import .emf

[lorenw]

When I try importing an .emf into koolmoves The vectors are all wrong.

I have done this in the past (no reduction in points) without problems and when I view the .emf files in thumbnail preview they look as they should but when imported they have no resemblence of what they should look like.


Am I doing something wrong or has something changed since the newer versions.

Thank You.
Regards
Lorenw

[Bob Hartzell]

emf and eps are problematic in koolmoves. I suggest dxf or wmf.

[blanius]

personally never got SVG or EMF to load right. WMF mostly works though

[lorenw]

I have a program (pro grapher with a plug-in) that will take a .gif or .jpg and converts it to vectors . . . perfect for logos and simple designs. Only problem it will only export to .emf

it was about a year ago I built an extensive flash layout using pro grapher to create a virtual kitchen from images found on the web from refrigerator magnets , coffee maker, banana plant out the window to the curtains on the window and even the kitchen sink.

http://www.wlmark.com/fridg/

basically everything on the page is an imported .emf and the date stamp for these files was 3-12-05 if that helps.

Is there any possibility of getting the import to work. I could never do those images myself as quickly as pro grapher can.

Or do you have any suggestions for another prog?

Thank you.
Loren

[Bob Hartzell]

Are you sure it is converting images into real vectors? That is basically the job of autotracing. Does it claim to perform autotracing which is a very sophisticated operation and usually requires cleanup to make it look OK.

[pherbrick]

Or do you have any suggestions for another prog?
Loren

Hi Loren,
A few months back I looked for a free raster to vector app whose output would work w/ KoolMoves. I tried Gimp, ImageMagick, Inkscape - no good. I think it was Ghostscript viewer (Ghostgum?) that almost worked, but you needed to buy a plug-in to offset a color shift.

I just did some googling w/ autotrace and autotracing, and there are several vector apps that use this, but pro grapher/vgedit doesn't appear to be one of them. In fact, autotracing seems to be a relatively rare approach.

Anyway, here is an interesting site that briefly describes autotracing and lists some autotracing apps. The list is from 2004, but it should be a good starting point, with descriptions of each app's purpose and best use.

Peter

[lorenw]

Thank you for your replies,
For Bob's question:

Yes they are real vectors and fully scale-able. The bananas leaning on the fridge were very large originally and were done from a jpg photo of a bunch of bananas. The only two items that are not made with pro grapher are the clock and the comics on the fridge. all the rest were taken from jpgs and gifs

For Peters comment

I googled forever to find this app . . . tried em all and all of the others were off in thier rendering. Pro Grapher (now called vgedit) was almost spot on with tracing
(you have to fiddle with thresholds and a number of other controls)
notice the curtains

http://www.script-debugger.com/products/prographer/
wth the RtoV converter plugin

I did do some trimming up . . . It puts two vector shapes around objects, one for the border and one for the fill so I just added borders to the fill and deleted the "borders", I can live with that (I did the claenup in Kool Moves.

Give it a try, once you see how good it is you will want to fix the import function ;-)

[Bob Hartzell]

Send me a simple emf file that doesn't work in KoolMoves and I will see what the problem is.

[lorenw]

This is a small example . . . I used the gif to trace these with.

Thank you very much

[lorenw]

I found the problem.

If I export as bezier curve then KoolMoves doesn't like it but if processed as "broken line" it works. I didn't realize there were two flavors of .emf.

I used bezier because it gave the most accurate results but after tweaking with the settings I got "broken line" to get almost the same results.

Thanks for your help and hope Pro Grapher with the r to v plugin can help someone.