Thanks guys.

This is all very odd ! I was on this persons machine doing this and whatever we tried it did not work out at all. Back here on my machine I have installed an old version I had lying around from a previous sample try of it (0.45) and using the image provided and the seeing what looks like the same menu item and dialog panel of options whatever I try to do I cant for the life of me *not* get it to work just fine.



The other day all the edges were all ragged with stray vectors & spikey bits all along the edges. Now they are all perfect almost with every option I try. I was using the linux version so had the free Xara to try too. Now I am on my usual WinXP so I wont be able to confirm the Xara again but I think this comes down to 'user error' that is 'I must have been a plonker' for some reason. I cant explain what went wrong but we tried loads of options to try to make it work.

I'm not very familiar with inkscape so just to check I am using the right params. I load in the image by dragging it in. Select it so that it has arrows on the corners, use Path, Trace Bitmap and select Colors and set the Scans to 3. Then when I ok it, I drag the vector image out of the way and delete the bitmap.

I can see what you mean Rob that you have to cut the red with the black to get just red as it starts by being the union of the two colors. No big deal there.

Although with the original attempt we used image magick to drop to three colors like I did to post the image. The image I posted was resampled so I thought it would fit nice on the guild thumbnail. I wonder if the different size made a difference. Perhaps the original one was too small. I dunno !

Ahh well, it seems that these apps can do a great job if you don't let people like me near them This is all very good news cos I think I might be using this feature a lot more from now on.