Show HN: Tool that turns your images into plotter-like line drawings (opens in new tab)

That's really neat! Is the source of the path generator available anywhere?

Oh that is a beautifully simple trick, I love it!

That's really cool!

But I thought of that as a feature: it's great to make cursed images!

I run brave and did not experience this issue.

Why does this feature exist?

I thought it was just taking a while lol

It's just a list of X, Y coordinates...

An untested python one-liner:

    '\n'.join(["G0 X"+x+" Y"+y for x,y in coords])

Grab the code for homing and stuff from the start of another gcode file that works.

There are at least 2 of us :-)

Author here, that sounds soo cool! If you decide to try please let me know if you need any support!

WSJ have a site for this at https://aiportrait.wsj.com/.

Ditherit.com might do a decent rough approximation

Many years ago I wrote a program to convert images into Python scripts containing "turtle" commands. It's mostly a "cheat" based on "penup" and "GOTO(x, y)", but it can certainly be extended with smarter routing and optimisation algorithms: http://chriswarbo.net/projects/turtleview

Also, you can try reducing the "contrast" and "definition" settings. I think in this case the hoodie is taking a lot of the lines, I'll take a look, thanks!

Left image looks... interesting. I wonder whether this kind of artwork style has a name.

Can you try again with "Single Line" on?

You would probably have better luck with SVG -> DXF, then open in AutoCad and "plot to file"[1].

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/400...

Inkscape does it. Change the text to paths (Path -> Object to Path)

It can certainly be a Minimum Description Length (MDL), which is a more general measure based on an arbitrary language (like "lines on a canvas").

Kolmogorov Complexity is the MDL when the language is Turing-complete; in that case I think the number of lines would be less interesting than the patterns in their arrangement. For example, we can arrange millions of lines in a spiral with very low Kolmogorov Complexity; whilst a handful of "random" lines could have a much higher complexity (since, without a pattern, we have to specify them all individually).

I mentioned it in a sibling, but I've written a very simple Python script which can be used as a test-bed for finding the Kolmogorov complexity of plotter-based images (using turtle graphics) http://chriswarbo.net/projects/turtleview

I bought an Ioline Smart Trac 24 in. x 16 ft. in ~1998 and still works perfectly.

Here's a video of my plotter with a Sharpie:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IbZ4IPUEkU28_KBybtFo...

The best pens are the cheap ballpoint ones, unless you already have rapidographers. I don't like using Sharpies because they fade out in the middle of the drawing and you have to plot at low speed.

For example, I ballpoint outlined the staircase piece (linked above) and then I manually filled it in with a Sharpie.

I snagged an HP7475a off a local buy and sell site recently for $60. Came with a serial-to-plotter cable (which I only realized after splicing that cable, working out the wiring, and finding it was already the cable I needed :( )

Then I bought a cheap 3d printer and made a few of these, which fit the "fat" sharpies: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1261805

I need to adjust that print for "ultra fine" sharpies in order to do prints like what this website is producing though.

on older plotters:

there were many manufacturers. the ones that seem to be higher quality were HP and Roland. alps made a tiny one that was repackaged for commodore, atari, etc. and there were a plethora of other manufacturers (graphtec, houston instruments, and so on)

check ebay for "pen plotter" but beware that many are quite large and shipping will be expensive.

i currently have a HP DXL 7575a (a large roller plotter) and a Roland DXY-1150 (small flatbed). the roland was shipped but the hp i had to pick up locally. roland still has the manual on the site for the 1150, but it required a wacky power supply that took some effort to find. for HP stuff make sure it has RS232 and not HP-IB interfaces or whatever wacky stuff. also, different plotters used different languages. Roland's RDGL and HP's HPGL were easy enough to implement directly from the documentation...

many of them don't work because various belts have died. my HP fired right up.

one ongoing concern is that pens are no longer made so you have to fight over scraps on ebay.

modern plotters:

get an axidraw. it is nice and lets you use standard pens.

In the commercial space, I think "wide format printers" have totally replaced plotters at this point. They're basically big ink jet printers, though usually a bit more sophisticated (often 6 or more inks, including variants like "matte black" and "photo black" and "gray"). The quality is very impressive, you can literally print posters or frameable photos on it if you have the right paper.

"XY plotters" are still around but seem to be very niche (emulating hand writing) or DIY/hobby stuff.

I remember being in an engineering office of some sort as a kid, fascinated by watching the multi-pen plotter [1] drawing some kind of technical drawing. It had a pen carousel to change colors, and a little robot gripper to hold it. Finding information on these (from the 2 minutes of searching I did) seems quite hard, so it seems like they probably went out of fashion before the internet was a thing.

[1] https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/XY+plotter

Hang around the industrial auction sites like Bidspotter. I just scored a 1980s-era Draftmaster II for $60 and it came with a pile of pens.

Thanks! Author here, are you testing with the HEIC files from your computers? To me it seems that iOS does not have issues with HEIC but probably it is doing some conversion before.