Tracing a Logo in CorelDRAW 13

Have you ever received a logo from a client that needs to be in vector format, but they only have it in a rasterized bitmap format? CorelDRAW X13 has updated their raster to vector trace feature to make it faster and easier to use, with much better results than ever before!

Check out the flash demonstration of this technique by clicking here.

1. Start with the logo on a new page in Corel. When you select the logo you will see a button appear in the toolbar at the top of the page called "Trace Bitmap."
   
   When you click the button, a drop-down list will appear. You can choose "Quick Trace" to trace the bitmap in one step, or choose a preset style, providing you with more control over the trace feature. For this example we chose the logo style.
   
   
   
   

2. As you can see from the red line in the image to the right, the trace we achieved by choosing Logo worked very well and closely matches the original. The only item it appears to have missed is the center of the "A" in laser.

   We can adjust the detail that the trace program tries to find by sliding the Detail scroll bar to the left or right.
   
   

3. If we slide the Detail all the way to the right, you can see that the trace has picked up very subtle differences in the image, adding too many lines.
   
   
   
   
4. By sliding the Detail back to just a little more than it was originally set to, it has added the center of the "A" to the traced image without picking up any extra lines that we don''''t want.
   
   
   
   
5. You can also change how smooth the lines are. If we slide Smoothing all the way to the right, you can see how it has adjusted the lines on the "A" and "S" so that they are too smooth and no longer line up to our original image.
   
   
   
   
6. When you have everything lined up the way you want it, you''''re ready to send your outline back to CorelDRAW by clicking the OK button.
   
   
   
   
7. That''''s all there is to it! Your logo is now a vector line image ready to be cut out. You can use the PowerTRACE feature of Corel X13 for creating outlines of all types of images that you work with. Play with the settings and you''''ll find one that works for your logo.