Jpeg to vector for idiots

Hi all, I'm trying to get into engraving badges...football and military kinda stuff, but alls I have are jpeg that I've downloaded from tinternet, but they are just too pixelated when I auto trace them onto my onecnc xr5 and the programs are way too big for my awea vp2012 to hold in one go and I'm bored of etching one badge in 5 different programmes, I'm not very clued up when it comes to computers....I know what I need to, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a simple to use software that would clean up and reduce the size of these drawings,
Like I said....I'm not too clever on computers so go easy
Thanks in advance

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but they are just too pixelated

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garbage in, garbage out.....
You probably need to start with higher resolution images.
But personally, I prefer to manually trace, as it gives you much cleaner vectors, and smaller files that run better.

As Gerry said, better search for the vectors if possible, so less job to do. On many places you will find fr4ee vectors of popular logos.

But reality is that sometimes you can not escape from manual time consuming work. I use Aspire. Coreldraw or Adobe illustrator are what i may suggest. As they are the best aand industry standard.

I would suggest also to learn the pen tool in Illustrator or whatever program you are using. Its well worth the 1 hour time that you will need to figure how exactly is working. Ok, i admit i am a Photoshop expert /almost/ as i was retouching and using the pen every day for a couple of years. This is the best tool for fast and clean forming a vector around or from something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXxmKZtFutI

The other thing you should learn is use the keyboard shortcuts in " node editing mode" :
-switch on off to node mode
-split line at point / cut
-learn to manage the curves in node editing mode

There are some shortcuts in programs like Aspire, that are specifically made to do this, but believe me on that, some times you have to spend an hour or two, just node editing and cleaning crap. At the end its faster, though it may not seem so.

Example bellow that i scanned from web and node edited to perfection, as i found that the vector ones had some small mistakes that took me even longer to find and cure. plus i had to make proportions according to my specific liking and tool. So at the end it was shorter to trace perfectly a part of it and then copy paste build it as a whole.

Attachment 19464

Another tip. Do you note how big is that one at the right and how small are the actual machining ones? Thats cause i blow always the JPG as big as possible by stretching / +shift to keep proportions/ . Then i trace. Then i fix. Then make vectors small and all is perfect for machining. Though as i said this time i just had to redraw it using the pen.


PS. I mixed the pen with the pencil which is free hand. The pen is the right tool. And as i said use the "shift" tool also here. See video below


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpOCt6k7Oqg