Turn a logo into a file for sign making

Clients send logos as a JPG from their website, a scan of a business card or a photo of a van. A vinyl cutter can't cut any of them as they are: it follows paths, and a picture has none. Some cutter software traces a picture itself; Roland CutStudio's Image Outline "extracts the outline (contours) of an image and creates a polyline" (Roland). Whichever tool traces it, the result is only as clean as the image.

Outlines. A cutter follows the edge of every shape and nothing else: "Line width, fill, dashed line, and arrow of lines are ignored" (Roland). Every shape Tracer traces is a closed outline, which is the path the blade takes.

One colour per cut. A vinyl cutter "does not recognize colors", and a design in several colours means cutting each colour of vinyl separately (Dartmouth).

Letters big enough to cut. 3M's bulletin for its Scotchcal Series 100 film puts the minimum text height at 25mm, in Helvetica Medium, with strokes no thinner than 1mm (3M). Other films and fonts differ, so check your film's datasheet. A logo traced from a business card often has details far below that.

The real size. Tracer's DXF is in millimetres with the longest side at 100mm, and Vectric, for one, reads vectors in "at the size and scale they were created" (Vectric). Scale the logo to the sign before you cut or route.

Tracer exports SVG and, on Pro, DXF, EPS and PDF. What each program lists as an import:

Sources: SignMaster, GoSign manual, Flexi, CutStudio, Graphtec, Vectric.

A DXF is one colour, on one layer. GoSign can split a DXF into cut methods "by layer name, by spot colour name, or by colour". Tracer's DXF has none of those: every shape sits on layer 0 with no colour, so the whole file gets one method. That's right for a one-colour cut. A job that needs different methods for different parts has to be split up in the sign software.

Tracer's colour styles split the image into four bands of brightness and fill each band with the image's own colour for it. A colour trace downloads as SVG, EPS or PDF; a DXF needs a one-colour trace. Before you cut the layers:

• —Similar brightness merges. A red and a blue of about the same lightness land in the same band and come back as one colour, on one layer. Check the layers against the logo.
• —It is always four layers. A two-colour logo comes back with near copies among the four. Delete them, or each one is another roll of vinyl.
• —The layers are stacked. The lightest layer covers the whole logo, and each darker one sits on top of it. Cut as they are, the colours go on vinyl over vinyl. To set them side by side instead, take each upper shape out of the one below it.
• —Colours come from the image. They're RGB values, not film colours. ORAFOL itself warns that colours on screen "may not be a 100% color match of actual material" (ORAFOL), so pick the vinyl from the supplier's swatch.

• —Closed shapes. Vectric's pocket toolpath works on closed vectors, and LightBurn's kerf offset only works with shapes that are closed. Tracer's outlines all are.
• —Inside corners. "A round tool cannot cut a perfectly sharp inside corner" (Vectric), so every inside corner of a routed letter keeps the radius of the bit. Sharp notches and fine serifs in a traced logo come out rounded.
• —Kerf. The bit or the beam takes material with it. Without compensating for it, parts come out "undersized (or in the case of slots, oversized)" (LightBurn, same guide). There's more on lasers in the laser cutting guide.

A traced logo scales to any size: "Vector graphics are resolution independent" (Adobe). A banner made from it stays sharp at any width, where the client's JPG would need far more pixels than it has. Photographs and gradients are the exception: HP calls raster "best for photography and complex gradients", and a trace turns them into flat bands. For the raster parts of a print, HP gives these resolutions at final size:

Source: HP's large-format printing guide.

• —Weed soon after cutting. 3M advises removing the excess film as soon after cutting as practical (same bulletin). GoSign's overcut setting is there to make it easier: it's "used to facilitate weeding".
• —Application tape carries the letters. ORAFOL's ORATAPE MT95 is made "for the transfer of die-cut and computer-cut letters and symbols" (ORAFOL).
• —Mirror for the inside of a window. Lettering applied inside the glass and read from outside has to be cut in reverse. GoSign has Mirror horizontal for it.

• —Tracing the client's smallest JPG. A logo from an email signature traces into rough edges in any tool. Ask for the biggest version first, then trace.
• —Live text in the file. CutStudio: "Character strings cannot be imported. (Text converted to paths by outlining can be imported.)" (Roland). Tracer's output is always outlines; this only bites when you add text in your editor.
• —Overlapping shapes on one sheet. A colour trace's layers overlap by design. Cut each one from its own colour of vinyl, never all of them from one sheet.
• —Letters under the film's minimum. Check the datasheet before you promise the client a small logo on a pen or a door handle.
• —Forgetting to scale. The DXF arrives at 100mm on its longest side, whatever size the sign is.