Corel PowerTrace – amazing piece of software

We have a 53 feet by 7 feet wall in the new office and are preparing a poster for it. The size is huge and we wanted to do some vector images for it. We had some raster images that we liked and wanted to convert them to vector, so that we can scale them and use as appropriate.

I had seen that Corel came with a software called Corel Trace that did this work. Tried it, but the results were not satisfactory. It generated too complicated lines – too many nodes. So once you have got the vector, and want to edit it, it becomes very difficult. My team said it’s worthless to try such a software, we will trace the images ourselves. We could do it faster, and will be able to do it the way we want.

But I thought: If people have made such software, there must be some use to it!

So researched some more, read some reviews. And found that Corel has a new version of the trace software called PowerTrace. It’s actually integrated into Corel Draw Graphics Suite X3. I said let’s give it a shot. So Harshad ran up home and got the Digit DVD which contained the software (saved me 4 hours of download), and we sat down to see how it worked.

And it rocks!

It was too easy to convert a bitmap into a vector image. Just insert it in a Corel Draw file, and click Trace! The traced vector did not contain too many nodes – it also allowed merging colors together which would save further nodes. The output quality was amazing and we fell in love with the software!

Good work Corel!