adobe streamline

[x4fx]

hi. i was just wondering if anyone has used adobe streamline, and what they think. i read about someone suggesting it in one of these forums and have never heard of it, but i think it could be a great asset for me. will it convert just scanned line art, or will it also do something like a photo? any input would be greatly appreciated! thanks! alison

 

[blueark]

I used to use it years ago to convert scanned logos. The results always needed cleaning up, and in the end I found it was quicker to just trace it manually in Illustrator. Of course, anyone who sent me a scan of their logo to work with usually sent me a bad scan, so that could have something to do with it! You might have better luck with higher quality source material.

Photos were another story. Later versions of Streamline weren't restricted to single colors, and could quite successfully convert any type of image. It was never a perfect coverversion (although why would you want that anyway; just use the original scan). It did give a nice posterized effect, similar to Photoshop (Image > Adjustments > Posterize) but using vectors. I found the best results came from using a small number of colors in the conversion to give a very graphic result, a bit like screen printing.

 

[fizzak]

Streamline is junk. Use this

http://www.silhouetteonline.com/

Expensive but works.

 

[x4fx]

hey, thanks guys for your input. silhouette looks great from the example i saw on the link, and i can get as a plug in for illustrator CS. i think im going to try it! thank you!

 

[richtestani]

I really liked Streamline a lot. I was in the silk screen industry and it was a godsend. If you have a good B/W source, scan it in at high-res, I am talking 1200dpi. Adjust your settings, and I always got very good results.

Depending on what you were doing, there was little edting. Color images on the other hand were something else altogether, which I rarely used but it often gave me a good startin point for spot color seps.

Adobe seemed to have swept this little app under the rug and forgetten about it. There is no OS X version available and none announced. I think they could easily integrate it into Illustrator, as they did with Dimensions, and get rid of the junk tracer thats there now.

What made Streamline valuble was that it did do what it offered, for only $130 bucks. Other vector tracers were very pricey.