outline from a picture?

I saw a picture of an outline that i liked and was wondering if there is a way to scale it up to about 6’8". Perhaps in adobe illustrator or something like that.

Hey, Take the picture you like and open it in adobe photoshop. Crop the picture so that the nose, tail, and rail edges are exactly on the border of the image. Then go to Image Size and change the height of the picture (assuming the board is vertical) to however many inches you want the actual template to be. Make sure the constrain proportions box is checked. If the width is identical to the width you want your template to be, then don’t change anything and exit the menu and save your picture as a tiff file. If the width is not the same as you want, then you can uncheck the constrain proportion box and chage the width and height to the dimensions you want. Save you picture. Open adobe illustrator and start a new file. Make the dimensions of the new file around 40 x 100 inches (100 inches being the height…this is only for a shortboard. You will need about 170 inches for a longboard). The go to File–> document setup–> and click on tile full pages. Press OK. Once back to your page you will notice a grid. Go to File…Place… and select your image file that you made in photoshop. You will see your board spread out over 10-12 pages. Align it on the grid so that it is evenly spread out. Go to Object–> Slice…and then click on Clip to Artboard. After this you can print it. Once all of the pages have been printed, you can line then up like a puzzle on the floor and tape then together. Cut out along your imgage rails and walah…you have a template of your desired board. Make sure the picture you are using is a perfectly straight on shot otherwise the board will not be simmetrical. What I have done in the past is crop the board in half so that only half of the board is printed out on the pages. This way, you can trace one side on the blank and then flip it over and do the other side. This way it will be simmetrical as possible. Hope this helps. -Ben

A friend of mine made full size paper templates for me that were perfect.He scanned some pics from a magazine and somehow had them printed full size at a blueprint shop.Cost about 5 bucks.I don’t know the technical details. R.B.

Photoshop will work fine, but if you have Illustrator, and think you might do a couple of outlines, it’s probably worth your time to learn how to finess Illustrator. The Pen tools (the heart of Illustrator) are much better than in Photoshop. Just ‘Place’ your picture in illustrator - horizontally (don’t blow it up yet, use it small at good resolution). Pull down a ‘grid line’ from the ruler and lay it across the stringer. Use ‘rotate’ in small increments to get the board completely level. Use the pen tool to place a point on the stringer at the tail, one at the hip, one at the widepoint, and one at the nose. (This is how I do a shortboard, sometimes I don’t use the hip point – a longboard is a little different). Use the ‘convert point’ tool – looks like a “>”, to pull the control lines off each point (these control the curve at the point). Then use the white arrow to manipulate your half outline until you have something you like. Copy the entire curve, and ‘reflect’ it to get the other half of the outline… place both halves together. Then enlarge it to the size you want and print… Voila. I’ll usually check the width on both sides of the stringer. If they don’t match, it means the the photo wasn’t taken completely perpindicular.

How does the rocker affect the outline of the picture and therefore the outline of the new board? is this significant?

I did some rough tests on some shortboards with a fair amount of nose rocker when I thought of the same thing… I also drew some lines on a board and took some pictures then popped them into illustrator. The differences were nominal. In the case of most modern nose designs its going to be unsignificant. Nose flip affects it a bit more and you might want to give yourself a little room if that’s the case. I just rounded all my measurements up for the nose, seems to work fine. The outline should only be used as a guide anyway. Leave the final shaping to your trusty eyes… if you like the results put your template back on the board and tune it up to your shape… transfer to masonite and hang it on the wall.

i “swiped” some good templates using ACAD (a computer drafting program). the benefit was being able to scale the drawing to the correct length, then find the width dimensions. this really helps keeping the outline true to the original. hope whatever you use works.

This can be done in Illustrator… the Navigator will tell you the exact width (length) of your shape, in what ever units the ruler is set to. Take the length you desire, divide by the current length, and you have for multiplication factor. I have no doubts that AutoCAD can do it… just may be a little overkill (ok maybe that’s unfair. I just have bad memories of working with r.13 and r.14… I know the new ones are better). Though the pen tool in AI does make it easy to get smooth flowing curves.

okay the learning curve for photoshop and illustrator is rather steep, so many damn tools its hard to know what to do! Guess I gotta keep trying

