VectorMagic Project Ending

[Jigga]

I would gather that a great number of the folks here that talk about Illustrator did not purchase the software. Some of us are lucky enough to have it through work, but some people have acquired it by other means. Not trying to throw anyone under the bus or anything.

[Nick 1733]

I would gather that a great number of the folks here that talk about Illustrator did not purchase the software. Some of us are lucky enough to have it through work, but some people have acquired it by other means. Not trying to throw anyone under the bus or anything.

It's called a student discount, then upgrading. At least that's what I did.

[rmered]

I would gather that a great number of the folks here that talk about Illustrator did not purchase the software. Some of us are lucky enough to have it through work, but some people have acquired it by other means. Not trying to throw anyone under the bus or anything.

It's called a student discount, then upgrading. At least that's what I did.

I think, perhaps, Greg is alluding to people who know some guys, who know some guys, who can get it even cheaper than student discount. For next to nothing. On an unprinted CD.

[Nick 1733]

I would gather that a great number of the folks here that talk about Illustrator did not purchase the software. Some of us are lucky enough to have it through work, but some people have acquired it by other means. Not trying to throw anyone under the bus or anything.

It's called a student discount, then upgrading. At least that's what I did.

I think, perhaps, Greg is alluding to people who know some guys, who know some guys, who can get it even cheaper than student discount. For next to nothing. On an unprinted CD.

Actually, in the world of the internets, I do believe that the CD and knowing a guy isn't required.

[Jigga]

Nick, that's still purchasing. Don't act like you don't know what I mean. Mero knows what I'm talking about.

Anywho...peep diz:

Vector Magic transitioning away from Stanford

about 5 hours ago

Posted by Jacob

The Vector Magic research project is coming to an end. While a precise end-date is not yet set, the computer resources so graciously provided by Stanford will need to be reallocated to other research projects within the next few weeks.

Since the user response to Vector Magic has been so great, we will continue the service outside of Stanford.

We want to thank everyone who has been using the service during its tenure at Stanford - your use and support is what has kept this project going for as long as it has.

We hope that the service is useful to you and that you will continue to use it as we transition to a new hosting environment.

Best,

James and Jacob

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/blog/show/25

[Nick 1733]

Nick, that's still purchasing. Don't act like you don't know what I mean. Mero knows what I'm talking about.

Anywho...peep diz:

Vector Magic transitioning away from Stanford

about 5 hours ago

Posted by Jacob

The Vector Magic research project is coming to an end. While a precise end-date is not yet set, the computer resources so graciously provided by Stanford will need to be reallocated to other research projects within the next few weeks.

Since the user response to Vector Magic has been so great, we will continue the service outside of Stanford.

We want to thank everyone who has been using the service during its tenure at Stanford - your use and support is what has kept this project going for as long as it has.

We hope that the service is useful to you and that you will continue to use it as we transition to a new hosting environment.

Best,

James and Jacob

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/blog/show/25

I do believe I covered that in my previous post.... Referring to wonderful things such as torrents, Limewire, Frostwire, Ares and more.

[Jigga]

Which are all very, very bad.

Kids, never try these. They will put all kinds of malicious viruses, trojans, and worms on your computers. Plus, you will go blind and your hands will catch fire.

[rmered]

When this finally does become a product to be paid for in stores, instead of waiting until someone loads it onto a place where you can download it through any of those sites, I think a better idea would be to go into the store selling it and just take the box.

That way you get to have the manuals and assorted other paperwork that usually comes with the software.

Sure, people might question you about it, especially over-officious pimple-faced EB employees, but hey, you were going to download it anyway, and this way the manufacturers will actually know who is stealing their software, and how many versions there are in consumer-land.

So you're actually doing them a favour.

[ShinyHubCaps]

Back to raster it is, then.

Or, you could just learn illustrator and redraw it yourself.

The thing is, if the vector to be produced is complex, you're still putting in a lot of time to fix it. In many cases, you might as well redraw the image. I see this as an improvement to the Live Trace feature of Illustrator. As a stand alone program, I don't think even most professionals will use this as often as many think.

It's not the cheapest thing.

If he is already using vector files, he already has the software. If you're referring to tutorials, there are plenty available online.

I vectorized files with VM for scaling, then exported only the image for raster edits. I do have a limited version of Flash that can accept .svg I think, but that's it. I had a trial of Illustrator, and would gladly go back to it if I had hundreds of dollars. Other than that, no, I do not already have the software.

I'd like to someday, though, but again, I'm just a hobbyist.

[Epiphanic]

Might I suggest Inkscape for fellow hobbyists? I believe I first heard about it on these boards and I find it to be very good for my needs. It's a free open source vector program so there isn't any need to plop down hundreds of dollars for Illustrator. I'm sure Illustrator is more polished and has more features, but if your looking for a simple program for vector editing, Inkscape should get the job done.

[patsox]

You now have to pay for vector formats and to get a .PNG without a watermark.

[Jigga]

Wow. Just wow. This sucks.

"While many aspects of Vector Magic are free - you can upload, vectorize, and preview images without any commitment - you need to exchange 1 token for the vector results for which you wish to enable downloading."

