Live Trace

10-12-2008


So,

Getting into this whole "graphic" hobby again I have been playing around a lot with various art packages. One of them is Adobe Illustrator CS2, a pricey bit of kit if ever there was one. It has a feature in it called "Live Trace" that is meant to take an image and turn it into a vector graphic for you (how did I not use vectors all these years????) but it is a fickle little bastard to use.

So here is Jester's top tip: If you have scanned in an image, black and white pencil sketch that you inked, to make "Live Trace" add single vector paths to your lines use the following settings:

Select "Default" from the list of presets. Uncheck "Fill" and check "Stroke". Set Max Stroke to "20", maybe 30 for complete lines. Check "Ignore White". Then trace and expand.

This should get around the problem I was having, were the traced nodes were on either side of the line rather than over the line, basically it made all my lines into shapes which wasn't what I wanted.

Now, if I can figure out a way of doing that in Inkscape I will be happy, but for the minute AI will do me.

Better go to work, sadly I don't get paid for graphical work.

Yet(?).

Blue_jester