Cutting and Converting an Image

May 13, 2014 6:14 AM

I have an .pdf image that includes railroad tracks. With an old version of Paint Shop Pro, I want to remove just the railroad tracks and then, using a .pdf to .dxf or .dwg converter, I want to make it black and white and scalable. How can I use my version of PSP cut out the image I want? Is there anything else I need to know?
posted by CollectiveMind to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

You need to know if the image in the .pdf is vector or raster.

If it is vector, skip PSP (PSP still exists?), and go straight to inkscape or Adobe Illustrator which can export a .dxf natively.

If the image is raster, than you will need to vectorize it by tracing it by hand. You'll need to know how to use a pen tool in PSP, to make a vector image. I honestly can't remember if PSP can do this or not, but something like Inkscape (which is free) can.

Whats your end goal? A laser/vinyl cut?
posted by fontophilic at 10:24 AM on May 13, 2014

Response by poster: Yes. And I know very little about selecting an image from the background but a few times, while messing around with PSP, I managed to cut it right out and move it around. I don't know or remember how I did it. But that's what I want to do rather than draw in-between all of those lines. And, if I could add an offset so that when the laser cuts it w/o cutting it so thin that it falls apart when you touch it, that would be ideal. But the first priority is selecting and pulling the image out of the background.

How can I tell if it's a vector v a raster? Properties?
posted by CollectiveMind at 2:25 PM on May 13, 2014

Basically if you zoom in, do you start to see pixels? Or does it stay sharp.

You can also pop it into inkscape/illustrator and see if in the layers panel you get an image or a path.
posted by fontophilic at 6:10 AM on May 14, 2014