Converting JPEG/Raster to Vector with Illustrator Live Trace

In this week's video tutorial James demonstrates how Adobe Illustrators Live Trace tool can be effective for converting JPEG logos and illustrations to vector files.

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Closed Caption:

hi and welcome to this week's web design
video blog today we're revisiting and
updating an old tutorial from 2010
that's been really popular on YouTube
it's how to convert jpg rasta fires to
vector using Adobe illustrators built-in
live trace tool introduced in CS to the
live trace tool is an excellent way to
complete your illustrations or even jpg
logos into a scalable vector file in
illustrator
let's dive straight in and show you why
it's such a great tool
ok so to get started I've created a new
document in Adobe Illustrator 5.5 have
placed into different rested graphics
but this server PNG
imperial star wars logo and a hand drawn
illustration has been scanned in run
through Friday shop and placed it into
the document as well
you can also add files to your
illustrator file by going to file and
place or you can simply open the
illustrator will just drag them straight
in from the internet now using live
trace to create a vector versions of
raster files can be really helpful
example if perhaps maybe clients giving
you a logo supplier for their own logo
and you're looking to use some upscaling
in a design
so sometimes creating your own vector
version of something can really helpful
in the design processes
so let's make start then with our star
wars imperial logo
now you'll notice that you can access
the live trace settings from two
locations
it's available here in the top panel and
you can also go to object and live trace
she's down here at the bottom you use
the quick access
no just over here and you want to simply
select your graphic so that it's
highlighted and then what you can do in
the first instance if you did a pretty
good job already in Photoshop of
adjusting the image that it's got a good
set of black and white definition is
just to push live trace and see what
happens with the default settings
now because the PNG star wars lego that
I brought through is already have a
fairly high quality
you'll see that the default live trace
has done a really good job of my graphic
however if you want to adjust the
settings you can go to the live trace
tracing options which is just down here
let me slide this panel over you'll see
that there are sort of 14 different
presets that you can use that are
designed to achieve different effects
would you put your tracing options open
you always want to push the preview
button and this will allow you to
preview your trace in real time
one of things that all you do is you
when im using live trace I'm easy
selecting just one sort of key area
perhaps of a logo or an image and you
know sometimes you don't take cross the
white so if you push the ignore white
button
it's only going to do the darker area
now in most cases if you're doing an
illustration a large space
administration or a logo before we just
want to stick with the black and white
mode
this will just let you give you a sort
of two color or a single black color
trace of your image and now the
threshold is really useful
essentially this sets a threshold many
pixels in a lighter than the threshold
will be converted to y2 in our case
disappear any that a darker who
converted to black
so you can slide this sort of up and
down just to make sure you've got the
threshold just write this will look a
lot clearer when we come to the
illustration in a moment we're going to
too much detail will be the settings are
going to play around again the sort of
blurry will blow your image before it
does the live trace you can really
achieve some quite nice effects but for
the purpose of our Star Wars logo we
push trace and then you simply want to
push to expand key which is just over
here that will convert your shape into a
vector graphic from here you can
obviously start to adjust the colors
take it to the back to photoshop
ok and then let's move on now to our
campervan illustration
so do the same so I think we just push
the live trace button off the bat
you don't quite get very good conversion
live trace first time so let's just and
do that and that's perhaps bring up our
options panel again so i mentioned we're
simply going to the live trace option
just here going down to the tracing
options
ok so same thing again let's just push
this little sort of ignore the white
setting and we're going to turn the
preview on this i'm going to just the
thing to make sure we get the most
definition on our registration
so again try playing with the presets
you'll see that this sort of different
effects in here
you can try for your van but i usually
just use the default settings and adjust
the settings to achieve the look so I
just the threshold
i turn the threshold up you'll see that
I've got quite a lot of nice definition
on the video we can prevent can we
ignore the white and pushed race
don't forget to hit the expand button
and that's our illustration completed we
could take through back into Photoshop
thank you for watching this week's video
tutorial you have any questions or
contributions
please leave them in the comments below