Any suggestions for vectorizing or tracing raster PDFs like this?

[pdiff1]

I’d like to have GF cut items like this for paper modeling, but tracing (Inkscape) does a poor job due to the shading of the raster images. Any tips or should I just bite the bullet and manually draw vectors around these shapes? Example file here: http://www.delta7studios.com/images/Rosie%20model%2003.pdf from Delta 7 Studios.

Thanks

[Jules]

Yeah the Glowforge Tracing function would work really well on that - you click on the white background, and it puts a cutline around everything.

Glowforge Interface - Using the Trace Tool

The Trace Tool in the Glowforge User Interface can be used to scan printed artwork for engraving, and to create cut lines around the artwork, or inside the artwork, by clicking with the mouse. There are a couple of ways to do things with the Trace Tool. (I’m going to borrow one of Glowforge’s freebies to demonstrate since my drawing skills are non-existent. I printed this airplane out - pretend it’s hand drawn.) Procedure To Scan a Physical Drawing and Add Cut Lines: Black ink d…

[cynd11]

Whoops! I was just typing pretty much what she said!

[pdiff1]

Brilliant. Will give it a try. Thanks.

[evansd2]

Inkscape can read PDFs, and if they are embedded images in the pdf you can then use its trace bitmap feature to convert to vector.

Inkscape has a more robust editor than the gf UI, to say the least.

[pdiff1]

This is what I had tried, but the resulting vectors on curves, etc, were quite jagged. I was looking for a little better, but I’m not real familiar with Inkscape, so wasn’t/am not sure I had correct settings.

[evansd2]

Yeah it all depends on your source material quality. If the image is low res it’s hard for Inkscape to get a really solid trace. Likewise it would be hard for the GF ui as well but they may have cracked that with clever optimized software.