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#5 Illustrator Needing Help
Hello, as a Designer & Illustrator I have loved using Potrace for several years on Windows. How you have managed to build something that vectorizes my drawings better than Illustrator is beyond me. What else is beyond me, is installing Potrace to my new Mac. I've attempted to read the instructions many times through and googled as much as I could but at a certain point, the language is just beyond my non-developer understanding. It might be simple to some, but I am an artist, I don't know this language.
I'm hoping someone can tell me step-by-step instructions of how to install the software to my Mac. I've downloaded the latest version and I can work my way around Terminal if someone tells me the steps but I just can't find them anywhere.
Please help, my drawings are suffering through Illustrator's Image Trace!
-Thank you
Hi, thanks for writing and sorry for the delay in replying. I assume you've downloaded the file potrace-1.16.mac-x86_64.tar.gz, which is an archive containing a bunch of other files. Perhaps you are able to open this archive by double-clicking on it. Otherwise, you might try something like the following in a Terminal:
cd ~/Downloads
tar -zxf potrace-1.16.mac-x86_64.tar.gz
cd potrace-1.16.mac-x86_64/
sudo bash
cp potrace mkbitmap /usr/bin
I don't have a Mac right now to try it on, so please let me know if you get any errors. For example, I'm not sure if sudo works on a Mac. Its purpose is to give you administrator privileges. If sudo bash doesn't work, you can also try something like
su -
cd ~your_username/Downloads/
cd potrace-1.16.mac-x86_64/
cd potrace-1.16.mac-x86_64/
Let me know if you have trouble. Thanks, -- Peter
Hey Peter,
I tried both of these out and it led to a Password needing to be entered but it wouldn't let me type anything. I'm attaching a screen shot.
I tried deleting what I had and re-downloading and tried again and got the second screen shot attached. I tried the su - thing but it went back to asking for a password and not letting my type.
Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Thank you for your attention to this!
When entering a password, it is normal for the password characters not to be shown on the screen. This is to prevent a person looking over your shoulders from seeing the password. You have to enter the password and press enter.
Ok I tried that out and I kept getting this message:
The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run
chsh -s /bin/zsh.For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.
bash-3.2# **
That message is not related to Potrace. Apple is asking you to upgrade some software. You should ignore it, or not, but it has nothing to do with Potrace. In particular, it is not an error message. It is an informational message from Apple.
So I'm not sure what to do then.
Nevermind. I think I figured it out!
Will update when it is finished downloading/installing. Thank you for your time and attention.
I was able to install succesfully but I'm not sure how to run it or use it now.
Sorry I'm so confused by this. On Windows I used to use the command prompt to convert a file from svg to eps but not sure how to get there now.
If you've successfully installed Potrace, you should be able to open up a Terminal (that's what the command prompt is called on a Mac) and type "potrace -v" in it. It should output the version number and some information about Potrace. Then you can use Potrace in exactly the same way as you did on Windows.
Hey Peter,
I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm not sure what to type in Terminal before 'potrace-v' or where to place the 'potrace-1.16' folder once its downloaded and unzipped.
OK, please watch this video: http://potrace.sourceforge.net/video/potrace-mac-install.mp4
If that still doesn't work, I recommend buying Image Vectorizer http://image-vectorizer.com/ . It's what people use on Macs.
Yes! That finally worked. Just needed to see the steps. Thank you so much for sending that.
I wanted to show you a drawing I'm working on and the differences of the renders. As a designer who works on brands, this ensures my original ink drawings aren't compromised when vectorized. So thanks again!
Great! I'm glad it worked out.