#Tracing Torture Test
8 messages in this thread
Art Expression, Soft-Logik's upcoming illustration program, will be bundled
with an autotracer. The tracer is, in our opinion anyway, one of the best
for any platform. We would like to test it with realworld files before
release in order to ensure that it meets your needs. If you have files
which choke your current tracer, or which it traces poorly, put them on a
disk and mail them to:
Soft-Logik Publishing P.O. Box 510589 St. Louis, MO 63151-0589
Mark them attn: Art Expression Tracing.
Our test group will run them through our tracer, and if necessary, tweek
the program to ensure that it's as good as possible. Black and white, color
(palette, RGB, CMYK, grayscale), large (up to 32000×32000 I believe)
pictures are welcome.
Please include a note stating whether the pictures are PD or commercial. If
they are your creation, state whether the resulting drawing can be used in
Art Expression advertising, literature, etc…
Submitted disks cannot be returned, sorry. Please do not submit pictures by
email. (We spend long enough online as it is!)
Soft-Logik Publishing
Mark,
Will the tracer program automatically apply the required operation to cut
complex paths down to less than 1500 anchor points?
The good programs on the MAC do this. I can send in some images which trace
well, but result in paths that exceed 1500 points. The images display on
the screen, but when sent to any PostScript (level I) output device, choke
the device. This is a limitation of PostScript itself. It is corrected in
PostScript Level II, but in excess of 99.9% of all installed PostScript
output devices are Level I. And that number will not really improve for a
long time.
The solution is to either hand edit the images (sometimes easy and straight
forward, sometimes _very_ tedious) or use a tracing program that has this
feature built in.
Rich
Rich: (my name is Mike, not Mark 😉 We haven't put the max point stuff in
at this time, but I think that would be a good idea. How many points is it?
I haven't asked the tech guys, but isn't it dependent on printer ram and
stuff? How many points? 1250, 1500, definable?
How should the program limit the number of points? Should it apply extra
smoothing routines (more iterations, longer curves, more throwaway etc…)
or should it attempt to, um, ginsu knife it into pieces?
I've scanned a few things which were too complex for my printer already,
but Art Expression's editing tools are so easy to use that it took just a
second to split my paths in two. It would be nice to have this automtically
though.
We've compared our Tracer to all other programs available. It's better than
Adobe Streamline for accuracy, but a little slower. It has more features
than just about any on the market. I especially like being to decide what
part of the picture to trace before selecting Trace.
Michael Soft-Logik
Mike
the tracer sounds excellent … can I suggest a user-definable maximum
points reduction option since, as you rightly say, so much depends on the
printer. The minimum implementation limit quoted in the Red-book is 1500,
but could be a lot more (or, in some rare cases, it be less.)
Limiting the number of points is a tricky one … and needs careful
thought. Throwing away intermediate points seems the only way, but ensuring
that sharp angles are preserved (these are what normally seem to suffer in
some trace routines I've seen).
Splitting it into separate paths isn't really practical, as you'll lose the
fill ability.
I sure look forward to it though!!
Mike (from the UK)
Well, we were making jokes about the Ginsu knife technique, but the fill
problem was one we recognized. You could do it, but you'd have to make
filled objects which align together to ensure there is no disruption of the
fill. The alignment line would have to be unstroked. This isn't a problem
except if it's a composite path. The Ginsu knife approach falls down there.
Throwing away points is not a problem. Most tracers routinely throw away
more points then you'd want to know about. But the problem here is, you
have no idea how many path points you're going to have until after you've
done the trace. So the program could wind up with 1550 and then it would
have to change smoothing algorithms or variables and do it again. The
question is, should you set how many points max you want, and let it do
this, or shoud it tell you how many points it came up with and let you
select different options and do it again? Personally, I prefer the second
solution so I know what's going on.
Michael Soft-Logik
Mike,
Sorry, for getting you mixed up with Mark.
The maximum number of points in a closed path is 1500. This is a limitation
of PostScript, I believe – not printer memory. Might be wrong on this
point.
I think it is addressed in PS Level II – greatly expanded.
My suggestion is to ginsu knife the path into pieces. Don't throw away any
points or do any smoothing. Adobe Streamline does this very nicely. The cut
and rejoin is invisible – unless you deliberately pull the butted paths
apart to see where they touch.
Gees. I can't wait for AE.
Rich
OK, we'll take another look at Streamline and see how they do it. I must
have missed it the first time I tried Streamline.
You can't wait for ae! Gee, I just want to get the manual done! Except for
the manual for something like SAS C, or something like SuperBase, the AE
manual is probably the most in-depth manual ever for the Amiga. And
certainly the best illustrated ever. But what a lot of work.
BTW, butted areas are fine, but think about complex composite paths. There
is no easy way to ginsu them. Well, you could I guess, but it wouldn't be
very nice to work with later.
Michael Soft-Logik