Tutorial- Converting images to WMF

[johnie]

This is a tutorial on how to convert images into the Vector WMF format, theoretically, without purchasing any software.

1. Go and download Star Office (For FREE)
The download is http://www.sun.com
(You will only need Star Draw and Star Image. Hopefully you will be able to just download these components at http://www.openoffice.org in October. If you don't have Microsoft Office then it might be beneficial to install the whole thing.)

I also recommend getting a high-powered image editor(If you don't have one) becuse Star Draw is not very easy to learn to use.

The GIMP (FREE Software)
Windows port
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/

GNU-Linux
http://www.gimp.org

JASC Paintshop pro (shareware)
http://www.jasc.com

Photoshop (Not Exactly in my price range.)
http://www.adobe.com

Etc. I'm not going to list every Image Manipulation program out there. (Nonags has a lot of free ones by the way http://www.nonags.com)


2. After Installing Star Office Open it and you should get the Star Office Desktop (Hint: If the double desktop annoys you then hit View> Integrated desktop ([ALT V] I)- I know Star Office has really crappy documentation.)

3. Double click your Image's icon or Scan your Image by hitting File> Scan ([Alt F] S). Another way to get images is by surfing the Internet with StarOffice. All Image files you click on typically go straight into Star Image.

4. You are now in the Star Image Program. The screen should have changed automatically with the new tools on your left.

5. The tool you are most interested in right now is the cool looking eyedropper along the left hand side. StarOffice will allow you to change color values with this. Click on it and you should get a dialog box.

6. You are going to want to make a lot of things transparent (I.e. the paper that you drew on). You can also use this to darken your lines. The other tools can be used to clean your image also (You also want to reduce the number of colors in your drawing- the fewer the better.)

7. Okay now these next couple of steps is where it can get a little tricky because of a bug in StarOffice. Hit Edit>Copy ([ALT:E] C)

8. Open Star Draw (separate from Star Image) by hitting File> New > Drawing (You Cannot Use a Shortcut Key Because hitting [ALT F] will take you to the filter menu.)

9. Paste Your Image into the drawing by hitting Edit> Past ([ALT E] P). The bug in Star Draw is that you cannot import from the Star Image editor. When you try it will only insert a blank image.

10. Vectorize your flat image by hitting Modify> Convert> Polygon ([ALT M] C P). You will get the vectorize dialog. I highly recommend using the preview function. You will also notice that it will only vectorize 32 colors (remember what I said in step 6). You may have noticed that Star Draw can render 3D Images- I'm not going to go into it here but this can be quite useful.

11. The last step is to export into WMF Format. Do this by hitting File> Export ([ALT: F] E). When you do this StarOffice will give you the export dialog. Chose WMF as type and choose any name you want.

When you import the image into Kool Moves you will notice that Star Office Gave your Image a default square layer. Click on it and hit delete. Now if you have a lot of them the problem is that you did not listen to me in step 6. StarOffice will draw thousands of paper color squares if you did not make your paper color transparent. When StarOffice vectorizes an image it tries to give you exactly what you have. Go back and reduce the number of colors you are using and make more things transparent

[Edited by johnie on 08-06-2000 at 05:32 AM]

[johnie]

These programs will also convert raster into vectors.

http://www.arttoday.com/
http://softwarecenter.net/irfanview/english.htm
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gwspro.html
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kkuhl/ks_page1.htm

[johnie]

OOPS,

Art today is a free clip art site

Sory about that.

[21kine]

Not completely free though...free membership allows you to download a certain number of cliparts but not all of them, I'm a member for 2 year now and it's an absolutely cool site

[johnie]

In Illistrator and Photoshop-(the GIMP also if you don't mind doing some finagaling with it.)



1. Scan the "art" at 600 ppi (pixels per inch – commonly referred to as dpi: dots per inch – yet another article). Grayscale images work just fine and help keep the file size down. Intricate designs will be easier to re-create at slightly larger sizes, although I would not go larger than 6" x 6" (approximately a 12.4 Mb file at 600 ppi)
Lets say the logo you are recreating is a two-color image. Using Photoshop, select all areas of the image that are the same color, including screens. Click on the tab in the Layers palette labeled "Paths". After you’ve made a mask for the first color, click the small black arrow in the upper right corner of the Layers palette. Select "Make Work Path" from the fly-out menu. For intricate images, use a tolerance of 1.0 pixels. If there are long curves, use a tolerance of 2.0 or 3.0. A path labeled "Work Path" in italics will appear in the palette.



2. Do the safe thing and save the path, then save your work! To save a path, click the arrow again and select "Save Path" from the fly-out menu. We will use the default and save it as "Path 1". Then save the entire file by selecting "Edit>Save". ( I prefer shortcuts – [Ctrl-S])

3. Go through and clean up the path. Path editing in Photoshop appears to be quicker than in Illustrator. There will be a few places where there will be extra points that are not needed. Now is the time when a little experimenting with the path tools will do some good.

Don’t forget to try using the Alt, Ctrl, and Spacebar keys when you have different tools selected!

4. Go to File>Export>Paths to Illustrator. You will be prompted to name your file and specify a location to save it.



5. Load Illustrator then open the file you just created. If your page is blank except for crop marks, don’t panic!

This means the default stroke in Illustrator is set to "None". Go to Edit>Select All. Now you should see the paths. Set your stroke to black and hairline and Viola! You now have a vector illustration from your raster image. Also, the paths are still editable! Repeat the process for the second color. To make a composite file, open both files, copy one set of paths and paste them into the other document.



6. Now you are set to fill the paths as needed to complete the illustration. If you plan to place this file in a page layout program, save it as an EPS file and your ready to go.

PS. Illustrator is a vector drawing program. If you are asked to rasterize an image that means it is asking you if you want to turn it into a flat image. Save as a WMF if it is an option, if not then you will have to save as an EPS and pass it through another program to get it into WMF format.

[johnie]

Why I suggest using Star Office to vectorize images.

1. Star Office is free. You can download it for several OS's and in most Linux distributions it is already included on the CD.

2. It is realitivly stable- (well it crashes about as much as MS Office- if you want to call that stable. Okay, Okay- I'm lying to you- It is as comparitivly stable Office but not very stable compared to other linux programs. This may change in the open source 6.0 realese)

3. It is easy to use ( Again I'm fibbing- Sun offers no support for the product and the help file sucks- but the shortcut keys and methods of doing things are almost Identical to its Microsoft counter part.)

4. It is interoperable with Microsoft, Corel, and other Apps ( Sorta- 90-95 % Compatible with Microsoft 2000 products).

5. It is one of the few office productivity programs in which you can swap files with regardless of what OS you're running (I'm not lying this time).

Really the best reason I could give you is that it really will vectorize flat images realitivly easily and export them to the format you want.
[Edited by johnie on 09-15-2000 at 02:16 AM]

[johnie]

I might do another tutorial movie on this subject.
But I really don't want this to become a Support Forum for Adobe and SUN.

On another note: To install only Star Draw;

1. Download the installer and run. This will take 5 hrs on a 28 Modem.

2. Choose Custom Install.

3. Choose Star Impress (will automatically install Star Draw with this option) or Star Draw.

4. That's it.

Oct 13'th this will probably change. Version 6.0 is being GPLED on that date and realesed to the open source community.