Best software to design and vectorize inlays? (1 Viewer)

DerFabo

DerFabo

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I'm playing around with some inlay designs to relabel some of my old plastic chip sets to get on large set.

Some of you might have seen the thread I posted a while ago about experiences with onlinelables.com but since then I changed everything in my designs almost weekly. So till today I haven't print or ordered any new labels.

I've made my last logo design in Inkscape and it worked quite well, but changes are still about to be made.

At this point I'm wondering what kind of design software you all use to create inlays or even the whole chips plus edges for ceramics?

The problem is, I'm that type of chipper who will never order anything because he's never happy with the design. So i will possibly spend all my life with designing chips. :D

What is the best software?
Thank you all! :)
 
Eloe2000 said:
https://www.vectorizer.io/
Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn’t understand what you were asking. Adobe Illustrator is far and away the best option for designing ceramic chips. Inkscape is the free option. I would t recommend anything else.

However, if all you are doing is creating an inlay, you don’t need to create a vector and you have a lot more options. I prefer to design inlays in Photoshop. And there are a lot of free or cheaper alternatives to that.
 
Eloe2000 said:
Adobe Illustrator is far and away the best option
Click to expand...

Would you elaborate on why it's the best option? And why you prefer PS for inlay design?

Also for clarity, why Inkscape as the free option, I found it difficult with colors because I didn't think inkscape did CMYK colors? Krita seems was another one I found that had high reviews
 
I think for pure vector artwork, Inkscape is the only free software worth considering. Other free software allows you to do more creative artwork in terms of painting / motions with the pen.
 
Machine said:
Would you elaborate on why it's the best option? And why you prefer PS for inlay design?

Also for clarity, why Inkscape as the free option, I found it difficult with colors because I didn't think inkscape did CMYK colors? Krita seems was another one I found that had high reviews
Click to expand...

Adobe Illustrator has been the standard in graphic design for some time and it has by far and away the most capabilities and utilities.

I am just more proficient with PS because I am a professional photographer. And since you don’t need vector art for inlays pushing myself to use AI isn’t a necessity.

There aren’t many good alternatives to AI. Actually I wouldn’t even consider Inkscape a good alternative. It’s just free and could potentially get the job done. But it had lots of bugs and problems.
 
Eloe2000 said:
And since you don’t need vector art for inlays pushing myself yep use AI isn’t a necessity.
Click to expand...
Although this is true and I completely agree with it, I also think it is up to the printer that you're going to use. For example, sticker mule does not do very well with raster artwork. In my case, my POS home printer produced sharper images with my artwork then sticker mule did. When I asked them about it they said it was because I had used images and not vectors.
 
BearMetal said:
I think for pure vector artwork, Inkscape is the only free software worth considering. Other free software allows you to do more creative artwork in terms of painting / motions with the pen.
Click to expand...
To be clear, it doesn't have to be free. But I would prefer it to be a one time payment software rather than a subscription-based software like AI.
 
I mean, for commercial use it has its pros, like upcoming big updates including and things like that. But I don't really know how much I'm going to use it.

So it seems like I stick with Inkscape for the moment an look, how intense I'm going to work with it before I consider getting AI or something like that.

Thank you for your replies.
 
DerFabo said:
To be clear, it doesn't have to be free. But I would prefer it to be a one time payment software rather than a subscription-based software like AI.
Click to expand...
I think all of the Adobe products moved to a subscription base. Adobe fan boys can correct me on this.

If true, then I think you're only solution for a one-time payment for top quality software would be defined in older version of illustrator that still is supported and purchased that.
 
BearMetal said:
Although this is true and I completely agree with it, I also think it is up to the printer that you're going to use. For example, sticker mule does not do very well with raster artwork. In my case, my POS home printer produced sharper images with my artwork then sticker mule did. When I asked them about it they said it was because I had used images and not vectors.
Click to expand...

Commercial printers will absolutely be able to put out the same quality via raster or via vector as long as; 1) they communicate their specific print parameters, and 2) the submitter follows those parameters exactly. The issue arises when people don’t follow those parameters usually. And people aren’t good at following directions. I Always submit artwork as raster for chipping and professionally/commercially. The only time I can recall being forced to use vector is with Tina’s chips. With the cut cards, with StickerMule, and even my CPC inlays I have used raster and always got perfect results but I respect the input parameters.

The last two cut card group buys I ran I would say in excess of 90% of the designs submitted by people who designed their own artwork had critical errors that would effect the printing as-is. However with vector it easily scales or is easily fixable by the printer or by me. But with raster it was not. If I hadn’t fixed 90% of the raster files that were submitted by self-designers then the output would be sub-par.

Honestly, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that anyone here who is not experienced designer that designs their own chips or inlays simply hire a designer to review your artwork before production.

These are raster art from Sticker Mule for me…

8E167103-D63C-4DCF-B417-51E7C05295E1.jpeg
43FC27B2-CE3A-4E4A-9645-9AD6CD1CB12A.jpeg


And my CPC inlays which I worked with David to triple confirm parameters…

400739D6-BD8A-4BF7-824B-859D7AA650CF.jpeg
 
Last edited:
I've always loved your Casa Mango artwork, @Eloe2000 ... And it did turn out amazing in those above photos.

