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Someone made me a logo years ago that I want to edit myself. They were send as PNG files. Parts of the logo and monogram are very very thin and delicate, I want to edit this slightly. When I image trace (rasterize?) it completely changes the nuanced look of the design. How can I do this properly?

Additional notes: I presume it was saved at 72dpi as when sent it off to get printed on business cards, it looked more pixelated when slightly enlarged. Wondering if this can be fixed as well.

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    It sounds as if you need a professional to recreate your logo in vector form, which should have been done initially.
    – Scott
    Commented Dec 15, 2020 at 0:00

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If you have a PNG which has too few pixels (note that ppi settings are irrelevant), then you probably can't do anything that will make it better. Enlarging a low resolution PNG will always make it look worse quality. Probably not what you want to hear. For this reason, raster images are generally not used for logos by graphic designers. You should ask the person who created the logo if they have it available in a vector format, such as SVG, AI or EPS.

If you can't get the vector file, then depending on how many pixels the PNG has, you may be able to do something to fix it. There are a couple of possibilities.

  • You could Auto Trace the image using vector software such as Inkscape (which is free) or Adobe Illustrator
  • You could Auto Trace the image using vector software, and then manually edit the curves and anchors to improve the trace.
  • You could just redraw the image manually in vector software, using the Pen Tool (Bézier tool) to trace over the top of the raster image. This option requires quite a bit of skill, and probably isn't practical if you are a novice.

Here's an example of a raster image of a monogram. I show what's possible with Auto Tracing in Inkscape (using Path > Trace Bitmap), and manual redrawing. As you can see, Auto tracing sometimes fills in areas of fine detail, but this might be good enough for your requirements.

enter image description hereClick on image to enlarge

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  • This is very helpful- thank you so much for your detailed reply! Looking into all this today
    – jsanchez
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 17:10

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