Supplying your artwork to be vectored
Low resolution
When supplying your artwork to be redrawn from a bitmap to vector, it’s always best if you can send us the best quality version you have. Although we are able to redraw from quite pixelated images there are limits to what we can do. We can only draw what we can see. Although sometimes where text is too unclear to work from, we may be able to recognise the font and so we can simply type in the text rather than attempt to try and redraw it manually.
Photographing at an Angle
When photographing artwork to be converted into vector as a profile image, please make sure you take the photo face on and not at an angle. For example, if you look at the face profiles below, the image on the right was taken correctly at a right angle to the subject and therefore we can produce a more accurate result compared to the one on the left.
Similarly, this also applies to logos or other graphics. Try to scan or photograph your artwork face on, to avoid creating distortion or perspective angles, which will make it difficult for us to correct. Although we can usually overcome these problems. It doesn’t make it easy for us and so may incur extra costs as there is more time involved to try and correct it. Also it may turn out to be less accurate than the original artwork supplied.
Scanning
If you need to scan your artwork first then it’s always best to scan at 300 DPI. When you open your scanning software there will be an option to set the DPI. Sometimes this may produce large file sizes depending on the size of the artwork scanned but we can accept up to 25MB file size through e-mail.
If you don’t have a scanner, you could try photographing your artwork using a mobile phone. Most current smart phones can produce excellent results and are also more convenient than using a scanner. Just remember to try and photograph it face on without any distortion as mentioned in the previous section.
Complex effects
Some graphics are not ideal to be vectorised, like the example below. Bevelled edges and complex lighting effects cannot be achieved easily in vector. These types of effects are more suited to raster (Bitmap) images and achieved easily in Photoshop. These effects are not easy to try and replicate in vector. Using some of these effects in vector can make the graphic less portable and may cause problems when used for commercial printing and other mediums. So it’s best to avoid these effects where possible if you need your graphic to be a vector.
File formats
The most common raster image file formats which are supplied to us for conversion are JPEG, GIF, PNG, PSD files. But we can also accept most other common file formats. If in doubt just ask us. Once we have vectorised your artwork, we usually send back an AI and EPS file as standard. But we can also provide a PDF, SVG or CorelDRAW formats if requested.
