I will not be doing much in the way of painting for a few days due to the holidays and more importantly Coast Airbrush back ordered a couple of items and I probably won't have paint until next Monday, but we still have things to cover.

Let's go over how we work with image (files ) and how we get them to the cutter.

The first thing we need to be aware of is the cutter can not work with a picture (JPG) file. If we were to look at a JPG it would be made up of thousands of little dots. The cutting plotter only wants to see "outlines" (lines). What we will be working in are "vector files". Vector files are the format we use to rework or manipulate the image. Once we are working with a vector file we are only dealing with lines within the image. The importance of vector files is no matter how small or large we make them (scale), they still maintain their shape, form and integrity. Try blowing up a JPG file and see what happens. The image begins to deteriorate fast...not so with vector images.

The cool thing about vector images is once you have the image, you are good to go for any size you want to create. As a for-instance on the pictures posted earlier of the two Proteus, you will see the same "Proteus" logo in several different sizes. You will see it the largest on the side of the plane, next in size is on the ailerons and the smallest are the little "ghost images" you see scattered around the plane (more on this later). What I did was create the Proteus log (image) in a text format and converted it to a vector image which allowed me to re size it to the different versions instantly.

The same goes for the flame graphic on the wings of the Evolaris and the two Proteus. All I did was reduce the same image for the stabs and sent it to the cutter. Easy deal..done and done. You can see that the plotter will save massive amounts of time allowing you to do stuff you would never be able to achieve otherwise (well you can but it would take massive amounts of time). Another thing about using the plotter is to save all your sizes of images so you can go back and cut another one if you need it for repairs (been there, done that).

There are a few was to obtain (create) vector files. The first is to buy them. If you search the web you will find several companies that create and sell them for a few bucks. Once you acquire it you can modify it if needed and scale it to any size needed. The next way is to just draw your own and the method I use a lot is to create them on the fly from a JPG image off the net.

OK, so if we were to buy an image, the software package that ships with your cutter would likely be adequate, The big limitation with the basic software is the limited capability to create our own vector files, so what I did was purchase the software program Corel Draw. Adobe Illustrator is another powerful program. You can buy the Home/Student version of Corel Draw for around $150. If you want to get serious about this stuff, you are going to want Corel Draw or Illustrator. I have not worked with Illustrator, but Corel Draw is very intuitive. I don't think I have ever looked at the help files...I just keep clicking until I figure it out.

Go back to the beginning of this thread and you will see on the Evolaris a cool "Tribal" graphic on the wings and stabs. To create this image, I did a net search for "Tribal Graphics" and found an image I thought would work well. Keep in mind the images we pull off the net are in picture (JPG) format. What I do is just save it to my desktop and "import" it into Corel. Once it's in Corel, I use the "Outline Trace" feature that converted into a vector file. Once it's in a vector format I can rework it if needed and re size it. If you look close at the graphic on the wings, you will see I have painted a "beveled" edge (or the allusion of a beveled edge). All that was required to create the beveled edge was to add a line around the outside of the image. This was done with the "Contour" feature in Corel. This sounds intimidating, but is very easy to do.

You will also notice on the sides of the Evolaris and the top of the T Can on the Proteus, several company logos. Again this was a very easy process to grab the JPG image with a Google search, and follow the above process to convert them into vector files with the "Trace" feature.

More later