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Perry
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Post by Perry »

I have an image that I am trying to minimize my efforts to trace. I have not had much success using Inkscape. I am hoping that someone here might be able to point me in the right direction and explain the settings to get my desired results. I am only interested in the graphics contained within the shield. The rest of the coat of arms file will be cut using the file purchased from James Booth (Nice work James!!).
Thanks team.
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HayTay
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Post by HayTay »

Perry,

That image will be difficult to convert to vector with most tracing applications. The detail is too small and is difficult to see (at least with my eyes). Computer vectorization/tracing programs can't "see" the image as we can and tend to blend the small details together. Do you have a larger, higher resolution image that you/we can work from?
HayTay

Don't be the one that stands in the way of your own success!

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Perry
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Post by Perry »

Hello HayTay.
Regrettably, no I do not have any other copy of this shield. Nothing in hi res. I guess I will manually retrace it in Corel, and go from there.
Paul Nielsen was a huge help in that he was able to send me a file containing items to make up the shield, in dxf format. I am going to redo the dragons because as far as I can tell, there are a variety of styles of dragons on shields. I don't know why, but I wouldn't want to insult anybody's family by getting it wrong!

Paul Z
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Post by Paul Z »

Perry,

Is this what you were looking for?
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HayTay
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Post by HayTay »

Paul Z,

Nicely done.


Perry,

Dragons? Are you sure? I was under the impression that they were lions.
HayTay

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Colin P F
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Post by Colin P F »

Well done Paul.

What did you use to get the image so good?

Cheers,

Colin

CRFultz
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Post by CRFultz »

Colin P F wrote:Well done Paul.

What did you use to get the image so good?

Cheers,

Colin
This is Paul ..we should call him King Vector :wink:

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Perry
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Post by Perry »

Paul Z. - FANTASTIC!
I would also like to know how you were able to attain such detail from what I posted.
Apparently, if your name is "Paul" it means that you have a gift for graphics. :D

HayTay - I do believe you may be right. I thought with the pointed tails and such that they were, well dragons. I guess
you can (and should) learn something new everyday. Oddly, as I searched the web for "dragons" and "shields" or "coat of arms", my results were images very similar to what I was looking for... just not quite exact.

Once again, thanks ALL for the help. I needed to get the graphics (somehow) before I quote the job. Should I get the job, I will post the finish photos.

Keep making chips!

Jeremy
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Post by Jeremy »

Those are in fact Scottish lions. It looks like you have this all sorted out, but if you do a search for Scottish lions, I'm sure you can find some alternative pictures. The Scottish royal flag (the Rampant Lion) has one of these on there.

Paul Z
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Post by Paul Z »

I used Photoshop Elements

1. MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR FILE !!!
2. Open the file
3. Change Image, Mode to RGB color
4. On the filters tab, select Trace Contour (set level to 68 ... I don't know why ... it seems to be the default), click on OK
5. Image, Adjustments, Threshold all the way to the right, and save it under another name.

Photoshop Elements is great, a lot of capability, and a steep learning curve (for me).

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Phil
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Post by Phil »

I made a family coat of arms recently. I believe the lions are the same. They carved very nicely. You could take the lios from this design and incorporate them into you project.
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Perry
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Post by Perry »

Thanks Paul for the step by step. I don't have Photshop, but will try the formula with the Corel stuff to see if anything comes close.

Phil, nice job on the shield. I do think there are differences in the lions on your shield and the lions on this shield I have been asked to quote. I did come across a couple of sites with heraldry vectors that may fill in the blanks for me as far as redrawing this shield. Here are the links (should someone else also be looking to do this type of work).

http://vector-images.com/
http://www.heraldryclipart.com/features.html

To ALL, great support!!

Peter Stenabaugh
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Post by Peter Stenabaugh »

Hey Perry and others.

I know this does not really apply to this project, but if you or anyone else is looking for dragon pictures to carve, I have a copy of the book "Great Book of Dragon Patterns" by Lora S. Irish. ISBN: 1-56523-231-3. I purchased it some time ago at our local tool store, The House of Tools. I have already scanned most of the patterns from it into .TIF files that can be brought directly into Corel and traced. These files can then be exported as .eps files and brought directly into Vcarve. Erase the duplicate vectors, and process it. There are about 100 usable pictures in the book, although some I didnt like so I didnt scam them, but if someone wants something I dont have, it only takes about 20 seconds at work to scan it, and it is yours the same day.

If anyone has any specific needs or wants, let me know what you want, and I will gladly email you some of my dragon files. No need to buy the book for only one or two files, just ask.

I did make an earlier post some time back, that showed my first attempt at carving a dragon's head, it came out awsome....

I have attached a jpg file and the .crv file of my latest project that I have already carved into a laminated pine plank, but now that I have a local source of veneered mdf, I will try that as well, within the week.

Later all.

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Colin P F
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Post by Colin P F »

Very nice work with the dragon sign Peter.

And thank's for the offer for dragon artwork, I'm sure someone will take you up on the offer.

Cheers,

Colin

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