"When signing up you get 2 free tokens. Sign up before March 5th to get 2 additional free tokens (for a total of 4 free tokens). Token prices range from $1.56 to $2.63 per token (that is 25% off the regular price) depending on the number of tokens purchased."

I'm going to sign up or whatever, just for the 4 free tokens, but after that, Vector Magic. If it costs roughly 2-3 bucks per result, you can bet your sweet bippy that the desktop application isn't going to be cheap.

[LEWJ]

Arrrrrgh!

I've been using vector magic for various things, most notably for my Argyle Sigs.

Now that you have to pay I can't put them through vector magic unless I want the nice little watermark there.

Rawr.

And I can't buy it, being the 15 year old that I am.

[rmered]

Wow. Just wow. This sucks.

"While many aspects of Vector Magic are free - you can upload, vectorize, and preview images without any commitment - you need to exchange 1 token for the vector results for which you wish to enable downloading."

"When signing up you get 2 free tokens. Sign up before March 5th to get 2 additional free tokens (for a total of 4 free tokens). Token prices range from $1.56 to $2.63 per token (that is 25% off the regular price) depending on the number of tokens purchased."

I'm going to sign up or whatever, just for the 4 free tokens, but after that, Vector Magic. If it costs roughly 2-3 bucks per result, you can bet your sweet bippy that the desktop application isn't going to be cheap.

I can't imagine they've done any market research to see what the market will bear on their pricing structure.

Let's face it, does anyone here remember getting an email or a questionaire to fill out? Apart from the few days before they went live.

If people pay what they're asking, good luck to them, but I thought of Vector Magic as being a hobbyist's dream, and a professional's nightmare, so they might pick up a few bucks here and there, but the real money won't come until they sell the whole thing to Adobe.

I would have thought a far more strategic thing to do would be to give away the service, get everyone absolutely hooked on it, then sell it to Adobe.

OK, they need some investors for that, but they're in Silcone Valley for goodness sake, you'd think they could find a decent sized server and a willing owner of same. For a small percentage maybe?

Or payback at an interest rate.

It seems like they're being penny wise and dollar foolish trying to chimp a few bucks out of the Neville Nobodys when they could be making damn sure Adobe have got their full attention by getting a bigger share of the market.

And for a logical comparison, look at singingfish. Well, you can't they're gone now.

However, it was a search engine for mp3 files. And it was brilliant, and it was free.

The longer it was free, and the better it was, the better it looked to AOL, who bought it.

[quantum]

Adobe will buy it just to remove the competition in the market and kill development. It may be a hobbyist's dream, but the program isn't a threat to professionals. It is just not good enough, at least not enough to run an image through and not have to put additional time into fixing it. Professionals are either creating something original or are supplied the source art by the customer. If the source art is lost or unavailable, redrawing the art from a sample is more likely to happen (depending on source image complexity).

A tool like this is more of a threat to entertainment figures and sports teams, since this would allow counterfeiting hacks to get close enough in reproducing art to sell inferior crap.

[NDwas]

This absolutely blows. At least it was fun while it lasted.

[Jigga]

Interesting new VectorMagic development...

Vector Magic Unlimited released!

Apr 22 2008, 04:34 PM

Posted by James and Jacob

Vector Magic Unlimited is now available ? it?s a new subscription plan featuring unlimited downloads, giving you full tracing freedom without having to pick and choose which results to download.

Sign up now to lock in a price of only $4.95 per month: http://vectormagic.com/unlimited

There are no signup or termination fees and you can cancel at any time. If you have already purchased tokens, no problem: any remaining tokens in your account are fully creditable towards a subscription.

At roughly the price of a meal at the local fast food restaurant, this plan is a great deal for anyone who would like to trace as few as 2 images or more per month.

We?re very excited to be offering this new worry-free plan and hope that you will find it a great option.

Best,

James and Jacob

P.S. The desktop application is still in the works. It?s just taking a bit longer than we had hoped, so we wanted to give you a better deal with the online service in the meantime.

So now we're talking about $60 per year for this service. I think this means that the desktop version will be 100-120 bucks, at least. Still too rich for my blood, but oh well. Either is certainly better than that garbage token system.

[Mac the Knife]

So now we're talking about $60 per year for this service. I think this means that the desktop version will be 100-120 bucks, at least. Still too rich for my blood, but oh well. Either is certainly better than that garbage token system.

I don't mind $60/year. I blow that much in a month on cigs, so $60/year to be able to do something I haven't yet figured out how to do on my own yet isn't bad. I think they realized the error of the token system (i.e., no one was buying them) and changed their business model in hopes of getting back some of the people they'd lost after the freebie period. It probably won't work to the extent that they'd hoped, but it will bring a few folks (like me) back into the fold - eventually.

[Jigga]

As of July 15, Vector Magic is available as a stand-alone desktop application. It's $295, or you can subscribe to the online version for $7.95/month.

[SG30]

What I do if I'm just cleaning up a logo or something, put it into a program, put the image on a larger canvas, and then I put it into vector magic and download the .PNG and then crop off the wordmark. and cut out the logo or whatever. Its a little bit more time consuming but it doesn't cost anything.