How to vectorize outlines of photographed objects

Users sometimes send us color or grayscale photos of objects they'd like to vectorize the outline of. We've been sent photos of cows, cats, cars ...

Unfortunately, vectorizing an object on a photo can be very difficult. This is because before you can vectorize the object you need to divide the photo into two discrete color areas: The object and the background. This is usually hard to do automatically because the object and the background tend to share colors or shades of gray that make it difficult or impossible to separate them.

Here's a quick "cheat" approach:

  1. Get a piece of tracing paper and trace around the object on the photo with a pen or pencil.
  2. Scan the traced outline.
  3. Vectorize the outline in Scan2CAD.

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