Well, the interesting thing about this particular image (and why my readers here ended up with a free video) is that this is a situation outside of what we normally see when tracing. First of all, one would think this would be ideal for using center line tracing because it’s basically an outlined image with a white filled center (refer to my Center Line Tracing video or any of the KNK Studio manuals). I tried Center Line Tracing, however instead of ending up with separate puzzle pieces (the goal of this project), I had an overall outline of the dinosaur with separate, disconnected lines for the middle of the dinosaur. Now this would be perfect if the user planned to just cut the outside of the dinosaur and then, perhaps, dash-line cut the intererior lines. But to achieve 3 separate puzzle pieces, Accuscan would be needed instead.

Now tracing it was easy (as you’ll see in the video). The next issue was that the trace lines will be made on either side of the outlines of the image. In most cases, this is also never a problem. But with Sherri’s project, we needed to end up with three puzzle pieces that fit together. So, I came up with the idea of using Transform>Outline to make some of the pieces just a tiny bit bigger, resulting in a better puzzle fit.

So, check out the video and I also am including a link to the original KNK file sent to me by Sherri in case you want to play along! Special note to non-Groove and non-Maxx owners: this same method should work for those of you with the original monochromatic vectorizing (just use the Scan and Trace Wizard) and those of you with color vectorization (same method I show in the video).

Tracing and Editing Sherri’s Dinosaur

And then here is the original file:
Dino Puzzle To Trace

I also sell a video on using the Auto Tracing for KNK, ACS, DM and plan to have a new one soon covering the details of the Vectorize Wizard available in the latest KNK Studio Maxx software.