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Right now I have all my artwork sent out. It is beginning to get expensive and also sometimes the artist isnt reliable. What is the best program for vectoring artwork? Someone sent me a PDF of their logo and I would like to try and make it print ready myself. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kak9288
Right now I have all my artwork sent out. It is beginning to get expensive and also sometimes the artist isnt reliable. What is the best program for vectoring artwork? Someone sent me a PDF of their logo and I would like to try and make it print ready myself. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
Hi kak9288,
Do you have any artworking experience at all, and also do you own any software packages currently? If not do you have a budget for one?
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
I have photoshop and don't have any real art experience or much experience working with photoshop itself. I send the files out currently that are not print ready and the artist sends them back to me. Embroidering and silk screening is going great Im just tired of relying on other people especially when there is a time crunch. Hopefully I will be able to have an artist on staff next year!
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
You can use Adobe Illustrator to create some vector art or to open a PDF file.
Coreldraw Graphics Suit is another vector based program used by alot of people.
Then there's also Inkscape, the only free one out of these, it's open source.
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
It seems the link to inkscape is not working for some reason. Im going to download and try corel draw. I should have looked down the forum since this seems to be a common thread. My apologies to the professionals, Im sure it gets tiring answering the same questions over and over.
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kak9288
I have photoshop and don't have any real art experience or much experience working with photoshop itself. I send the files out currently that are not print ready and the artist sends them back to me. Embroidering and silk screening is going great Im just tired of relying on other people especially when there is a time crunch. Hopefully I will be able to have an artist on staff next year!
It depends what you are comfortable using really. I prefer to use Adobe Illustrator when redrawing artwork and often PDFs contain vector data already, using Illustrator to open the PDFs can sometimes make the vectors readily available to you. (you may already no this, i'm not sure!).
It is possible to use photoshop effectively, but I feel that illustrator is more geared toward doing this naturally and you don't have to worry about resolution so much.
Maybe ask your artist to if you could sit in on a job and observe how he works and if its something you feel you could do yourself?
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
I am a fan of Adobe Illustrator, as I use it for a lot of artwork creation and vectorizing. One feature that is super nice is the Live Trace option which takes a lot of the grunt work out of vectorizing designs from the simple to the somewhat complex. Live trace allows you to begin converting images to vector with the click of a button as well as fill color pretty easily. I also use a tablet which you can find on the internet for a pretty cheap price which allows me to retrace images in illustrator using the various pen and pencil tools. A tablet is a digital pen and drawing pad that allows you a bit more creative freedom and detail when the live trace option doesn't cover the bases. I believe you should be able to check out some of the tutorials and even take it for a 30 day test drive by visiting the Adobe site.
Corel may have similar features, however I am not as familiar with it. I do know that my current screenprinter uses Corel for it's ability to produce one click color separations.
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
Corel X3 does have a trace function that is greatly improved over past versions. I use it a lot more than illustrator simply because I am more familiar with the program. Both programs have a learning curve and working with a complex image can be frustrating. Photoshop and similiar programs are great for photo manipulation but work with bitmap/raster images and do not produce vector images
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork?
Corel does import PDF, I don't know if they are vector, but you can always import to photo-image to black and white, clean the drawing up a bit.
Then open in Trace, get a good result, and open in draw to touch-up.
I mostly do vinyl, and a CLEAN vector is always important.
Do a search on Corel tutorials and you will find a lot of good free info.
What is the best program for vectoring artwork? 
re: What is the best program for vectoring artwork? 
