tS Digital Decorating Figure 4. These are examples of different designs that easily can be used when working with cut vinyl. Figure 3. To convert a block font into a stencil using CorelDRAW, apply overlapping rectangles to the right areas, trim the design and leave the insides of each attached so they can be pulled out as one big piece in a single step. don't dramatically and adversely affect the legibility or visual appeal of the original. Adjusting a design's line widths is helpful for avoiding issues with thin pieces of vinyl that may become distorted, break off of the garment easily or not stay attached to the release sheet long enough to be heat pressed. The main thing to remember is that the production file cannot use the outline style commands for line widths without converting it to a visual object size. This means a thicker line needs to read in the software as a thicker outside cut line around the image, and not just a thicker line in the software for display. In software such as CorelDRAW, the "Convert Outlines to Objects" command is useful for defining the actual line that the cutter will follow. Simplifying a complex image often involves the same process, followed by creating a posterized effect of the graphic. This means converting all of the shadow areas in the design to solid shapes while all of the highlight areas stay open. A popular conversion of this commonly is used in sport ball templates for T-shirt graphics. These are used as symbols to represent the sports and are wildly popular as accents to logos and team graphics. They also happen to be great heat-press vinyl design solutions due to minimal or no weeding necessary and simple edge qualities (see Figure 4). PROFITS THROUGH SAVINGS Use Info*Action #25 at impressionsmag.com/infoaction 62 Impressions | October/November 2015 Some of the cutter software will allow you to pack designs together so that you can cut them in rows to use the most possible vinyl surface. This way, you don't waste big vinyl pieces from small jobs that don't use the negative space around them well. Once you begin to do more vinyl, you will become more creative in your ability to stagger different designs to save as impressionsmag.comhttp://www.softwareforscreenprinters.com http://www.softwareforscreenprinters.com http://www.impressionsmag.com/infoaction http://www.impressionsmag.com