Dear InkscapeForum users,
I am opening this thread because i need your help on that how to make ready to cut vector graphics from a photo. I looked at а few sites that sell wall decals and came across a picture that is edited with a graphics program and now is suitable for cutting with a plotter.
This is the vector graphic :


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

And it is the image from which it was made :


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I have tried to use Trace Bitmap(Inkscape) and Trace Image (Illustrator) but the end result is not even close to what the ready to cut image looks like.

Any advice and help will be much appreciated!

Regards,

Alex

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

Inkscape cannot automatically trace a photo, in such a way that it needs no further work, before sending to the cutter. Although I think someone could be successful, if they wanted to create a trace engine for such a purpose.

Anyway, I'm not so sure that's what has happened with your sample images. It looks to me like someone must have tweaked the vector quite a lot. The reason I think that is because the vector image does not look like a faithful reproduction of the photo. Specifically, note where the pylons of the wooden deck/wharf/boardwalk meet the water, there appears to be ripples in the water. But the photo does not have any such ripples, or anything that might cause those features.

And also, look at the surface of boardwalk on the vector image. It would appear to be darker along the edges, and lighter along the middle area. But in the photo, I don't see anything like that. The deck looks fairly much the same, whether you look at the edge or the middle. And I could make similar comments about the horizon and reflection of the mountains on the water.

Somewhere I've seen examples where Illustrator's trace can almost perfectly reproduce a photo. But perhaps the version you tested does not have that. Inkscape's Trace Bitmap should be able to get you a good start at it, though. Especially by tweaking the various options in the dialog. You'll just have to do a good deal of trial and error, with the settings, and still probably a good deal of node editing, to create the effect you want.

Also, there are other trace engines, which work differently than Trace Bitmap, which might get you closer to what you want, in one go. But you'll still need to do a lot of trial and error, until you learn how the various settings affect the outcome. Here's one other tracer that I know about: http://www.roitsystems.com/cgi-bin/autotrace/tracer.pl And there's another vector program, which I think can trace....I wanna say Vector Magic, but I'm not positive about that.

An automation will never produce the result as shown on your first image based on your second image.
An automatic trace can measure the colour data of each pixels of your image, and connect the coordinates wich are at the edges of a bigger contrast.
There are different auto-tracers, with different options for this sampling and recreating them in vectors,
but basically none will produce lines in where the original image had nothing.

You cannot adjust the colours of your image to have contrasting edges that could be auto-traced as on your first image.
Here is an example on how a tone curve adjusted image would work:





Used 7 colours, to produce some more lines.
Notice, how none of the waves or the wood will ever turn out as on that black and white image you posted.

That image was a complete tracing work of a human, with learnt perception of how things look, and not on displaying them as a photograph.
I can't think of a photograph that an auto-trace method would produce a very similar result as a traced-by-hand one.
This function can be handy in some situations though, but not for such task that you would use here.