Help on VectorEZ

VectorEZ is a vectorization application for Windows and macOS. Download the demo here! And read the help below.

Quickstart

VectorEZ helps you quickly convert a bitmap image to a vector format.

The example below will guide you through the process of loading an image, selecting a color in that image, extracting the contours around the specified color, tuning the result, and finally saving it in a vector graphics format (SVG).

1. Load a bitmap image

Use the menu File → Open image... to open a bitmap file. Alternatively, the user can drag and drop the image file directy onto the viewport area. The supported image formats are: BMP, JPEG, PNG, TGA and TIFF. In this example we open a scanned image, bird.png.

2. Select the segmentation color

Use the pipette tool in the "Source image" panel to select the color that will be used to extract the contour.

3. Tune the vectorization

In the "Vectorization" panel, use the "Precision" slider to tune the result to your convenience. Moving the slider to left will lessen the precision, meaning the curve will fit more loosely to the input image, the contour will be less detailed and the resulting file will be smaller. On the contrary, moving the slider to the right will result in a more detailed curve that fits more closely to the input. The output file will be larger.

4. Save the result

Save the result as a SVG file once you are satisfied with the vectorization output.

The menu option opens a preview window of the vectorization as it will be saved in SVG. The user is free to tune the image before it is saved. Usually, one prefers to save the silhouette with a transparent background. Click on the eye icon next to the background color to ensure it is hidden. Finally, click the "Save SVG" button to select a file and commit the result!

As a result of this tutorial we saved the file bird.svg. We hope this walkthrough gave you a good enough overview of what VectorEZ has to offer! In the next sections we will provide a more detailled documentation of the tool functionalities.

Controls and key bindings

Interface

The View panel

The view panel gives control on what is displayed in the viewport. It does not affect the vectorization process.

1. Set the viewport's background color with a color editor or a pipette tool.
2. Checkerboard: Replace the background color by the checkerboard pattern.
3. Split view (shortcut: S): Show the source image on the lefthand side of the viewport and the vectorization on the righthand side.
4. Flip view (shortcut: F): Flip between the source image and the vectorization.
5. Zoom to fit: Reset the zoom on the image to fit the viewport.
6. Zoom in/out. Also with the mouse wheel (Windows) or the touchpad (macOS), as well as shortcut keys.

The background color does not affect the vectorization, it can however be saved as the background color of the vector image file, depending on its format.

The Source Image panel

The source image panel controls what pre-processing is applied to the source image, and which color is used to extract the silhouettes to be vectorized.

1. Hide/show the source image.
2. Set the segmentation color with a color editor or a pipette tool.
3. (Slider) Set the tolerance on the segmentation color.
4. Filter the source image and convert it to a monochrome image.
5. Upscale the source image to catch finer details.
6. Invert the color selection.

The segmentation color is the color used the define the silhouette shapes that must be vectorized. In the output file, it is also used as the fill color of the vector paths.

The upscale tool will scale the image resolution two times. This is helpful if the image has small details that you want to keep in the image trace. It usually leads to a better quality result, and therefore it is enabled automatically on small resolution images (< 1k). On higher resolution images it is disabled by default and it is up to the user to enable it or not. The upscaling will impact the speed of the vectorization. Also, if you are vectorizing from a very high quality input (for instance, a 600dpi scanned image), it is likely that the upscale feature won't impact the result significantly.

While the mouse hovers on the tolerance slider [3], the silhouette is highlighted in the source image

The Vectorization panel

Finally, the vectorization panel controls the transformation process of the selected silhouette to the vector paths.

1. Hide/show the vectorization result.
2. Sharp corners and straight segments: When selected, allow sharp angles at anchor nodes and also enable the detection of straight segments. When unselected (the default), all nodes are smooth.
3. Silhouette only: Keep only the outer contour of every shape of the image in the vectoriezation.
4. Control the style of the vector paths: filled or not, outlined or not.
5. Open the vectorization color selection window, allowing the user to control the colors of the vector paths.
6. Hide/show the anchor nodes. Those are the extremities of the Bezier curves that form the contour paths.
7. Hide/show the information overlay. Located at the bottom left hand corner of the viewport, that overlay provides quantitative information regarding the vectorization: The number of countour groups, the number of contours and the number of nodes.
8. (Slider) Set the precision of the vectorization. It decides how closely the vector contours will fit to the silhouettes extracted around the segmentation color. The higher the precision, the more accurate the fit, and the higher the number of nodes.