Converting from adobe to flexisign pro

[sharpline]

Hey guys help much needed i have flexisign pro for my vinyl cutter and adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator and usually inorder to get a new picture onto my program i need to go to a site called brandsoftheworld.com but i need to be able to find any picture on the internet or scan a picture into my computer and make it cuttable in flexisign i know i need to export it as a .eps file but i need to do something else to make it a cuttable object, ive been told i need to convert it to curves or outlines or something but what do i do that in illustrator? or photoshop and how do i do it? if thats really what i need to do. PLEASE HELP ASAP
p.s reason i use brandsoftheworld.com is because the files are already eps and ready to cut.

SharpLine Decals & Designs

 

[sharpline]

OH and also i am using photoshop cs2 if that matters. i was also told it does

 

[eugenetyson]

Photoshop is for bitmap, i.e., raster images. They are pixel based.

Illustrator is for Vector images, i.e., they use paths/curves.


Photoshop can create curves/vectors/paths but they are rasterised on output (converted to pixels). The only way to get them from Photoshop with Vectors in tack is to save it as an EPS. But that has it's problems, because when you reopen it in Photoshop, the vectors are rasterised, "argh" you say. Well there is another option:

File>Save As>PDF when the Vector is created. A PDF is a Portable Document Format and it supports and holds Raster and Vector Images in the one file. You can even save the layers, meaning that you can have a multiple Layers of Vectors in the one file.

You should be able to save the PDF as an EPS.


Another way to do this in Photoshop is to create the vectors, which will be called WORK PATHS in Photoshop. Then go to File>Export>Paths to Illustrator, but that creates a *.ai file. Which is Adobe Illustrator, not EPS.

So you can see already that photoshop is going to be very problematic if you're not familar with the workings of it.

So your best bet is to use a program like Corel Draw, Freehand or Illustrator, which are all vector based drawing applications, I'm sure there are more.

In Illustrator if you have a good enough scan or sample from the internet, you can use Live Trace to Automatically redraw the logo.

But my advice is to find some tutorials on using the Pen Tool and learn to do them by hand, because as good as Live Trace is, sometimes it's not very accurate.