Tag Archives: do-over-tracing

This is what happens when you like a SVG, but the points are a mess for cutting out purposes and so you convert it to a raster (bitmap) image and trace it.

You Should..

You Should Be Wary Of Free SVGs

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–especially if it is being called “clipart”!  The bulk of them are meant for clipart things like being printed on announcements, learning sheets, and old school websites.  They are not meant for a machine to cut them out.  If you tried, the machine would shred your paper because there are so many points and lines in clipart.  If you’ve already been visiting cutting machine websites, you can probably spot good candidates on these clipart sites.

Good VS Bad Clipart for Cutting Machines
Shading+a vignette prevent the left clipart from being useful to cutting machines.
  • Limited color palette–I would say about 10 would be the utmost you would want to stretch it.  2-5 colors (with two of them being black and white) work the best in my opinion.
  • Solid line or color around body of image
  • Clear delineation of the parts of the image

Even with these characteristics, it still may not be good to cut out because the vector work is bad.  In this case, you can convert it into a raster (bitmap) image and then trace it yourself.  I will be doing another post with examples.  I call this process “Do-Over-Tracing”.

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