Converting Art to Vector with Image Trace from: Adobe Illustrator CS6: Learn by Video

This video looks at Image Trace, a brand-new tracing functionality to help you vectorize raster images. It gives you cleaner tracing paths and better color recognition than in Live Trace.

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Closed Caption:

we've already seen how i can take my
image and trace the image using the
brushes and pencil and other tools in
illustrator but sometimes when I've
drawn an image like this really i don't
want to recreate the whole drawing again
so sometimes image trace can be a good
solution now in the case of the
superhero normally I would redraw the
lines because i want a specific clean
quality of line for this drawing but if
I wanted a more sketchy look image trace
is a good option
so what I want you to do is open up
image trace our . AI and once you're in
there you can go to the window menu and
choose image trace to open up the image
trace panel now i'm going to drag it
over here and docket next to my
navigator so I have all the settings
available to me now you can access some
of the settings up here so i could click
on image trace here and it will convert
the image to tracing object but if i
have a layer selected and click on
preview down here it will actually
preview the image trace for me and allow
me to make some changes now along the
top we have various options for using
color and grayscale and black-and-white
and we've already looked at some of the
color options in the introduction so
what we're going to do is concentrate on
black and white and gray scale now if
you choose one of the presets down here
it will choose the colors for you so if
i go to a sketch tart for example notice
it changes the mode to black-and-white
ok and that's the same as clicking
black-and-white here changing it in the
menu and changing it here will do
exactly the same thing now in the menu
only gives you three choices between
color and grayscale and black-and-white
however these allow you to choose
between auto color hi color and little
color grayscale black-and-white an
outline
now that our preview modes as well if we
go up to our view menu up here we can
choose how to view cart racing results
we can see the tracing result without
lines or we can see the outlines on the
original image or just the outlines of
sources mention themselves but really
the most useful is to actually see the
result of the trace so with
black-and-white you get a threshold and
you decide how high you want that
threshold to be so if I just move that
up i can add more of the areas of grey
to black
so basically we'll look at the image and
try and change it to a black-and-white
image so if it's these great pixels if
we put the threshold higher it will put
those gray pixels towards black if we
put it lower it will tend to push those
great pixels towards white so if you
want more black areas increase the
threshold then we have our advanced
setting it in the advanced setting we
can determine things like how many
corners are used and how many paths are
used so with path fitting the
higher-value usually means a tighter fit
but by reducing that value we can
actually make the image a little bit
faster to process
let's go back up to our presets notice
if i choose black might logo it will
adjust the settings for me and we get
completely different result from going
to sketch art it takes a little bit of
time to update this but sketch art is a
little bit more accurate and you'll
notice adjusted the noise and corner
settings so these presets refer to these
settings and these are in the Advanced
section now generally what i'll do is i
will increase the threshold first of all
try and get as much detail as i can and
usually about a hundred and eighty works
well with my artwork then i'm going to
try it reducing the paths and I try
registering it quite a low value and
you'll notice that as I do that don't
hear these numbers will update so I'm
simplifying the artwork
and that's actually working quite well
so i could probably go down even lower
let's try going right down to one
percent and that we were losing a lot of
the anchor point detail it's kind of
like going to simplify path up here i
think i'm gonna go a little bit higher
something eight percent worked well so
we'll go up to eight percent so then we
have the setting for corner emphasis
higher value means more corners and it
depends whether you're working with
curves or straight edges but if i bring
that into a very low value you'll notice
that this number changes here and if we
watch the artwork as well we get higher
number of anchors but we get more
precision on artwork if I bring that up
too high value you'll notice the number
changes again and we got a lower value
but I kind of think it's less accurate
actually with corners i usually find
that fifty percent is actually find from
my artwork then we have noise settings
down here and you can reduce noise by
ignoring areas of a specified pixel size
so for example if we have a look at my
source image
you notice that little specks and flex
all through the image but I've use the
eraser tool to erase parts of the image
if i go back to tracing result notice
none of them have come through if I put
a higher value i'll reduce the noise
okay but you'll usually find if we have
a look at the settings down here that
the numbers also update and we also lose
a bit of detail so you want to bring
this down as low as possible if i bring
it down to one pixel we're probably
going to get a little bit of messiness
in my drawing which I actually don't
mind but if you don't want these little
specks appearing just reduce the noise
and probably about setting of 10 you
don't want it too high because some of
the detail in the hair you lose if you
reduce the noise too much so usually a
fairly low value as low as you can get
away with at the moment it's only
creating films but we can also say
create strokes and if you say create
strokes for thin edges it will try and
create strokes rather than fills and
that's going to reduce the amount of
anchors for you as well it will increase
the amount of paths through so you know
you got to weigh up which is more
important to you if you want to have a
look at how that affects the outlines
you can go up to here and choose to view
the outlines as well so let's have a
look at that
so there
outlines let's have a look at it on the
source image and if i take strokes off
you'll notice be adjust the amount to
paths to about a third so generally i
leave that off but you can put that on
if you want strokes so let's put it back
on tracing result now I think this has
worked quite well and I'd be quite happy
with us but i just want to show you some
gray scale options as well and if we
click on the preset menu again I could
go in here in two shades of grey as my
preset
and as a default it will use 50 shades
of grey and you'll notice it takes quite
a long time to do the pixel clustering
and smoothing and all the amazing things
that this is doing in the background
I quite like using great skill to create
a kind of sketchy Luke if i'm not too
worried about coloring the image but i
just want to get a kind of sketchy Luke
I quite liked using shades of gray and
I'll show you why in a second it gives
me great ideas as well as black areas
and it looks much more hand drawn and
sketchy but you'll notice the downside
is that it's quite a long time to render
but you can bring down the greys and
really I only need about ten grace for
this drawing and you'll notice that that
speeds things up a little bit and I have
this lovely look to my drawing it almost
makes it look like a watercolor so i
tend to use that if I want it to look
more hand drawn and pencil sketchy i
tend to use the grayscale values here
ok so use gray scale for something
sketchy like this and then if you open
Bev image trace start something like
this which is more cross-hatching really
than pencil lines I've drawn this with a
pen
whereas this one I drew with a pencil in
sketchbook pro for this one the gray
scale works well excuse me or pencil
look for this one I would definitely
choose probably sketch start and maybe
just adjust the threshold on this and
you'll see a
a really good result with that with this
i'd probably take $MONEY threshold down
a little bit because at the higher
threshold is picking up too many years
as black by pulling that down i'm
getting a few more highlights on the
jeans and you'll see that that works
really well
once I've done it the image chases done
but if I want to actually go in and
adjust any of the vectors I would then
click expand and now i get vector
artwork from my drawing and it's just
such a fantastic way of converting my
artwork into vectors and my style of art
works really well with this so i have a
go with it yourself do some drawing and
then try just bringing the drawings in
and converting them to vectors rather
than hand tracing them