Accurately converting bitmap images to vector files with tracing tools relies on the image having clean detail, few artistic embellishments and solid fill colors.

Accurately converting bitmap images to vector files with tracing tools relies on the image having clean detail, few artistic embellishments and solid fill colors.

Here’s an all-too-common scenario involving new customers: they love your dynamic, sublimation samples; you’ve agreed on the products they want to purchase; they’ve agreed on your price, but when you ask for their logo or artwork, the proverbial needle can be heard scratching across your life’s soundtrack. Often, you’ll be handed a business card in response to this request (ostensibly so you can scan the microscopic, low-resolution image on the card to transfer beautifully on to their 11” x 14” photo plaque). Other times you’re directed to “right click” the logo on their web page. The latter is slightly better only because you at least know there exists an electronic version somewhere—Please, just give me your graphic designer’s name! Sometimes, the customer pulls the old bait-and-switch on you by procuring a very-professional-and-business-like USB drive from their key ring only to deliver a JPEG of such poor quality it looks like it was scanned ten years ago from a dog-eared, mimeograph copy of an overcast satellite photo of…you get the idea.

Any business owner dealing with outside graphics submissions knows that rarely do customers hand you “print ready” artwork. Having a prepared artwork specifications guide or “specs sheet” spelling out exactly what file types and formats you need can go a long way toward avoiding artwork delays or quality issues. Additionally, be prepared to explain to customers the science behind sublimation, strengths and limitations inherent in a dye process and some of the amazing results you can achieve provided you have the right graphics. Unfortunately, merely informing your customers of these requirements doesn’t mean these needs will be met. Even the attempt to explain why the files already submitted won’t work and which file format you need instead can be as futile as herding cats.

So there is no gray area moving forward, here follow some sublimation truths: Sublimation success requires vector artwork for proper spot color matching. Sublimation requires 300 dpi bitmap images at full size of product decoration area for the “best possible results” on hard substrates. Because softer substrates like Vapor Apparel, car flags and mouse pads are more forgiving, you can usually get away with 200 dpi and lower bitmap images on soft substrates. However, sublimation’s overall fine printed detail and millions of printed colors mean that your standards for graphic submissions must be higher, too. Otherwise, your end products will reflect these substandard graphics. Every little flaw in an image will show up on a sublimation print.

Here are some tricks that will help you reduce many of those graphic-born headaches, produce better end products and samples, and better communicate with your customers about what graphics you’ll need from them in order to get the best sublimation results. Even if you don’t consider yourself an expert in CorelDRAW or Adobe Photoshop, you should be able to comfortably follow most of these tricks.

Trick #1: Get Vector Or Original Graphics For Spot Color Projects
As mentioned in many previous articles, it is essential to have vector artwork if the customer wants spot color matching. That being said, sometimes all a customer can provide is a bitmap version of their logo or artwork—and a bad version, at that. Whether corporate logo or branded, promotional design, hitting multiple spot colors from within the tight constraints of a single sublimation transfer graphic relies on your ability to re-color individual elements. If you can’t enter the proper RGB values in the graphic file, you can’t guarantee a match of the customer’s branded colors. Sure, you might occasionally get lucky when printing a basic, one- or two-color bitmap logo, but the more colors and embellishments within a design, the more difficult it becomes to ensure proper color output. Remember, when you edit a bitmap image, changes made to color balance, luminosity and saturation usually affect the entire image (a bitmap has all elements compressed on a single layer instead of being made up of multiple layers like vectors), so it becomes nearly impossible to adjust a single image along multiple color needs.

From dull to amazing, you can use professional graphics software to create more vibrant, artistic versions of substandard or dry original artwork.

Basically, what this means is that vector is king for all spot color jobs. Be prepared to have to explain to your customer what you’re looking for, as they might not be familiar with the graphics terminology (this is where a specs sheet makes things easier). Give customers specific vector file extensions to look for like EPS, CDR, AI or PS so they can find what you need more quickly, often by doing a simple search of their own computer for matching file extensions or by forwarding your list of specifications to someone better in the know who can get you the files you need.

If the logo is trademarked and well-known, you might be able to find it within a third-party collection of trademarked logos or by searching online resources (even when your customer cannot seem to find one). Purchasing a CD- or DVD-based logo collection from companies like Digital Wisdom or Beacon Graphics usually means better quality control of the final vectors and that you’re getting more current graphic versions (this is all contingent upon the software companies updating their files regularly, too). Online there are many resources for obtaining vector versions of popular trademarked logos, but the most popular site for finding [even some of the most obscure, retro] company logos always seems to be BrandsOfTheWorld.com. Many publicly available trademarked logos floating around in cyberspace have glaring mistakes, so always do your own quality comparison. Wherever and however you obtain customers’ vector, corporate logos, remember that it takes those same customers to give you the express permission needed to lawfully reproduce any trademarked logo’s likeness on retail or wholesale products.

