Steering a trace with guide areas in Vectornation by Zaweba

A single set of trace settings rarely suits a whole picture. The face in a photo wants fine detail, the sky behind it wants to be simple, and the watermark in the corner should not be traced at all. Guide areas in Vectornation by Zaweba let you say so, region by region, instead of settling for one compromise across the image.

You draw a guide area straight onto the image as a rectangle, an ellipse or a freehand shape. Each area carries an instruction, and the tracer follows it inside that boundary while the rest of the image keeps the panel's main settings. Colour rules work on the same idea, but they pick out traced colours rather than places.

What each guide area can ask for

There are six instructions to choose from. Keep detail tells the tracer to hold on to small features in that area, which suits eyes, lettering or the fine edge of a logo. Simplify does the opposite and smooths an area down to fewer, broader shapes. Straighten favours straight runs, which helps with buildings, frames and anything drawn with a ruler. Make gradients lets a smooth area become a gradient rather than a stack of flat bands. Keep flat colour holds a region to solid fills even if the rest of the trace uses gradients. Leave out removes the area from the result altogether.

Leave out is the one people reach for first. A date stamp, a stray hand at the edge of a scan, a background you mean to replace: draw round it and it never turns into paths you then have to find and delete.

Choosing the shape of the area

Rectangles and ellipses are quick and tidy, and most of the time a rough box is all the tracer needs. Freehand is for awkward regions, such as the outline of a person against a busy background, where a box would catch too much. The area does not need to be precise to the pixel. It marks where a rule applies, and the tracer still finds the real edges inside it.

Overlapping areas are worth avoiding when they ask for opposite things. If a Simplify area and a Keep detail area cover the same patch, you have asked two questions about one place. Draw the smaller, more important area with care and keep the broad one clear of it.

Colour rules for traced colours

Sometimes the problem is not a place but a colour. A scanned drawing might have a pale yellow paper tone spread right across it, or a logo might have one brand colour that must stay a clean flat fill. Colour rules let you pick a traced colour and give it the same kinds of instruction as a guide area: keep its detail, simplify it, straighten it, let it become a gradient, keep it flat or leave it out.

Leaving out a paper colour is a common job. Rather than tracing the background and then selecting and deleting it, you tell the tracer the colour is not wanted, and the artwork comes out sitting on nothing.

How it fits with the rest of Image Trace

Guide areas and colour rules sit on top of the main Image Trace panel, so start there. Set the palette, levels and overall detail for the image as a whole, and look at the live result. Only then add areas where the result is wrong. Because the panel shows the trace live and follows changes, you can draw an area and see its effect without committing anything.

The split and side by side views are useful here. Put the source next to the result and it is easy to see where detail has been lost or where the tracer has invented noise, and those are the places that need an area.

Where traces go wrong

Drawing areas before the main settings are close is the usual one. You end up fighting the global settings region by region when a single change to the palette or levels would have fixed most of it.

Another is asking for detail everywhere. Keep detail across the whole image is just a higher detail setting with more steps. Use it where a viewer's eye will land and let the rest simplify, and the traced file stays light and easy to edit.

Finally, remember that Leave out is a decision about the result, not the image. The placed picture is untouched, so if you change your mind later you can remove the area and trace again.