Help!

Ok I have this image of the University of Windsor Coat of Arms. I need to make this into line art so the we can make a dye out of it and stamp it on our watch's faceplate.

What do I do?

Thanks.

http://www.mad-alchemy.com/heraldry/academic/uwindsor.jpg

i dont have experience in line art, that looks hard to convert. My guess would be using some of photoshop's filters, like note paper or photocopy to get as close as possible to the outlines.

the center of the coat of arms would need some work even with that.

how about vectoring the jpg ?

Well that does look like a tough image to convert especially for dye that is presumably going to be very small.

I think the complexity of the image and the detail in it kind of takes away any possibility of using any filters, but then again i could be wrong. I was going to suggest using levels/guassian blur and what not on a greyscale image then creating a work path etc....but I think when it all comes down to it the best method my be to redraw it in illustrator - I mean if its just the outlines you need it wouldnt be that bad.

Geeze you guys... It's Die not Dye

and yes this will be a tough one... check with the die maker for help.

Steeldolphin has got a good point

if it were me and i were going to use this for printing, i would definitely re-draw it in illustrator

Steeldolphin has got a good point

if it were me and i were going to use this for printing, i would definitely re-draw it in illustrator

Only problem is that it is being used for a die. Dies do not hold fine detail, especially small dies. Now maybe this die would be processed differently than the ones I have had made for embossing, foiling and die stamping paper, but more than likely it would be very similar. In which case they may not even take vector files, they may want a raster file.

Re-drawing this in illustrator would take mucho hours. Unless you have it in higher resolution than what is posted, it would probably be better off starting from scratch rather than trying something like streamline as they will probably not be able the decipher the image.

That image is as good as it gets. And yup, freaky is right, the die maker prefers jpg's.

I bow to freaky's expertise....i have never made anything like this for a die before but Iproblably would have redrawn teh bugger with less detail then reduced it in size and rasterized it...but I am lame.

I need to see an example to give you the best advice, but as a start you might try to experiment with the 'find edges' effect in combination with some other effects, blending modes or tools.

This is what I can come up with but it's not that great for line art.

Click Here (http://members.lycos.co.uk/steelrage/uwindsor.jpg)

I have absolutely no experience in file prep for dies, but I'll go ahead and throw my two cents in. Given the complexity of the image and the final size for output, I would abandon all attempts at using filters. As you can see from your example of what you can achieve by filters, there was so much grit, unwanted detail, and jagged lines that you can't even tell what the image is. Your best bet is to take this into Illustrator, or you can use photoshop, decide what detail is important and what is not, zoom in really close and turn this into lineart manually. Sure it will take a long time if your not accustomed to this type of work but you'll have a much cleaner result and like I said, you can stylize the emblem a bit to the bare minimum to communicate the essence of the image. Once you have it to the where your satisfied, save it as a jpg and there is your rasterized lineart.

If your still determined to take shortcuts instead of doing it the correct way, then I would say you should use threshold to turn the image into complete black and whites, blur the image to meld the gaps together, and then fool around with curves to make the lines solid black and the outer areas white. Do this on different layers at different settings to pull out different amounts of detail and then simply mask in and mask out different areas from the various layers until your happy with the results. I attached a sample of what you can get with this technique using only two layers, if you want better results then use more layers. You might even want to consider using both methods. Use the second one to get most of the work done, and then go back in and hand detail the rest of the areas that need more work. So there is my long winded answer, goodluck!