How to make an illustration to a bitmap to be placed

[gerbera77]

Hi, I have this cmyk illustration to be placed in Adobe Illustrator CS, but the layout has to be a one spot color only. I converted the illustration in Photoshop as a bitmap and save it as tif, but the quality of the illustration is not good when I place it in Adobe Illustrator, even though i make it 800 pixels/inch...I also tried to make the illustration as a monotone from the Duotone options, but when I save it as psd or tif, it doesn't want to be placed in Adobe Illustrator. How do i convert the illustration to a one color in photoshop without losing the quality, and still can be placed in Adobe Illustrator? Is there a way? Thanks so much.

 

[dmacster]

Not sure how the illustration was created in PS, but if you have paths you can export to Illustrator (then you have vector art). And are you relying on the display for quality, or have you imported to Illustrator and then printed to double-check quality?

 

[jmgalvin]

You didn't say what the original format of the pic is. If possible, couldn't you open the thing in Ill, use the magic wand tool (making sure that you have the appropriate pickup options set by double clicking the magic wand tool) and change the color to the one spot - presumably one of the Pantone solids.

If you want to do it in PS, you can again use the magic wand and then go to Select menu/Similar and change the color to what you want. Repeat for different colors as necessary. Save as EPS and put it in Illustrator.

 

[gerbera77]

Thank you for the quick replies.For the quality check, I rely on the print-out. That's a good idea, but the illustration is kinda too complicated to be converted into vector art, though...
The original format of the pic is psd, so you're right, one way to do it is I could go ahead select the illustration with the magic wand. I'm gonna try this. Hopefully it works
Thanks again for helping, I really appreciate it.