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Tracy: From Paper to Vector

almost 6 years ago from , Pushing boundaries, not pixels.

Today, I’m sharing a small design tool that I’ve been working on. With Tracy you can convert monochrome sketches, drawings or hand lettering to SVG.

In contrast to Adobe Illustrator’s general purpose "Live Trace", Tracy is optimized for tracing monochrome, low-fi, simple drawings. You might find it useful for presentations or websites that require a hand made human touch.

Just drag and drop a photo and adjust the smoothing and boldness as needed. You can also connect your smartphone to take photos of your drawings that you want to vectorize.

So far it works for my needs, but I’m curious if you find this useful, too. I know that some people use Procreate on iPad to draw digitally these days, but this is for the rest of us.

Tracy: From Paper to Vector

http://www.usetracy.com

Demo Video

https://vimeo.com/246579946

More on implementation details

https://medium.com/@getflourish/from-mobile-to-desktop-cross-device-communication-using-websockets-f9c48f669c8

12 comments

  • Mohd HazwanMohd Hazwan, almost 6 years ago

    wow mann.. alternative for adobe capture. is it free? ill give a try soon

    1 point
  • Arthur BArthur B, almost 6 years ago

    Looks fantastic.

    By the way, is it possible to access the website via HTTPS

    0 points
    • Florian Schulz, almost 6 years ago

      Good catch. Unfortunately, I only found out now that my domain service doesn’t offer SSL. I already found a better solution and will move as soon as I received the information to transfer.

      0 points
    • Florian Schulz, over 5 years ago

      Hey Arthur, just letting you know that I finally moved the domain to support HTTPS. :)

      0 points
  • Dan Chapman, almost 6 years ago

    Simple and useful! Thanks for making this! :)

    0 points
  • Tyler Finck, almost 6 years ago

    Bookmarked! This is an amazing resource, thank you.

    0 points
  • Vipul. MishraVipul. Mishra, almost 6 years ago

    Works amazing!! Must to try if you use Cocoapotrace or any other tracing tool. mostly tried on monochromatic icons etc..

    Has someone tried this on colored outlines? Would be interesting to see how that plays out.

    Will keep an eye on future developments.

    0 points
  • Rico T., almost 6 years ago

    wow!

    I've been using Cocoapotrace since ever. I'll take a look

    0 points
  • Helen . Helen . , almost 6 years ago

    Love the concept and the simplicity of getting a paper drawing scanned vs having to scan it with the scanner. Definitely going to be giving this a shot!

    0 points
    • Florian Schulz, almost 6 years ago

      Thanks! Would like to hear if and how it works for you. And even more so if it doesn’t with a certain browser setup or type of drawing.

      0 points
  • Gage Salzano, almost 6 years ago

    This is genius. Thank you so much for making this.

    0 points