Materials
- A bold drawing on white paper (felt pen works best)
- cardstock or vinyl to cut
Software and equipment
- Phone camera or scanner
- Cricut / Silhouette or laser
Bold, closed drawings trace best: think silhouettes, cartoon outlines and hand lettering drawn with a thick pen. The tracer keeps the shape; you choose the size.
What you will learn
- Tracing with threshold, noise removal and output width.
- Cleaning traced outlines.
- Checking minimum detail sizes for your cutter.
Tips for the photo
Shoot straight on, in even daylight, with no shadow across the paper. Crop close to the drawing. See inaccurate tracing if the result is rough.
Steps
The same steps appear in the studio, where each one is checked against your design.
- 1
Open the importer
Open Import in the left rail and choose the Image tab.
- 2
Trace your drawing
Choose PNG / JPEG / WebP and pick your photo or scan. Move Threshold until the preview shows your lines solid, raise Noise removal to drop specks, and set Output width to the real size you want.
- 3
Tidy the outlines
Select the traced shapes. Delete specks you do not want and use Edit nodes (N) to fix any wobbles. Combine overlapping pieces with Union.
- 4
Check it can be cut
Open Check & output. Thin lines below 1.5 mm are flagged for cutters; thicken them with Offset in Advanced mode or redraw them bolder.
- 5
Preview the result
Click Generate files and open Preview. Only what you see there will be cut.
Final result
Compiled by the same engine as the studio: 1 part on 1 sheet. Red is cut, black is engraved.