Crop Bitmaps Pictures in Vectric

In this quick tip, we look at how to use the bitmap crop tool and how to manually trace bitmap images. This works in Vectric Aspire, VCarve, and Cut2D.

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Video Transcript:

Hello, everyone. In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how to crop bitmaps. So the first thing we need to do is to import a bitmap. So we're going to go to import bitmap. We're going to select a picture and click open.

And you can see, for this example, we're just going to be using this car. So sometimes you may import a bitmap or picture that you want to remove the background from whether you're doing photo v carving or lithophanes or some type of 3D modeling.

You may want to remove some of the background, so in order to remove the background, we need a shape to cut it to. So if you had a very high contrasting image, you could use the bitmap trace function to create a nice shape around this.

But in this case, it's not going to turn out very good because there's too many colors in here and we won't get a nice, clean tracing. So I would recommend manually tracing this. But if you want it to, you can also use regular shapes such as, we can try an ellipse.

And we could just draw a ellipse around the car and we can adjust it down. We're going to close this and select it, use our arrow keys to move it. We can get around the car like that. And after you drew your shape, you could hold your shift key.

Select the image as well. You want both selected and then you can click this button here, in the edit objects menu, it's called crop bitmap. So when you click on that, that will remove anything outside of the closed vector.

So now you can see we're left with just the picture inside of the oval. So that's one simple way you can do this, but you're still going to have some of that background in there. Now, like I mentioned, if you want it just along the edge of the car, we're going to have to trace that.

So let's undo what we just did and we'll look at how to trace that. OK, so in order to trace this, we either need the draw line tool or the draw curve tool. In this case, we're going to use the draw curve tool because we have a lot of curves in this and I'm going to make

sure my smart snapping is turned off. That way it is easier to draw the curves where it's not going to snap in vertical or horizontal directions. OK, and we're going to zoom in here. I like to start somewhere where it's a little flatter that way when we come back around.

We have a nice connection point there. So I'm going to start right here on the bumper and just click my first point. And then each time the car starts to bend in a different direction, I'm going to click to make another point.

So as you can see, as you click along the edge, it's going to curve the line behind where you clicked. So all you have to do is keep going along the entire car and just keep clicking new points to trace around it.

And I'm just panning with my mouse, using the scroll wheel when you click it in. And when you get to a corner, you might have to make an extra point there. So I'm going to go around this entire car and I will speed this up so you guys don't have to watch the whole thing.

And you could see when I get to a sharp corner like this, I will click in that corner and then click Spacebar to stop the curve and then snap back on to that corner to continue on. Otherwise, if I didn't do that, it would of left a curved corner there and I want a square corner.

So I just stop the line and then later on, I have to join these back together. OK, and then when you get down here to the bottom, you can decide if you want to keep the shadow or not.

In this case, I'm going to keep the shadow, so I will trace that as well. OK. And then once we get back to the beginning, we're just going to click on that starting point and then right click to exit.

OK, now we have our entire outline created, but right now they are separate vectors because I stopped the line at some points. So what I'm going to do is draw a selection box around all of those vectors and then click the letter J to open up our join tool and I'm going to click Join to close those

together. Now I'm going to close this tool, and now we have a closed vector going around the entire car. And then we just need to hold our shift key and select the image as well. And then we're going to click the crop bitmap tool.

And there you can see we now have just the car and we no longer have any of the background. So now you can use this image for whatever you like, as well as you can keep or remove the 2D vector going around it as well.

So as you can see, it's pretty simple to crop bitmaps. All you need is a closed vector and an image, and then you just click the crop bitmap tool. And if you have any questions on that, just let me know.