Trace Tool

Step-by-Step Guide

This tutorial demonstrates the use of the Trace Tool to produce an embroidery design from a raster image.

It guides users through the process of converting raster images into vector-based embroidery designs, covering essential steps from importing the image and choosing the trace style to editing the resulting vector objects and understanding overlay settings for optimal stitching.

To achieve a good quality design, the input image must be sufficiently clean. The image can be in any file format supported by Studio. The most important factor is that the edges of color areas are smooth, meaning not jagged, which can be a side effect of enlarging a raster image.

1. Import Raster Image

Use the main menu > Image > Import command to import a raster image into Studio. Do not scale the image to fit into the hoop, because if the image is enlarged, it becomes more pixelated, and the auto-tracing will not work well. It is recommended to resize the finished vector design instead. In contrast to rasters, resizing vectors does not affect the quality.

2. Choose the Trace Style

Let's start digitizing the design. Large filled areas should be digitized first. Select the Trace tool (the magic wand icon) from the Tool box on the side of the screen by using a long press with the primary button.

Then, select the Fill from the Trace Tool style panel.

3. Switch to Trace Mode

We are going to trace the large yellow area. The main control panel on the side of the screen contains trace controls and selection options. As this is a fairly simple object, set Simplicity to 10 to achieve a lower number of nodes.

Each filled area with an outline or a neighboring area of another color should have some overlay to compensate for gaps between adjacent areas of different colors caused by pull effect of the thread. However, the yellow area of the Smiley is somewhat specific because of the thin black lines on the eyes and mouth. While leaving holes for the main parts of the eyes and mouth, we will not leave holes under all thin black lines, because it would split the yellow circle into too many regions and complicate the sewing process. Moreover, the overlay would completely cover the holes under the thin lines anyway. Therefore, we will leave Overlay=0 for now.

The Selection is set to New. As we are going to select just one area now (yellow), it doesn't matter whether Selection is set to New or Add. The Color Tolerance for selection is the default 30.

4. Select and Trace the First Area

Click anywhere on the yellow area. The selection is indicated by flashing dots.

Click the Apply button on the button bar at the top of the screen to convert the selected raster object into vector objects. Five vector objects are created: the main fill and four holes.

If the Ignore Openings option is checked, the program would create just the main fill. This option is useful for the creation of an overall filled area when small holes are not wanted or when the fill is used as an overall underlay. This is not our case, so this option is unchecked.

5. New Objects in the Object Inspector List

Newly traced vector objects are added to the Object Inspector list. If they contain holes, they will also appear in the s Inspector list.

In this case, the Parts Inspector (the one beneath the main Object Inspector) contains a list of the five new vector objects - one fill and four holes.

Because of the reasons mentioned above, we will eliminate some holes that are too thin. Select object number 5 (the hole under the chin) and simply delete it. The holes under the eyes and mouth are more complicated because they contain both thin and thick parts. We want to preserve the thick parts and erase the thin ones.

6. Select Object for Editing

Select the mouth hole in the Parts Inspector and open a pop-up menu. Select Edit from the pop-up menu to switch into editing mode.

It is necessary to use the Parts Inspector to select mouth objects because openings cannot be selected directly in the work area.

7. Edit Vector Objects

Delete nodes on the thin parts of the mouth to simplify the object. Select the respective nodes one by one and delete each of them.

You can also select multiple nodes at once by holding the SHIFT key and dragging a selection box around the nodes.

Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the eyes. When finished, all three holes should contain only the thick parts, and all thin parts should be deleted.

Remember, we have not used any overlay for the yellow fill and its holes. We can add it now so that we will shrink the hole objects by using the main menu > Transform > Offset > Expand Object command. The Expand command will actually shrink the holes because the expansion will be done at the expense of the holes. Because of the expansion, the yellow fill will extend slightly under the mouth and eye areas.

8. Select Multiple Areas for Tracing

Now, trace all the gray and white areas on the hat. Use the Trace tool as in step 2 with a few changes: set Overlay to 0.3 mm (for example) and the Selection options to Add.

Then, select one by one all three gray areas and three white areas on the hat by clicking on them.

It doesn't matter that the selected areas are of different colors because the Auto Color option is enabled. Therefore, each vector object will get the proper color from the underlying picture.

If you happen to select the wrong area, use the Undo/Redo commands from the main menu > Edit, or the CTRL+Z/CTRL+Y shortcuts.

9. Trace Multiple Areas at Once

Use the Apply button or the Generate Stitches button to convert all selected objects to vector objects at once.

All six new objects are simple objects and do not need any editing unless you want to change the stitch direction or pattern. In such a case, use the Parameters window to set new parameters for the vector objects.

Note: all six objects were expanded with an overlay margin. This overlay covers part of the black outline areas. It serves to embroider the design without gaps between adjacent objects.

10. Choose Another Trace Style

The next step is to trace the white and red areas on the eyes and mouth. We intentionally omitted the white area on the eyes in step 8 because instead of creating them as plain fills, we will create them as columns. Make a long click on the Trace tool icon. Then select the Column style.

11. Trace Next Objects

Select the white areas on the eyes and mouth. Then, also select the red area on the mouth.

Use the Add selection option at all times to add the respective areas to the selection. Click the Generate Stitches button to create vector objects and fill them with stitches.

Notice that the new objects are columns and that they also have an overlay.

12. Trace All Objects of the Same Color at Once

Now trace all black outlines at once.

Select the Add Similar selection option to allow the program to select all areas of the same (similar) color at once.

Then, click anywhere on the black outline in the work area. Click the Generate Stitches button to create vector objects. As the column style was selected in step 10, the new objects are all of the column style. Actually, they are fill objects with the Autocolumn option enabled.

Thin outlines expanded with an overlay may need slight editing in some places. In this case, a few nodes in the right corner of the mouth were edited to remove intersecting edges.

13. Result of Tracing

The design is finished. Notice the difference between the plain yellow fill and the column style of the eyes and mouth. The previously made steps allowed us to create objects with an overlay and appropriate openings where needed.

One more thing that needs to be checked is the sewing order of the objects to minimize color changes. When making gray, white, and red objects, it is possible that newly created vector objects are not sorted by color. Therefore, reorder these objects in the Object Inspector window to minimize color changes.

As all objects in our example are separate areas, we do not need to insert connections between the objects. Trims are automatically added between all objects. In other cases, however, it might be suitable to insert connections between some objects (letters, for example) to reduce the trims.