An important concept of the Auto-trace tool is the ‘profile’. A profile consists of information that defines what the line or edge ‘looks’ like. A profile is defined for each type of pattern that you digitize. You set up an Auto-trace Profile on a proto-typical pattern, and then reuse this Profile for future tracing that is similar. This two-stage process provides for maximum efficiency in production.
An Auto-trace Profile is a combination of information about the nature of the edge or line being digitized (e.g. how strong is it), and parameters that define how tracing is done (e.g. the fitting tolerance, or how many lines to create). You typically create a new Profile for different materials, background and line strengths.
You create a new Auto-trace Profile when you first start digitizing and then you typically create new Profiles for edges when the material or background changes, or new Profiles for lines when the material changes a lot, or the line strength changes.
There are several scenarios where you would have different profiles for:
• changes in materials (e.g. mylar vs brown paper)
• lines, different pen colors, darkness, or thickness
• edges, changes in backgrounds (wood table vs concrete floor)
• significant lighting changes (if the light on your floor or table changes significantly you might find you need different profiles)
• different fitting and gap filling tolerances
• different number of total lines (esp. for Edge Profiles)
Line Profiles tend to be a bit more robust to changes in lightness, lighting, color, etc. than Edge Profiles. Hence if you trace edges on several different materials you may find you have more Edge Profiles.