Trick #2: Convert Appropriate Bitmaps Into Easy-To-Edit Vectors
Not only is vector necessary for getting the right spot colors, but vector graphics are typically much smaller in size than their bitmap counterparts and are not held to the same constraints when scaling the graphic up or down. Provided you have a high-resolution, clean bitmap version of limited-colors like a corporate logo, you might be able to use the software tools at your disposal to convert a bitmap graphic into a vector graphic.

Tracing Functions: Both Corel and Adobe’s bitmap-to-vector tools (“PowerTrace” and “Auto Trace,” respectively. See HELP sections in Corel and Adobe suite software) offer the function of analyzing individual pixels that make up a suitable bitmap image and converting like sections of pixels into representative, editable vector shapes. Tracing a bitmap can be tricky depending on the original graphic, so look out for trouble areas like shadow effects, gradients and highlights. Too many colors or elements play havoc on the conversion and will often result in a huge, grouped vector image made up of thousands of layers. After conversion into vector, your goal is to be able to easily recolor the graphic’s main elements, so the fewer the layers comprising your final vector, the easier it will be to edit. Also, if the pixels look blown out when looking at the original bitmap on your screen, it may be difficult to trace or redraw elements of the logo with any accuracy. Like other high-detail, full-color technologies, the end result is only as good as the original graphics available.

The simpler the bitmap image, the better it is for converting into vector. You want well-defined, smooth elements with solid, limited fill colors. Think of the very basic logo for Apple Computers—the small apple silhouette with a bite taken from the side. It would be relatively simple for the tracing function to translate the bitmap shape of an apple into a solid-filled vector apple. The more colors and variables you add to the original bitmap, the more complicated the final vector and the poorer the quality. When playing around with the trace feature, make sure to experiment with variables like smoothing and detail. If you are dealing with any gradients, merging color values will help to simplify the final vector graphic. Even small nudges on the tracing variables can have extreme effects on the final vector version.

Redrawing The Customer’s Graphic: Remember, no piece of software can perfectly recreate the quality of the original logo from a pixilated, degraded bitmap, so you’ll often have to go in and fix sections of a newly traced vector or even recreate the entire logo from scratch. Again, the degree of difficulty lies with the same parameters for tracing a bitmap: the amount of embellishments and the quality of the original bitmap. Obviously, the simpler the better if you have to redraw the entire logo. A perfect circle is easier to draw than a 40-pointed star. While simple color schemes and lack of embellishments are good, you also want as much detail and resolution as possible so you can more accurately redraw the elements as close to the “original, official version” as possible.

When redrawing a logo, first break the graphic down by elementary shapes like circles, squares and triangles. Lock the bitmap image in place on your active layer and redraw the shapes right over the top of the original as if you’re using a sheet of tracing paper. Take advantage of great services like WhatTheFont.com to track down the original font used or to find a similar substitute font that will suffice in your version (remember, the customer could not get you their logo in your preferred format). Obviously, you’ll want to recreate the logo as close to the original as possible, but at some point a cost analysis might be smart. If you’ve spent hours recreating or redrawing a customer’s logo, you should either be collecting graphic design fees from the customer for your extra work or the logo in question better belong to a very good customer.

Trick #3: Make Small, Methodical Adjustments To Bitmaps
Working with the digital images and graphics submitted to you by customers is no different than when working with professionally shot, royalty free artwork purchased online or as part of a collection. All of the old graphic adages hold true. The higher the resolution, the better. Any adjustments you make for one part of a photo usually affects the entire photo. When it comes to tweaks, less is sometimes more, even when you’ve noticed no visible changes on the screen in front of you. Small, seemingly imperceptible changes to a bitmap’s color balance, luminosity or tone can noticeably alter the final, sublimated transfer.

In order to better organize your approach to bitmap editing, try to perform the same editing steps with any photograph you work with (you can easily undo these steps later if needed). For example, only make edits to bitmap images within the same fixed categories (for example, color balance and tone curve) using set, smaller increments like five or ten on a 100 scale. Applying small changes in three different directions to the same image will net you three different results. Printing out these different renditions at thumbnail size and sublimating these on to scrap material will help you better grasp how these individual, slight changes can noticeably affect the final print.

Trick #4: Have Quick Fixes And Alternative Graphics Ready
If your business focuses on one-off products or short runs, the preceding three tricks can all present a big problem: time. Struggling to get the proper graphics, trying to track down vector versions and redrawing logos all takes too much time, and it will be difficult to reconcile your lost time. This is especially true if you operate your business where customers wait on product. You have to be able to take any graphic—dog-eared or fresh from a state-of-the-art digital camera—and get consistent results.

