagle artwork but the same pen tool would be used to follow along the edges of the engine. You can be very precise by zooming in more and picking up every little notch or you can smooth it out somewhat but keep in mind the less detail you trace around the more of the background shows or you could cut into the image too much and remove detail.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5144854/curvy eagle.mov

 

[TimToad]

Not to complicate things, but you could also open the illustration in Photoshop, select everything, inverse, make a work path, export work path to Illustrator, then do some cleanup back in Illy depending on how well your settings in Photoshop were adjusted when you made the work path.

There are probably a few other ways to skin this cat, but I can't think of too many other ones not offered already. I'm sure you could monkey with the autotrace in Illy and get it to do a decent enough job if using the pen tool all the way around everything isn't your cup of tea.

 

[kheebl]

I messed around with it very quickly and got a ok contour. I did it the way showed in this video.

[video=youtube;o1YogTE0_Ws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1YogTE0_Ws[/video]