However when I communicated with sticker mule they were very adamant that using any raster artwork will result in images that are slightly pixelated and grainy. No matter what the size of the raster was. I found this to be a bit confusing as my home printer was able to produce sharp images with the same artwork..

So perhaps it was a communication problem with them not telling me exactly how to get them the raster artwork in a form that would print properly.
 
Stickermule was the option I thought the most about besides Gear.
So what I understand is:
Vector graphics are not necessary but it would definetly be better to use them, when I send my graphics over to my vendor of choice?
Eloe2000 said:
Honestly, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that anyone here who is not experienced designer that designs their own chips or inlays simply hire a designer to review your artwork before production.
Click to expand...
I am clearly not an experienced designer, but I would love to do it by myself not to go the cheapest way, but to learn about chip designing during the process.
I like to do things on my own to improve my skills.
May I contact you to check my designs, if I am ever happy with them? :'D

I'm sorry if there are some mistakes in my posts that might lead to confusion, since I'm not a native english speaker. :D
 
When I dealt with Sticker Mule, IIRC, they never said anything to me about file format, they just said for 31.5mm diameter stickers 6pt font was a minimum for guaranteed readability. I sent them what I thought were decently high resolution jpgs (1140x1140 pixels) and their stickers were significantly more grainy and less detailed than what I sent. If vector format would have improved the final product, I wish I would have known.
 
I’ve been in the design/print business a long time, and always tried to use vector for flat art whenever possible. As sticker mule mentioned, and in my experience, raster art doesn’t do as well on things like logos and text, as vector does.
Sure you can take a really high-res raster and scale it down and maybe get a pleasurable result. But you will be guaranteed to get smooth, sharp results when the artwork is vector, which is resolution independent.

Regarding the op’s question, I like Illustrator, but it’s all I’ve ever known. I also use an app called VectorMagic to convert raster images to vector. It tends to be pricey, so if you have a raster graphic and would like me to convert it, send me a PM.
 
Affinity Designer might be an option worth looking into. It's around 50$ one time buy and for non-professionals it seems like a solid middle-ground between Inkscape and Illustrator.
 
Samuel said:
When I dealt with Sticker Mule, IIRC, they never said anything to me about file format, they just said for 31.5mm diameter stickers 6pt font was a minimum for guaranteed readability. I sent them what I thought were decently high resolution jpgs (1140x1140 pixels) and their stickers were significantly more grainy and less detailed than what I sent. If vector format would have improved the final product, I wish I would have known.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what I experienced. The odd part was that when I printed my proofs at home during the design process, they came out sharp and fantastic.

Some of my artwork came from actual pinball art, so to convert it into a vector would have been an expensive time consuming process. So I went with a very high resolution copy of the image, but like you, it came out a bit grainy.
 
I have used Photoshop exclusively for 7 sets, cut cards, dealer buttons, and Bonus! (bounty) chips.

I have no idea what a vector or a raster is. I know they have to do with resizing, but for the most part, if I'm designing a label I use a canvas that is the size of the end project (usually just under 1" for labels, or 39mm for ceramics).

Also my Photoshop is not a monthly fee (using PS6). Are all the new Adobe products bank-leaks?
 
Poker Zombie said:
Are all the new Adobe products bank-leaks?
Click to expand...
Yes .

But, the cost per year is lower than the previous model, and you are getting updates; though I'm not sure the update for the cost is proportionate it is easier to swallow the monthly cost.
 
Since I print my own using the print-and-cut function of a Cricut, I find I have to convert my vector graphics to raster because the Cricut software hangs when trying to process all the various individual elements in a vector image multiplied by the dozens of labels on a sheet.

For the size of the labels, a 300 dpi raster image printed on my home printer is more than enough, but for a professional printer perhaps even 600dpi raster image is still not high enough detail, and choosing vector just takes the resolution out of the equation.

Poker Zombie said:
I have no idea what a vector or a raster is. I know they have to do with resizing, but for the most part, if I'm designing a label I use a canvas that is the size of the end project (usually just under 1" for labels, or 39mm for ceramics).
Click to expand...

Vector means the graphical elements are essentially mathematical equations and therefore resizing does not affect the quality because you’re just multiplying and dividing by the equations to make the image larger or smaller.
 
Raster graphics are a bunch of dots of different colors, whereas vector graphics are mathematical algorithms that draw the image. Vector graphics are scalable and the quality doesn’t change no matter how big (or small) you enlarge it.

For digital printers, graphics are converted to raster just before before printing. So it shouldn’t matter as long as the parameters are correct to the printer. You don’t want your raster graphics scaled down and get degraded. A couple of things you need to keep in mind is that you need to think CMYK as opposed to RGB and dpi (dots per inch) as opposed to pixels.

When I was in the print business, I don’t think there was a printer that printed any higher than 600dpi.

For my CPC inlays, I used photoshop and set the dpi to 300. To me they look great. For larger inlays or ceramics, I would set it at 600dpi if that was possible.
 
Can someone who has Inkscape please send me a PM? I have a SVG file that isn't able to be viewed properly by a vendor, so I need it converted to a different format. Thanks.
 

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