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Computers and Software => Raster and Vector Manipulation Programs, and How to Do Stuff in Them. => Topic started by: Prosperi-Tees on August 27, 2012, 06:28:04 PM
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I have been using 24 hour artwork.com and artworksource .com for all my vector redraws strictly because they are so freakin cheap and have never given me any problems. A customer of mine just sent me a file he got using Vector Magic. Is it worth it? Or does it still give somewhat unusable results?
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i've been using it for a few years...when it was actually free...it really depends on the resolution of the original file.
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I've had it for a while. It has definitely helped me out more then a few times. It won't work "magic" on images that are super blurry. But if its a crappy jpeg file that needs some cleaning up, it does the trick. Usually people with crap artwork aren't to fussy, and vector magic usually gives passable results.
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I've had a subscription for a couple years. I get good results tracing art.... but poor results when tracing text.
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It's alright, it definitely has gotten me out of some jams. Worth the 7.95/month. It however, doesn't perform "magic" as it may lead you to believe. If the program doesn't convert like I want, I just tell them to handtrace it. They are very good at that.
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Vector Magic can do a decent job, but include Inkscape in your bag of tricks too.
http://inkscape.org/ (http://inkscape.org/)
Little quirky to use, but works in a pinch, does a decent job, and it's free.
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It's alright, it definitely has gotten me out of some jams. Worth the 7.95/month. It however, doesn't perform "magic" as it may lead you to believe. If the program doesn't convert like I want, I just tell them to handtrace it. They are very good at that.
is hand tracing an extra fee?
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We bought the desktop version after having a subscription for many years.
It works pretty good, but not all the time.
Sometimes we still send stuff to 24 hour artwork
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I've never liked the results much; we mostly redraw here, but more and more contract customers are going to outside cheap sources. If that's OK with them, it's OK with us too.
Steve
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as many said, it should be in your bag of tricks! We had a subscription and used it when Illustrator would not do it justice. CS6 vector conversion engine is very good and we now do almost everything here. When we can't do it in house it goes to one of the companies found through Vector Magic (Lizardfish graphics) or Jason here on the board.
pierre
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We use it almost daily. Its great to clean up a lot of stuff. It's not a fix all but it really does get you out of a lot of problems in a quick second.
We redraw from scratch when needed.
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Livetrace in AI can yield the same, if not better, results... And it's already on your desktop!
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I remember a few years back when many of us were the Vector Magic development guinea pigs and free users, someone, maybe Diane CYW, did some comparison tests of VM, and CorelDRAW and AI traces and in the end, some were better with one while another with another and so forth. None of the canned trace programs were the one end-all be-all.
That's one of the reasons, I bet, that these places like artworksource and others merely re-draw rather than trying to fix our crap.
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AI is good, but ive found almost any case with Text in the design, Vector Magic just does it better. So we go with it most of the time.
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It's always the text... the smaller, the worse. Anybody ever try ImagaroZ?
Steve
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It's always the text... the smaller, the worse. Anybody ever try ImagaroZ?
Steve
I have Imagaro Z. It seems to do pretty decent. The text identification is great.
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AI is good, but ive found almost any case with Text in the design, Vector Magic just does it better. So we go with it most of the time.
CS6 has some options that make the text much better than in the previous versions. If you get a chance try it out.
'have not compared the CS6 to VM, but since switching to CS6 I have not used VM!
pierre
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AI is good, but ive found almost any case with Text in the design, Vector Magic just does it better. So we go with it most of the time.
CS6 has some options that make the text much better than in the previous versions. If you get a chance try it out.
'have not compared the CS6 to VM, but since switching to CS6 I have not used VM!
pierre
I don't has CS6. LOL Still on CS5.
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AI is good, but ive found almost any case with Text in the design, Vector Magic just does it better. So we go with it most of the time.
CS6 has some options that make the text much better than in the previous versions. If you get a chance try it out.
'have not compared the CS6 to VM, but since switching to CS6 I have not used VM!
pierre
I don't has CS6. LOL Still on CS5.
I found the vector conversion to be the biggest improvement in the CS6. It does handle more RAM, but it is still a little buggy. I am having preview and stroke issues. Nothing big, but annoying when it happens.
In the tracing conversion they offer a "straight line" option now. So when something is pretty close to straight it actually converts and makes it so. This helps immensely with font conversion . . .
pierre
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AI is good, but ive found almost any case with Text in the design, Vector Magic just does it better. So we go with it most of the time.
CS6 has some options that make the text much better than in the previous versions. If you get a chance try it out.
'have not compared the CS6 to VM, but since switching to CS6 I have not used VM!
pierre
I don't has CS6. LOL Still on CS5.
I found the vector conversion to be the biggest improvement in the CS6. It does handle more RAM, but it is still a little buggy. I am having preview and stroke issues. Nothing big, but annoying when it happens.
In the tracing conversion they offer a "straight line" option now. So when something is pretty close to straight it actually converts and makes it so. This helps immensely with font conversion . . .
pierre
Solid, thats good stuff. I am bleeding money a 100 different ways right now but if business keeps like this we will probably do CS6 before years end. But I got newmans on the mind and finishing this building deal.