Discuss the various aspects of heat pressed vinyl transfers. Popular and new types of vinyl media, suppliers, vinyl cutters /plotters, press times, quality, how to instructions and more can be found in this heat press sub forum.
What am I doing wrong? I am new to vinyl and I am getting a lot of calls for heat tranfers of pictures of peoples pets. When I use the print & cut feature in cutstudio all goes well, till I slide the Image density bar over. The best image I get has a "cloud" around the image and maybe very pixalated. Do I need another program ? Would appreciate any help.
I'm not familiar with CutStudio but vinyl doesn't normally cut raster images (such as .jpeg). They must be converted to vector format. I don't know if your software has this capability, but that may be the issue. Anything that is raster is made up of pixels. If you could cut these, the cutter would likely impart a very jagged line to the vinyl. By vectorizing you create a very smooth line that the cutter can follow. If you need to vectorize the image, try a free software called Inkscape (on the web), or use a program such as CorelTrace.
you can cut jpeg images..contur cutting..go to youtube and watch Josh Ellingsworth video...or go to imprintables.com..watch his video on this and he is using cut studio.
Are you trying to cut a solid color image. I have a vinyl cutter and I take clipart into my vinyl as a jpeg and then use the auto trace, which I think converts the image to a vector image. If you don't have auto trace(a tool on the tool bar)then you will need a program that will make the conversion.
CutStudio imports a jpeg, then with its tools, takes the jpeg and converts anything with color, to a black mask.... then turns the mask into a vector shape for the cut path..... you print the RBG data with your printer, then take the print, place it on the Roland, then send the vector data to the cutter..... its all done within CutStudio....
I just use the Illustrator Roland pluggin.... trace around my image, place reg marks, then send the vector trace to CutStudio from the pluggin....
You are probably seeing a "cloudy" mask because JPEGs are generally compressed alot so there is RGB data in the surrounding white areas. Try to get a TIFF or better resolution JPEG.
Its best to use another app for creating contour cut paths for images. In Photoshop you can use the magic wand to select the white areas, then use the "convert selection to path" tool.... export paths to illustrator.... take the jpeg, import into AI, then place the path on top.... then send paths to Roland... its actually pretty simple.
I believe to get it to work like joshes youtube demo you need a 300 dpi image.
Even a 300 dpi JPEG could appear cloudy in the mask conversion.... the quality has do with the level of compression in the file header, not the resolution.
Easy way to test the file, if you have photoshop, is to open it in photoshop, use the "levels" filter and bring the left black "0" slider all the way to the right.... if you get colorized pixels around your image... then you have a "dirty" jpeg. Even a 1200 dpi jpeg at high compression would do this.
Best rule of thumb for any graphics department, never use jpegs, especially if supplied by the customer. Get layered PSD or EPS if they are vectors.
What am I doing wrong? I am new to vinyl and I am getting a lot of calls for heat tranfers of pictures of peoples pets. When I use the print & cut feature in cutstudio all goes well, till I slide the Image density bar over. The best image I get has a "cloud" around the image and maybe very pixalated. Do I need another program ? Would appreciate any help.
sandollar,
the "cloud" you're referring to shows up because you slid the density bar too far over. Back it off a little bit and the cloud will go away. If you get cut lines you don't want, right click on the image after tracing and select "Break Polyline". Then you can delete the cut lines you don't want.
I have always been guilty of doing things strange. I learned to use a photo plublishing program before I ever bought the vinyl cutter. So I create my artwork in the photo publishing program first just the way I want it to be cut. I do this because I may want two or three pieces of clip art combined or changed. I just did artwork for a youth baseball team. They wanted a bulldog with a baseball bat in it's mouth. So I first found a bulldog I liked then the bat made a cutout of dogs lower mouth and inserted the bat. All clip art has to have good resolution. If you enlarge it on the pc screen and it gets messy it is not good enough resolution. I even size it in the photo program that way it will open in the vinyl program it is the right size. Then I lock the work together and save it as a jpeg. I have done some very complex artwork and my vinyl cutter program I don't think would be able to do it. I don't honestly know. Then I trace it in the vinyl program and cut it.
jpeg files are stumping me 
Would appreciate any help.
