Alright in this tutorial I'm going to show you how you can set yourself up for a Print and Cut with Make the Cut. So we're going to go over the basics from Getting an image -Tracing and Printing all in MTC software. For this tutorial to work we're going to assume that you have a machine that is either laser calibrated so we can do manual 3 point registration or your machine has an optic sensor that detects the registration marks in order to conduct print and cuts. For this demo we're going to be using the BlackCat cougar and the process on setting MTC up until the point where we are going to cut this out will be the same.

The process where we can take an image and vectorize it and bring it into MTC called a pixel trace. Now you can conduct a pixel trace with basically any image or graphic that you find on the internet however some images will work better than others. Better the quality the better the trace. I'm going to be using our ScrappyDew image of our ScrappyDew Library called Konichi Wa Dolls. I'd actually like you to follow along in this tutorial as it will serve as good practice excise, and you'll feel more at ease when you try this with a different image. So with that said I'm making this a free download and instructions will be down in the description box.

So we have our image that we would like to cut and now it's time to trace this image in Make the Cut. The pixel trace button is located here at the top. Now if you don't see this on your Make the Cut try going to the view menu and select the Import Toolbar.

Once we select the pixel trace button a new window will appear. This is where we will navigate to our file that I we want to trace. In this example we're going to be using the paper dolls. MTC has the nice preview window on the side and these are the dolls that I want to cut out so I will click the open button.

A pixel trace window appears and this is where we are going to start tweaking the trace. Because we're doing a print and cut from an image we're tracing, we basically need the outline shape of the figure better known as a Blackout. So lets check the blackout option. While we're down here in the import settings l will check texturize path. That basically will import the pattern that you see underneath here. You can see that when we hit the apply changes button.

As you can see we need to tweak the threshold as it stands now at 127. 127 is a happy medium it's the middle number between 1 and 255. I think of it as the closer you get to 255 the more colors you're willing to accept in the trace. We don't want a detail trace we want the big overall picture.

Typically you'll want to increase/decrease by 10 or 20 and hit the apply changes button to see if it is the desired result. However I know from experience that I want the threshold to be set to 200 and hit the apply changes.


Look at the #1 Circle- Something else that I wanted to point out here is the resample image. Now I'm going to zoom in here on this preview and show you want a higher sample rate can do. Right now we have it set to 1. Lets bring it up to 4. Prior to hitting the apply button I want to bring to your attention how the 1st sample doesn't quite get it around the corners and we're wanting some crisp edges. So let's hit apply and check out those edges. Because we increased the sample number it may take longer for the trace but the results will be worth the wait.

Much tighter result but look at the increase in nodes! As you can see now the trace goes completely around the objects and I think we're ready to import.
Once you hit the import button a menu will appear and we are done with our tracing season and I will select NO

Now as a side note on texture tracing. You can move and split your textured trace… If you're wanting to resize you can do that too you will just need to hold the shift button down while resizing with the handles in the corner not the ones on the side. With that said you can NOT rotate. If you're wanting rotation you will have to use a graphic editor in order to accomplish this and you will have to retrace. You can't expect MTC to do everything!

So the next thing we need to do is prep our MTC program for printing. So if you go to file print options your print options will appear. There's a couple of settings we need to set up in here prior to printing. Lets click the show paper on mat, print registration marks, I'll keep it as show registration marks on the mat. Here's where it will differ for you if you have an optic sensor like on the silhouettes as they are specific for those machines like the SD or the Cameo. Since we're going to use the laser and non optic sensor I'm going to stick with the Make the Cut registration Marks. That 's all we need in this menu and I'm going to select the OK button.

Ok so lets take a look at what happened here. There's a new dashed border on our paper that represents the paper that we are using 8.5 by 11. So as long as we have our images with in that dashed box we know that it will print just fine.

Next we're just going to print like we're in Microsoft word go to the file menu and go to print. Select your printer and you should be good to go. Notice on your printed paper it looks exactly like your screen to include the registration marks

Ok so that concludes Part 1 of this tutorial where we took an image into MTC conducted a trace and printed our design on the paper. Because the next step is cutter specific we will make that the Part 2 of this topic.