Messing around on a Saturday afternoon

[Daryl185]

ran it throught Serif Photo Plus got this far in 20 30 min would be a sweet portrait indeed

Attachment 3234

[CanadianScroller]

One of the problems relying on just software is the floaters situation.
Also the original is a low contrast image. When you bump up the contrast the resuts are not too favorable. Sometimes the wrong sections come through.

Part of the charm of the original picture is its softness. That is hard to achieve when converting it to strictly B/W

I traced over the original with a stylus you could easily do the same thing with a felt pen on tracing paper.
I sometimes think we rely too much on computers when we do these things.
I know anyone can trace. So as long as we folow some basic rules of having bridges to connect floaters, And maintaing smooth lines we can still make a cutable pattern without the use of a computer.

I think the more we make our own patterns the better we will get at understanding them. If you have made the pattern yourself you know what will be the best way to cut it.