Creative Tip: The Best Autotrace Tool Available.

Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has developed an online autotrace tool that is dramatically more accurate than the LiveTrace tool available in Adobe Illustrator, or the old Adobe Streamline utility that some designers still have lurking around their hard drive. Even better it’s free! VectorMagic is available as an online tool on their website:

vectormagic.stanford.edu

You upload your bitmap image, answer a couple questions about the original image, and the system creates a vector EPS version that you can download and edit. Their example results are stunning, and from our own experiments at CreativeTechs with a few real-world projects, the results are impressive.

The interface is fairly straight-forward. But if you get lost they also have a quick 3-minute video tutorial showing the system in action. Give it a shot.

Source: This tip inspired by a recent label design project for Firesteed Winery (some tasty wines by the way) by Seattle designer Craig Marocco. The actual tip comes from the January 2008 issue of Design Tools Monthly.

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Xtra Tip: Macworld 2008 Keynote in 60 Seconds.

If you didn't dedicate an hour and a half to watching Steve Jobs' latest keynote at Macworld 2008, here is a great video that lets you catch the entire 90-minute speech in 60 seconds!

Macworld 2008 Keynote in 60 Seconds.

Remarkably all the highlights are there. Enjoy.

Source: We first found this video posted on James Dempsey's new The Graphic Mac blog. Terrific catch Jim!

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CreativeTechs QuickTips is a free weekly newsletter for creative professionals who use Macs. Each week we publish a fresh mix of left-brain and right-brain tips based on our real world experience supporting hundreds of creative teams in the greater Seattle area. For a complete archive of previous tips, visit www.creativetechs.com/tips

For IT Professionals supporting Mac users, visit Make Mac Work. This weekly technical blog focuses on IT issues facing Macs in Enterprise environments. It is written by CreativeTechs' lead enterprise engineer, Jordan Bojar. For an archive of previous topics, visit www.makemacwork.com

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