Auto digitize

[Custom Threads]

Can someone tell me the steps to scan a business card with design shop pro and convert the logo to embroidery?

[Juli in Kona]

My advise is to not even attempt to auto digitize a company logo. You will probably never be satisfied with it and your customer will definitely not be satisfied. Scanning gives lousy graphics! So, what to do?

Scan and then manually digitize. Better yet, get a Vlox or some other big and very good graphic from your customer. Logos are touchy things. Companies want their logo to be perfect. Jpg in, perfect out - I don't think so!

Juli in Kona

[HERB]

Scanning does not always give us bad graphics. You need to scan them at 300dpi. I have found that anything greater really is a waste. The file is huge without getting a big emough difference. Business cards are a problem though. They are already tiny, usually not printed with a great degree of resolution. Somebody made them. Ask the customer where/who made them. Develop a relationship with the printing folks in your area. Then you can go to them and get an eps or ai of the file. I get mine with no hassle and usually by e-mail. Now you have vector graphics, yahoo!!! digitizing is now fun.

[oldkush]

First, you need software capable of autodigitizing.

Second, auto-digitizing a scanned logo off a business card will be disappointing at best. You will create a much better embroidery design by manually digitizing the logo.

Some people have the misconception that using auto-digitizing software means that they simply have to click a button or two and don't need to learn digitizing ..... this is not true. Using auto-digitizing requires a real good understanding of the digitizing ..... so that mistakes created by the "auto" process can be corrected before the design is sent to the machine.

Although useful at times, do not expect auto-digitizing to replace quality manual digitizing.

Bob

[signman]

Let me throw my 3¢ in...I know, someone expected me to do it anyways...
business card logos are the worst to try to duplicate-but if you know some tricks, easy to do.
Scanning them generally is not worth it-because most of your business cards are printed with 'thermographic' inks-as the ink cures, it 'puffs' to give that great 'feel' on the card. So when you scan it-you get all the bumps and puffs instead of nice clean lines.
BUT, the majority of people that bring in a business card as a 'logo'-didn't go through a graphic person to get that logo-they picked from the book of clipart at the 'printshop'. I have probably a dozen disks of clipart-collected over the years-and 75% of the time I can find that clipart and bingo-vector line art and do what I need to with it.
Otherwise-I run it in on my scanner, 300% at least magnification, 300 or 600 dpi. Depends on the detail which I use.
I take this image into photoshop, play around with brightness & contrast, and turn it into as sharp and crisp an image as I can.
Then I bring that new image into my art program (Freehand, but many use Illustrator or CorelDraw) and copy by hand outlining or tracing, or a combination. Then I have a full 'line art (vector line) drawing that I can clean up, tweak, restore full curves, straight lines, etc. Remember-I've got 20 years of doing this-so for me it is easy. A beginner (like I used to be) can easily spend a couple hours. But the more you do it, the faster you get.
Then you can bring that final design into Designshop. IF you can get autodigitize to work right, just click on ONE section at a time-don't do the whole image. Don't bother to digitize any lettering-do that with your stock fonts. Much faster and neater.
Alternative? there's a couple companies out there that will give you 24 hr turnaround on converting any image (scan, print, etc.) into clean vector line art. Riptaw Graphics is one I know. For $15 and up, you just send THEM the scan or copy and let them do it.

[The Embroidery Authority - OLD]

Roland,
Hold on....
Let's see, 3¢ you say... hmmmm.
You've got some change coming back!
LOL
Nah, just kidding. Must be the egg nog talkin'.

Ed

[danielk]

auto digitizing isnt what its made out to be.. i find anyway. i used it a few times and found it just couldn't pick up shading or anything, its good for some things for not all.the sew outs are so much better when they're manually digitized.

[jimrockford]

having Beta tested quite a few of the industries "auto digitizing" programs i would not recommend any of them. they use fill patters almost all of the time, even in small lettering, this increases your stitch count by 50% and more. they have major design problems that though can be corrected with some editing i found that i would spend more time editing the design that i would have spent if i had just punched myself. i company that had an auto digitizing software pulled it off the market after thy could not correct one of the problems i pointed out to them. they refunded the purchasers money.