I’ve done quite a bit of hobby graphic work and thought I’d share one of my favorite little programs called Vector Magic. If you aren’t familiar with working with vectors/graphic programs, it’s a good time to learn before getting your Glowforge! This program is a little gem and maybe someone can find it useful
Vector Magic is available for online conversion or you can download the program. I use both Corel and Adobe and Vector Magic typically does a better job with tracing and vector conversion than either one of them in my opinion. It has a very basic interface so it’s not too hard to learn. The editing features aren’t advanced and they are a bit cumbersome, but great program nonetheless.
Thanks for sharing this–I know people have mentioned it, but I’ve gotten so invested in the magic/morass that is Illustrator that I hadn’t investigated other options for this function, which is pretty essential. I’m looking forward to trying it.
Yes, I meant Illustrator. To be honest, I haven’t used Illustrator in a few years (just happen to prefer Corel) and my version is likely outdated. The trace feature of AI may have improved so you mileage may vary Download the free trial and let me know what you think of the comparison!
I did find a few comparison pics. One was from VM own site so take that for what it’s worth. The other was from a good comparison test site.
When you think about it, $7.95 a month isn’t all that bad of a price compared to the $295… you’re paying less if you get under 3 years use from it. It’s one of the few that works well with color bitmaps.
If you have simpler needs, you can give the potrace freeware a try. It’s not quite as user friendly, and doesn’t exactly do colors (but it does know about them and has pre-processing to deal with them)… but it seems to produce some good results if you’re comfortable experimenting with that sort of thing.
I have X8 and vectormagic doesn’t do simple B&W line art drawings as well as Corel so I didn’t bother trying any other format (like detailed BMPs, etc). Neither did the potrace variants. Might be worth messing around but I lost interest pretty quickly when it failed on simple
I just got it myself. Great program from what I’ve seen so far - definitely gave me superior results to what I was able to get out of Illustrator (bleh!) or Inkscape.
Speaking for a small minority, I’m using Affinity Design for Mac. I downloaded a sample SVG and it looks amazing in Affinity. I will be considering VM a bit more, but it’s certainly intriguing.
Download the free trial and let me know what you think of the comparison!
