Converting Raster to Vector

[walks]

I have a bunch of sports logos for a bunch of teams and they are all currently in Raster format.

I've had Illustrator for awhile just havent dove into it. I thought I would convert them but was wondering what the best way to do so would be? I thought I could make a layer for each color and essentially just trace each color with the pen tool.

Is this the best way to conver these logos?

If so is there anyway to make it so the pen tool doesnt have that "fill effect" over the logo because I cant see what Im tracing.

 

[RickWolff]

Here are your choices. The first is the easiest, and the last is the highest-quality.

1. Use an auto-trace feature in Illustrator. In the tools pallette, it's the tenth tool on the right, underneath the blend tool. The tool icon looks like a wavy horizontal line with grey shading under it. You click it on the edge of the bitmap shape you want to trace around.

2. Use a different Adobe product, called Streamline. Last version I ever saw had some sophisticated controls for tracing around areas of color in a full-color image, producing a posterized effect that you can edit as a vector drawing, because that's what it becomes.

3. Trace around it. This is particularly a good idea with letters and logos, since you can make sharp corners and perfectly vertical and horizontal lines the first time, instead of noodling an approximation from an autotracer.

Your other problem involves the fill of the outline you're drawing obscuring the rest of the image you're tracing. you could switch to a view where you see all your strokes as one-pixel-wide lines against the traced raster image; I think you just ask for outline view, under your View menu, or type control-Y (command-Y for us Mac users). Even easier, just use the color pallette on the bottom of your tools pallette to select None (big grey X) for fill. You can also adjust the width and color of the stroke as you draw so that the drawing you've made so far stands out from what you're tracing.

Hope that helps.

 

[askIllustrator]

For the best tracing setup, place your raster image on its own layer. Double-click on that layer to dim its placed images and lock it. Then create a new layer (ctrl+l) and ctrl+click on the eyeball for that layer. This way you raster image is still visible on its layer and your trace layer is just showing your splines. Plan ahead too, if there is a shape that looks like a circle overlapping a square then build just that, a circle overlapping a square and unite them when your done.

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -Einstein

 

[walks]

This is an ultimate newb question

But I know with Photoshop you can drag and edit the anchor points in the pens path with the pen tool

However in Illustrator when I try to do that the anchor point disappears, how to I modify the paths anchor points?

 

[askIllustrator]

Use the open selector (white arrow)

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -Einstein

 

[RickWolff]

In Illustrator, the Pen tool changes functions depending on what you put it near. If you have it hovering in empty space (not near a path) and don't have any open paths selected, it's ready to begin to draw a new path. If you put it near a selected path (not a point), it wants to add a new point on the path where you click (there will appear a little + at the lower right of the pen icon while you hover). If you hover over a point on that selected path, it wants to remove the point (little icon becomes – , minus). To move a point, you need to change tools to the Direct Select tool (the white arrow). To make that tool change momentarily, hold down the alt key (option key in Mac) and it changes to the Select tool. Then click and drag. Let up on the alt/opt, and it's a pen again. Note: The tool changes to either the white arrow or the black arrow, whichever one you most recently used. Make sure it's the white Direct Select arrow. If it's not, use the tool pallette.