Your first cut file

One job is one artwork file in and one production PDF out. Nothing in between needs Illustrator, and nothing in the file is decided by anything other than the numbers you can see on the screen.

1. Upload the artwork

PDF, PNG, JPEG, WebP or TIFF, up to 200 MB and under 60 megapixels. Only the first page of a multi-page TIFF is traced. AI, EPS and PSD have to be exported first — the tracer reads a raster and its transparency, not a design document.

A PDF with real transparency is the best source there is, because the silhouette is already decided in the file rather than guessed at from the background. A PNG with a genuine alpha channel is just as exact. File requirements has the rest of it.

2. Give it a finished size

If the filename carries a size, it is read from there and the field fills itself in. LEAF_30CM.png is 30 cm high. So is LEAF_30h.png. SIGN_240_width.png is 240 cm wide — width needs the word, because height is the default.

With no size in the name you type one: Height or Width, in centimetres. The other dimension falls out of the aspect ratio — you never give both. Name files like NAME_30CM next time and the field fills itself.

3. Read what it says before you trace

As soon as there is a file and a size, the screen works out the effective resolution: pixels on the driven edge, divided by how big it prints. It says so before anything is traced, because a job that turns out to be 26 dpi is a bad conversation to have after it has been quoted.

That figure is deliberately an upper bound. It measures the whole canvas; the tracer measures the artwork inside it, which is usually smaller, so the traced number comes in at or below this one.

4. Trace it

Tracing goes into a queue rather than running while you wait — most jobs finish in five to forty seconds. The stages are named as they run: tracing the artwork edge, then adding the cut layer, then the mirror and the weeding box if the job asked for them.

What comes back is the artwork with the cut path drawn over it, the figures to check, and four sliders. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, and look at the inside corners — that is where a cutline usually goes wrong.

5. Check the four numbers

Under them is the layer line, which should read CutContour, Layer 1 — the cut above the artwork, as siblings. Reading the preflight report takes all of it slowly.

6. Download, and hand it on

The file saves as NAME_Hh_Wb.pdf, where H and W are the page in centimetres — height first. Send it to your RIP with the cutter selected. Registration marks are added there, not in this file.

Finished jobs are kept for seven days under Recent, so the same file can be downloaded again without re-uploading it. If the client should see the cut line before it is printed, the job can also issue a proof link.

If it did not trace

• The whole page came out as a rectangle. The file has an alpha channel that is uniformly opaque, so every pixel reads as artwork. Strip the alpha and let the background threshold do the work instead.
• The cutline chased spatter or a glow. Raise Alpha cut to shed the translucent pixels, and Minimum area to drop detached specks.
• The finished height is much bigger than expected. Something outside the design is inside the silhouette — usually a spec label printed under the artwork. Cut off the bottom discards it before tracing.
• The job never left Queued. Nothing about the file causes that. Write to us with the job and we will look at it from our end.