What are the four settings that you can adjust when tracing a bitmap? Explain these in detail and provide any warnings associated with those settings.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Color Threshold: Color threshold determines how many colors are reproduced in your vector conversion. The lower the number, the more colors that are reproduced. However, lower numbers result in larger files and longer conversion times. Be careful not to set the number too low. If the original bitmap contains millions of colors, and you try to reproduce them all, Flash may display an error informing you there are too many colors and you will have to try again with a higher value. For photographic reproduction, use low numbers such as 10 or below if possible. For a pop-art or techno look, use high numbers.

Minimum Area: The Minimum area setting determines how large of an area Flash examines when deciding which color to use when converting a pixel. For example, a setting of 8 tells Flash to start at the current pixel and use the colors of all pixels within an 8-pixel radius to determine the final color of the pixel. In other words, it is like telling Flash to ignore a pixel’s neighbors or pay attention to them. For photographic reproduction, use a low number such as 1 so that neighboring pixels are ignored.

Corner Threshold: The Corner threshold setting controls whether sharp edges are retained or smoothed out. For photographic reproduction, use the Many Corners option.

Curve Fit: The Curve fit setting determines how smoothly outlines are drawn. For photographic reproduction, use the Pixels option.

Be warned! Using low values for both the Color threshold and Minimum area settings can result in Flash appearing to freeze as your computer’s processor is being overworked trying to accomplish the conversion. If that happens, you need to either be patient as Flash finishes or force Flash to close using the Windows Task Manager. Depending on your computer’s power, it might take up to 30 minutes to convert a large bitmap to a photographic-quality vector using very low settings.