stuart@accupress.com
New Member
tiff in flexi? I have been pulling my hair out all afternoon. Is it possible to trace a tiff in flexi?
Thanks again in advance.
Thanks again in advance.
-
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How do you trace a
- Thread starter stuart@accupress.com
- Start date
GAC05
Quit buggin' me
Are you having trouble finding the autotrace tool, or trouble using the options under the tool?
In Flexi Pro the "Vectorize" option is under the "Bitmap" drop down menu tab at the top of the workspace.
The correct option to use depends on the type of bitmap you are trying to trace.
got a pic of what you are trying to do?
wayne k
guam usa
In Flexi Pro the "Vectorize" option is under the "Bitmap" drop down menu tab at the top of the workspace.
The correct option to use depends on the type of bitmap you are trying to trace.
got a pic of what you are trying to do?
wayne k
guam usa
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
Any version of Flexi which has a trace tool can trace a TIFF. The way it goes about it is ... well, flexible, because it depends on the color mode you have it saved in.
Flexi has bitmap (1 bit) tracing, grayscale and color. In addition, and as mentioned by GAC05, Flexi also includes a special vectorization routine they call Bezier and two of the routines that go back to the CasMate and Inspire tracing routines. Those three are all located in the bitmap menu under under Vectorize. So in all, Flexi actually has six different autotracing routines built into it.
If the image is in color, you might want to check to see if the color mode is CMYK or RGB. Whichever it is, try switching to the other, resave and then see if the autotrace likes it any better.
Flexi has bitmap (1 bit) tracing, grayscale and color. In addition, and as mentioned by GAC05, Flexi also includes a special vectorization routine they call Bezier and two of the routines that go back to the CasMate and Inspire tracing routines. Those three are all located in the bitmap menu under under Vectorize. So in all, Flexi actually has six different autotracing routines built into it.
If the image is in color, you might want to check to see if the color mode is CMYK or RGB. Whichever it is, try switching to the other, resave and then see if the autotrace likes it any better.
mark in tx
New Member
You can also manually trace in flexi with your pen tool.
SignGuy101
New Member
i don't think he is talking about auto tracing it, i think he meant opening it or importing it as a tiff to flexi and working on it. i agree with Whit i do the same thing, edit>>save as>>jpg then open it in flexi.
Good luck
Good luck
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
stuart@accupress.com said:
This is a non-question. Perhaps you meant "Can I import a tif into Flexi and then trace the resultant bitmap?" The answer is yes.
A bitmap is a bitmap and has absolutely nothing to do with what particular encoding method might have been used to store that bitmap in a file. Pixels is pixels and color depth is color depth. A bitmap in memory carries no necessary information as to what file type could have been used to store it.
One traces a bitmap not a tif, jpg, gif, pdx, bmp, or whatever file. Once a bitmap is reconsituted from a file that holds it is independent of that file.
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
TVG said:
Not a problem, merely a bit of conceptual confusion. One traces bitmaps, not files. A tif is a file format for storing a bitmap, not a bitmap.
So how do you trace the contents of a tif file in Flexi? Import the contents of the tif file into Flexi and trace the bitmap. The same way that one would trace any other bitmap. How hard is that?
Geary
New Member
Will,
I think what Bob was addressing is the course of thinking by some, including myself, that a tiff was any different than a jpg or any other bitmap file. His point is to say that it doesn't matter what "flavor" of bitmap it is.....if you have a Trace option in the software then it will work .....no matter what. And in my assessment, after reading about how digital information is processed, is that he's correct in that any bitmap file is traceable if you have the proper plugin on board.
~Gear
ps....*EDIT* well......we posted about the same time I see.
I think what Bob was addressing is the course of thinking by some, including myself, that a tiff was any different than a jpg or any other bitmap file. His point is to say that it doesn't matter what "flavor" of bitmap it is.....if you have a Trace option in the software then it will work .....no matter what. And in my assessment, after reading about how digital information is processed, is that he's correct in that any bitmap file is traceable if you have the proper plugin on board.
~Gear
ps....*EDIT* well......we posted about the same time I see.
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bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
myronb said:
Not quit. 'Raster' is the mechanism/process whereby a bitmap, and everything else on virtually all digital monitors in use today, is displayed. All raster really means is a beam traveling back and forth exciting phosphors along its path. As opposed to, say, the display of an oscilliscope where the data is applied to the Y deflection grids and controls the path of the beam thus painting the signal itself on the phosphor. A really simplistic overview.
Bitmap is the correct term for a table of pixel data, i.e. which phosphors to excite. Some software, like Flexi, uses the term 'rasterize' to create a bitmap. This is a description of the process rather than of the result.
Bmp, jpg, tif, gif, and legions of others are encoding schemes to compress a bitmap table into a format that can be stored and later reconstituted.
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
Baz said:
Can't say for sure but CompuServe started claiming copyrights on the format and some software developers started shying away from supporting the format.
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
Baz said:
Probably a couple of reasons. Gif is an old proprietary Compuserve format and a gif file can have a transparancy color. Only until recently could Flexi deal with bitmap transparancies. Moreover a gif file really isn't just an encoding and compression scheme. A gif has dither information, color tables, and all sorts of stuff that would tend to make Flexi swoon. A gif file is far more a synthesis than other formats they really don't make for hi-res images. I can only assume that the Great White Fathers at ScanvecAmiable found it way too much of a hassle to deal with gif files for at best limited results.