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Artist => General Art Discussions => Topic started by: Stinkhorn Press on July 23, 2014, 01:53:30 PM
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I have Corel and Ai. I'm familiar with doing it there - I understand there are places where you can upload a raster and get back a vector image online. I assume there's a human on the other end? Anyone use these?
I'm doing shirts for a yearly event that is a car show and every year before now he's just wanted 2 clip art cars, spot color. This year he wants us to take his photos of last years winners to put on the front (100 shirts). For 100 shirts it's not worth paying Dan or Scott to get great seps. We can do real crappy seps if we wanted to go the bitmap route for free. We could do a live trace and work from there -
- are the online raster --> vector shops any better than that? (worth the cost). And if so - any recommendations (or anti-recommendations)?
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need straight vector stuff, try:
http://www.vectordoctor.com/ (http://www.vectordoctor.com/)
PERSONALLY. if it was my shop, I wouldn't put out anything "crappy" and do GOOD seps myself or have Scott do them if I wanted really, REALLY good seps....
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crappy is in the eye of the beholder.
i've printed Dan seps. I have Scott quoting me for some other seps. so i know how good our prints could be if done right.
and i've printed our seps. they don't meet my quality control, but they meet the customer's expectations - so on orders of 100 and less i make the call to roll with what we can manage to output. i don't charge art fees unless I know I AM sending out for good seps that are beyond my reach.
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We use Qdigitizing for alot of this, or Vector Magic
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crappy is in the eye of the beholder.
haha, I know what you mean...I've seen some "great work" by some locals that leave me scratching my head...
but yeah -vector doctor is the jam...for vectors. Scott is the guy for rasters....
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I have used this one for a few years , for the $13 you can't beat it . has always done a great job.
http://www.24hourartwork.com (http://www.24hourartwork.com)
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I haven't used any outside sources for that since we can do our own work here. However, some of the stuff our contract customers send in because they don't want to pay our price, is not what they would be getting from us, it's usually inferior. But maybe it's time to take a look again...
Steve
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we use copyartwork.com... they've always treated us good. sometimes they don't get it on the first try and we need to have them 'fix' things, but everything they've done, even some gradient work, has come out looking really good.
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Vector doctor could do a line drawing (or line drawing with simple fills) but said it'd run 50$ to $150 per.
I think I'll take a chance on 24Hr artwork - $13 per hour, figure 2 hours a apiece for what I'm needing and we're good to go.
I'll report back to see if the results are good enough to satisfy my needs at that price.
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some good resources here. Most vectoring I just handle, but for some art, if the quality on the other end is there, these definitely provide a value.
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these guys are pretty good and fast
http://www.artworksource.com/Home (http://www.artworksource.com/Home)
mooseman
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I use Frank Kenny. orders@screenprintingart.com
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Brian at www.artboygrafix.com (http://www.artboygrafix.com) , however, I do not send out much these days....
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It's probably just me, but I'm kinda curious how you can take a multicolor photo and convert to a reasonable (number of colors) to print vector.
Perhaps because I'd probably be doing a Photoshop halftone sim process.
But maybe someone will edumakate me. :)
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Well, in Photoshop you could color posterize it, or use a cartoon filter like Toon Up or something similar, then take it into a GOOD tracing program (I like Illy CS6 way over it's earlier versions) but even then, I would, like you do a sim process. I suspect this is more of graphic logo issue here, but it's fun to theorize...
Steve
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Or you can try http://www.vectorizeimages.com (http://www.vectorizeimages.com) :) Vector conversion start from 9$ here.
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These folks just contacted me yesterday. I don't know a thing about them except that they have a California phone number.
http://www.moondigitizing.com/VAS/ (http://www.moondigitizing.com/VAS/)
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24hr artwork got back with a quote of 65 for one and 52 for the second, not quite the $32 per their examples were promising.
I ended up tracing them by hand and scanning them in and vectoring/filling them in, in Corel. Took a couple of hours, but looks fine.
The old artist at our shop had done it that way so many times I'm sure he could have done it much faster and better than I did.
So in the end, I didn't find any value in the offerings. It's either: do it myself vectorize, do it myself quick and dirty seps, or dollar for dollar value if sending it out, having someone like MySeps make a 3 color sep and calling it a day.
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24hr artwork got back with a quote of 65 for one and 52 for the second, not quite the $32 per their examples were promising.
I ended up tracing them by hand and scanning them in and vectoring/filling them in, in Corel. Took a couple of hours, but looks fine.
The old artist at our shop had done it that way so many times I'm sure he could have done it much faster and better than I did.
So in the end, I didn't find any value in the offerings. It's either: do it myself vectorize, do it myself quick and dirty seps, or dollar for dollar value if sending it out, having someone like MySeps make a 3 color sep and calling it a day.
So you do not think your time could have been more productive out selling?....
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So you do not think your time could have been more productive out selling?....
well, possibly, but -
in the same way that i don't measure "labor time to make a screen" (because I don't send the labor home with no pay when that's done, they give me 40 per week) - my time could be better spent selling potentially ALWAYS, but i do need to spend the necessary operational time no matter what as well. (would those 2 hours have been used as pure "trying to sell" time if I paid someone else? not necessarily).
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Not sure I totally understand your reply....My point is many small shops spend too much time "doing the work" (or waiting for work) rather than "growing the work"...Maybe it seemed like good value for your time, however, if did marketing and gained just 1 client, what is that client worth over the lifetime of your business?...A bigger "book of business" is a valuable asset....
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24hr artwork got back with a quote of 65 for one and 52 for the second, not quite the $32 per their examples were promising.
I ended up tracing them by hand and scanning them in and vectoring/filling them in, in Corel. Took a couple of hours, but looks fine.
The old artist at our shop had done it that way so many times I'm sure he could have done it much faster and better than I did.
So in the end, I didn't find any value in the offerings. It's either: do it myself vectorize, do it myself quick and dirty seps, or dollar for dollar value if sending it out, having someone like MySeps make a 3 color sep and calling it a day.
I would go pretty much the same route, except I'd scan the original, and do the drawing in Illustrator then add the fills. 6 of one, half dozen of another I suppose.
Steve
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I use Frank Kenny. orders@screenprintingart.com
When we get in a pinch and need some "back up," Frank is always at the ready. Recommended.
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I use Frank Kenny. orders@screenprintingart.com
When we get in a pinch and need some "back up," Frank is always at the ready. Recommended.
I've been generally happy with the few jobs I sent them. Even the one they didn't exactly do what I needed, they promptly re-did it.