While searching for a program to convert a selection into a path/vector, I stumbled onto Krita. So I’m a complete newbee. Also, English is not my native language, so what I write might be somewhat incomprehensible.
I was looking for this, because I want to do some car lettering. The company who will cut the adhesive film for me, needs a vector-file.
I have a psd-file with the text I want (can of course be saved as something else) made in Photoshop Elements, so not the pro-version where you can convert a selection into a path and save it as an eps file.
I can open that file in Krita and select the text, but can’t find out how to convert that selection into
a path and save it as a vector-file. I also can’t find anything about that in the instructions.
Is this even possible in Krita to create a file that this company can use for their plotter?
It’s seems to be possible to made this kind of conversion in Krita, but the result won’t be good enough for a company that will use it with a plotter and then cut it to made adhesive letters, because the selection to vector shape tools in Krita will convert the selection at pixel level.
Example:
Maybe I’m wrong and Krita offer a better vectorization process, but this one is the only one I know
If someone knows a better workflow with better results…
But if you really need to work with vector, the best open source software I know I think to vectorise an image and work on it is Inkscape.
You’ll find here the documentation page about Inkscape vectorize function:
It is possible to convert vector selection to a vector path with good results, but the selection you’re talking about is pixel, so… it would be better to just start with text that is vector shape? In both Krita and Inkscape it’s possible. In Photoshop probably too, but Krita don’t read text from .psd files properly because .psd is a closed format.
How do you convert a vector selection to a path? If I wanted vector selection, I make a vector layer and create a vector as a workaround. That vector layer would have 0% opacity and it exist only to have adjustable vector selection.
Does the company that makes the lettering need an .eps file or can they also use an .svg file?
In GIMP, you can convert text to a path and then export it as an .svg file. That is a pure path, no stroke or fill characteristics. You’d need to create the text in GIMP from scratch to use that.
, Inkscape is exactly what I was looking for.