Trace Sections of a Bitmap

In this quick tip, we look at how to use the bitmap trace tool to trace only sections of a bitmap or image instead of the whole bitmap or image. This works in Vectric Aspire, VCarve, and Cut2D.

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Video Transcript:

Hello everyone, in this quick tip, we're going to look at how to trace bitmaps, but only sections of a bitmap. So for this example, I have my logo imported into Vectric, and let's say I just wanted to trace this side over here

that's yellow. And I did not want to trace the text on the right side. So we can go to our trace bitmap tool and you could see if you're in the black and white mode, you can adjust the threshold to see what you're going to trace over here.

And then once you click Preview, you could see it's going to trace the entire image that we have selected. So instead, if you just wanted to trace this icon on the left, you can simply draw a box around it, right in the 2D view, just draw a rectangle, just click and drag going around that item that you

want traced, then click Preview again, and you can see it'll remove anything outside of that rectangle. Now it's going to only trace what's inside of the rectangle, but keep in mind, you have to have it completely inside. If you drew the rectangle, let's draw another one.

Let's say we drew something like this click preview. You see, it's going to cut off anything that's not inside the rectangle, so make sure you get it fully encapsulated inside the rectangle. Click Preview, then click Apply to save and then close.

And you can see now it's going to trace whatever you had in that rectangle. And if we hide our picture, you could see it will keep the rectangle that you drew, as well as the shapes inside. So if you want it to, you can delete that rectangle and you're left with the vectors going around just that one

section. And then we can bring our picture back. I can show you one more way you can trace stuff like that. Let's delete those vectors. We'll go back to our trace bitmap, and this time we can go to the color option.

And you can see we have three main colors in this design the white, gray, and yellow. So we want to make sure our number of colors is set to three. That way it selects the three main colors. You can set this much higher, but you'll see you'll get different shades of the colors.

So we just want the main colors, which is three colors. And now you can select the exact color that you want to trace. So, for instance, if you wanted this yellow icon on the left, as well as the yellow text over here, you can either check it up here in the color panel or you can click in

the 2D view the colors that you want to trace. So if you click the yellow. You'll see it highlight in red letting you know that's going to be the colors is going to trace. And you could change that trace color if you want it to, but that's just for visualizing on the screen here.

So once you have your color selected, click preview and then click Apply to save and then close. And you could see it's going to trace anything that is yellow, which is these shapes here and the text over here and did get these corners here.

So if you didn't want those, you could just delete those out. OK, so that's how you can trace just specific things inside of a bitmap that you imported. So hopefully that tip helped you out. And if it did, let me know below in the comments.