I realize most of this conversation is over with but I just read the string and want to point out that going technical isn’t going to somehow make your efforts with outlines any easier if you’re trying to learn how to shape something that really works well in the water. I’ve used illustrator to trace jpegs I scanned from magazines or off web sites. I’ve also played alot with that sample DAT CAD software for surfboards and got full-sized copies printed from scaled down printouts of DAT images…anything to try to get a perfectly scaled and curving line, with no bumps or flat spots, printed out to glue onto a piece of hardboard to cut out the perfect template. In the end what I really ended up getting from it all was a little more knowledge about the intricacies of the shapes of famous boardmakers and that you can at best make a decent representation of a shape, but nothing truly accurate in a way that matters performance-wise. There are so many ways to vary a line, so whatever you try to trace electronically or manually, you need to know what you’re going for, to begin with. You don’t strive for certain outline “cuz it looks cool”–you go for an outline based on its function at each point on the board, and that comes from knowing almost exactly what you want out of a board and what kinds of waves that board’s gonna ride on (the comment about tracing both sides of an outline to know if a board is perpendicular to the camera speaks to what I’m saying-what’s the real use of a board image if the board isn’t perfectly flat to the camera? The outline is bent, so why even trace it if it isn’t true to the shape? It’ll need adjusting anyway, and you need to know what you’re going for in order to adjust it). Secondly, say you’ve somehow got the perfect template–no flat spots, no bumps. Now you’ve got to develop the skill to translate that perfect curve into three dimensions of foam, and include rails and a rail line that maximizes the foil of the board. No software program is going to get that micro-level of fine tuning; only knowing what your intentions are with the board and developing the physical skills will achieve that. That high-tech template is merely the first big step of many if you want a board that will do what you intend. What I’ve personally resorted to over the past couple years is actually hand drawing every single milimeter of outline on paper with a pencil and eraser. I start off with basic dimension points and connect them with curves, constantly redrawing and correcting the curves for hours until I get exactly what I want. This can get you thinking alot about the relationship between rocker, foil and shape (“why should I make this curve like this if the board rocker is such and such and the thickness is such and such? How’s that going to feel in the water?”). When you make the template you still have to sand it perfectly to get the perfect curves–no bumps or flat spots. If you can shape a real template well, then you’ll have an easier time knowing how to follow a line on a 3-D foam blank. If you can’t even sand a perfect curve on a flat piece of wood–especially if you don’t understand the goals of your curves–what do you expect out of the board? Finally, any future outlines and adjustments can be based on previously made templates, but you need a starter outline to draw from, and no fancy software shortcut is really going to give you the understanding you need about the intricacies of a board outline–that is, if you’re serious about knowing how to shape a board that truly meets your intentions and expectations. Now if you’re tyring to bootleg world-class shapers (which is a market out there)then who cares about accurate lines, right? In that case a basic representation of a killer shape is enough, because in that kind of situation the goal is money and screw the quality of the board’s performance. But if you’re serious about learning shapes, I recommend going old school and studying curves very closely–and in that sense, electronic tracing can help a little.

I agree totally with Wilbur.After getting the full size template I had to glue it to the template material (I used doorskin) and cut it out.I cut it on a band saw and trued it up with the Skil planer,block plane and finished with a sanding block.This is where you have to have the ability to work by hand.However there are ways to have templates cut by a computer operated cutting system used by the big wood shops if you can afford it. R.B.

I completely disagree with Wilbur… but it’s not that I think what he is saying is wrong, just out of context… You guys forget that there are a lot of beginners around here. I’m not talking about tracing an outline to go put on the shelves of every surf-shop in the city. I’m talking about having a basic reference – When You Have None. Us rookies don’t have a wall full of templates that we’ve perfected over the years, nor do we have the experience that can pull a great outline out of three measurements (nose, center, tail). I’ve only shaped seven boards, do you think I know which outline “is going to do exactly what I want it to do” (paraphrased)… of course not. To a certain extent we (rookies) do choose an outline “because it looks cool”, and actually more importantly, because Rusty did it, and a great starting point is to try to copy a proven design. Surfboard shaping is difficult enough, there’s no need to throw in design problems in the mix. Haven’t you ever watched a young child or pet… how do they learn to walk and talk? Mimic-ing. It’s absurd to expect them to learn without example. Nobody is claiming that you just trace your outline and it shapes itself. Of course you still have to deal with flat spots, bumps, and transitions. In fact if you go back and read my post, you’ll see something to this affect. I always leave my outlines with a little room to play, and I don’t think any boards have come out mirror images of the final design. In the end you, go with the flow. You talk about hand drawing every single millimeter on the blank… well, what do you think we’re doing??? Just because we’re using a computer to do it doesn’t make it wrong. I spend hours going over my curves too, but really that’s just an obsession that I enjoy doing… I’m sure if I went with the curve I had after 30 minutes it would work fine. The issue about working the outline in with the rocker: …you can’t expect most people who would resort to this level of design to have enough experience to not only understand rocker, but know how to improve on it. I think rocker is something that should be left in the hands of the blank designer until the shaper has a strong grasp on the simpler components (outline, bottom shape, tail, etc.). That’s not to say I don’t spend a lot of time on the rocker, but I trust my blank, and I spend my energy trying to obtain a nice smooth curve, from tip to center. Finally, you speak of how new templates can be made from adjusting old ones… that is exactly my point. If you don’t have any old ones… where are you going to start? I don’t think most people here are trying to bootleg… we’re trying to learn.

How about it. Bring your templates and paper, doorskin, etc and swap outlines with each other. Bring some/take some. Rob Olliges

All of this discussion is basically “right”.My point was you may have a dead on perfect curve on a sheet of paper but you still have to transfer it to something hard (unless you can trace from the paper…which voids all of my comments).I’m not talking about old school templating,(which is how I do it).I guess I’m just an old geezer asking questions of you younger computer savvy types.No offense intended at all. R. Brucker

What you do is desing the curves in cad and have a cnc mill it onto a masonite board. That is it …no more discussion!! That is it. Basta!

l use 1mm PVC to make my outlines, l set them up as 1/4 templates so that you use less material and take up less room in the factory, the PVC is flexible and sits on the bottom curve perfectly, if you want you can print your curves and then light spray the back of the paper with adhesive spray and lay onto the PVC then simply cutout with sissors and fine touch with a block, you can even roll them up for easy transport. KR

You can accomplish this with a simple scale drawing. Draw it out by hand or find a picture and use a copy machine with enlargement capabilities. I use 1" : 1’. Very basic math… 1" on paper = 1’ on actual template, 1/2" on paper = 6" actual template, 1/4" on paper = 3" actual template, etc. After getting some dots on your template material, cut it out and smooth with a surform and sanding block. Eyeball it carefully for dips and bumps, then trace on blank. You can even skip the template all together. Just transfer some measurements to one side of your blank, connect the dots, cut it out, and smooth it with a long flexible sanding block. After one side is finished, transfer dimensions to opposite side. A long block makes it surprisingly easy to “draw” clean lines directly on the foam.