[Clipart] More discussion about Delineate/Autotrace images

[Nathan Eady]

A while ago someone pointed out some submissions that were created with
delineate and autotrace, and was asking about the style of the images
and the suitability of the technique.

So I downloaded delineate and autotrace and got to messing around with
them and, working from a photograph I took a few weeks ago, managed to
create something that could be considered useful clipart, if a little
on the complex side.

The original from the camera:
http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/img/gpl-2004-landscaping-Aug-30.jpg

The lighting on that leaves something to be desired (I'm not a real
photographer, and our digital camera is a bit old, and the time of
day I'm usually in the sun is in the wrong place), and the vehicle
in the foreground is in a mildly annoying spot (though at least it's
not right in front of the building).  Also there's that electrical
wire:  every shot I take of the library, my coworkers ask me if I
can get rid of that wire.  I tell them I'm a network administrator,
not a graphics artist, but to them it's all the same ("computer guy").

So I took the image and processed it a little with the Gimp:
http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/img/gpl-front-2004-Aug-30-008-cropped-and-lightened.png

I cranked up the levels a bit, which helps with the lighting but
creates its own problem:  now some parts look unnatural, almost
fuzzy or fakey, perhaps because of the loss of color range inherent
in such transformations.  A real graphics artist could probably do
a bit better, but there are limits.

So rather than try to retouch it further as photorealistic, as
I have done with other shots of the library in the past, this
time I tried vectorizing it with Delineate/Autotrace:
http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/img/gpl-front-2004-Aug-30-008-cropped-and-lightened.svg

Now it looks like an abstract or impressionistic image, and in addition
will be in some ways easier to edit -- which is what I did next, using
Inkscape:
http://openclipart.org/incoming/carnegie_library_building_01.svg

I got rid of the unnecessary background matter, plus the vehicle in
the foreground (and fudged the bush back into place, which I never
could have done convincingly on the photo version), and softened up
the places where the white background shows through by putting in
a small handful of more-appropriately-colored background polygons.
Oh, and I got rid of that yellow caution sawhorse by the flowerbed.

So now it pretty much just looks like a nice public building, very
typical for a library, but without all the photorealistic detail.
I'm especially pleased with how nicely the dome came out.

Ideally I'd like to remove the foreground foliage on the left, but
now we're back to my not being a graphics artist.  Still, this is
in some ways much nicer than what we had before.  If you compare
it back to the original photograph, there's quite a difference.

I also submitted it (the final version only, not the others on
the galion.lib.oh.us server; those are just there for illustration
purposes for this discussion) to kick off the "buildings" (other
than houses) category.

Other thoughts?