There are many quick fixes you can keep at your disposal to make a substandard graphic look a little more pleasing to the eye. When presented with digital images that look like someone turned up the color bar too much, pre-set Corel and Adobe bitmap editing functions like auto adjust and auto contrast can often reset an image’s rendering levels to something closer to the original. For hopelessly degraded bitmap images (e.g. JPEG, GIF), show the customer some quick artistic effects you can apply to “smooth out” the image and make it more palatable for sublimation’s discerning eye. Included in your graphics suite are a number of filters and effects which can quickly and easily be used to creatively alter bitmap images. These include such effects as watercolor, mosaic, pen & ink, crystallize and Gaussian blur.

It can never hurt to have a number of royalty-free graphic resources ready and available. Today’s digital age allows you to instantly purchase one-time-use graphics or full marketing rights for millions of professional images browsed from online catalogs like iStockPhoto.com, ShutterStock.com or Corbis.com. Purchasing individual photos from online depositories can get very expensive, however, so if you are not a self-reliant photographer or artist, consider purchasing collections of royalty free artwork that complement your business. Whether sports graphics with more generic locations and teams, 500 sunset views or iconic cityscapes, you can save thousands of dollars purchasing outright a full library collection of royalty free images rather than purchasing individually.

Trick #5: Invest In Available Sophisticated Software Where Necessary
For those of you that own lasers or screen-printing equipment that cost more than your first home, it was probably no surprise to you to discover the high costs for replacement parts and service visits—costs which seem commensurate with the capital expense of the equipment. You expect to pay more maintaining a Mercedes, but you also expect to get more. In addition to leveraging RIP software and custom ICC profiles, consider investing additional monies for graphics software upgrades and special effects programs when focusing on products which require more sophisticated color and quality output. This can mean you’re focusing on specialty sublimated materials like ceramics and architectural panels or high-end sublimation photo products. There are times when you will need to go above and beyond what your current graphics software was designed to do whether it’s re-sampling a high-resolution image to work for a six foot by nine foot tile mural or masking over a low-resolution image with a realistic, artistic effect so that the customer’s original vision is maintained, and you’re not sacrificing your quality standards. Like any other graphics-based add-ons, expect these programs to be memory hogs (in addition to the memory and resources required to open and edit large image files which can easily run past the 100 MB file size).

Don’t bite off too much at once by attempting to trace complicated, multi-faceted shapes. Instead, pick off the easily recognizable shapes and graphic elements first.

Photoshop does an excellent job enlarging a high-quality bitmap image when resampling the image in small increments (tip: to double an image’s size, resample in 10% increments). There comes a point where the file sizes make things hard to manage, especially on a PC computer. There are a couple of well-known programs made to greatly enlarge a high-quality bitmap image without losing color, detail or sharpness qualities. These photo-enhancement programs rely on complex algorithms to convert the bitmap pixel data into corresponding “fractal codes” which allow you to grow the image considerably without its getting blurry. Both OnOne Software’s Genuine Fractals 6 ($159 MSRP) and BenVista’s PhotoZoom Pro 3 ($219 MSRP) receive consistent accolades from professional graphics users for their ease of use and their ability to upsize relatively small photographs to sizes more suitable on billboards with very little image degradation. Each program comes with multiple, canned fractal filters as well as the ability to create and run custom scripts based on your product needs.

When graphic details remain cloudy and elusive and none of your quick fixes seem to do the job, there are a couple of standalone graphic programs which can help make even the worst photograph look like a work of art. Published by the makers of CorelDRAW, photographers find many useful features in the $99 Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 while artists and designers appreciate the professional and creative interpretations resulting from the $399 Corel Painter 11. PaintShop Photo Pro X3 is designed specifically for getting the most from digital photographs, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. In addition to being a standalone RAW photo importer/organizer, this high-end piece of photo software offers easy-to-use touch-up tools like the toothbrush and blemish remover, the ability to create custom batch, editing processes for quickly performing the same editing processes across multiple files and a library of dynamic photo effects from standard black & white and sepia to retro Polaroid and daguerreotype. Painter 11 turns your bitmap images into canvases for lifelike artistic renditions. You can transform an ordinary photograph into a lifelike oil painting by choosing details like brush style (huge ready-to-use selection or you can create your own), color (play with canned transformation effects while working within a set color palette) and textures (think of a final graphic with seemingly real brush strokes on canvas paper). While Painter remains an expensive “add on” at $399, in the hands of a proficient user the results can be amazing.

Again, you don’t have to be a graphics expert to have a methodic approach to working with customer graphics. That being said, you should stick to your guns when it comes to acceptable versus unacceptable graphics. Just because the customer can’t find anything else doesn’t mean you should go with the graphic in its current form. If you have the margins built in, consider spending some time finding or creating better graphics based on your customer’s needs. There are a number of tools available that will make graphic fixes easier, but the more you know your software, the more efficient your workflow. To discuss any of the tricks in this article, please feel free to contact any of us directly by e-mail. You may also phone us toll free to learn about Johnson Plastics’ library of free sublimation educational tools including live training events held at each of our eight US branch locations, industry trade show seminars and easy-to-access online “webinars.”