Live Trace and Bitmap Preparation

[ccuny]

Hi,

I do not own the new Illustrator but I have had the pleasure of looking at Live Trace recently. It is pretty amazing.

I am getting pretty mixed results doing blacj and white traces, even though I have adjusted just about every parameter I can find, including resampling. The reason I am getting mixed results is that Live Trace depends on the level of contrast and colour in the picture (in my own owrds). So of course, when I am tracing an image where everything is dark, features do not come out so well. Not Live Trace's fault.

My question is whether any of you have experimented with preparing the bitmap in Photoshop in order to get optimal results in Live Trace. If so, would anyone be able to give me some tips in how best to adjust the bitmap so as to maximise contrast between areas that are all fairly dark and similar on the original (example: a gorilla's face)?

I know this is as much a photoshop question as it is an Illustator question so I hope it is ok to post here.

Thanks a lot

Chris

 

[apepp]

If you want to trace something more complex, you can obtain the best results by opening the photo in Photoshop and removing the background and any areas you so not want to trace there first, before placing the image in Illustrator. Use any of your favorite selection methods or the extract filter to remove extraneous areas from the photo. If you want less colors to make a smaller vector file, try using the Posterize filter (Image > Adjustments > Posterize) to lower the number of colors in the image before placing the photo in Illustrator.

andrew

 

[apepp]

this link is helpful too

http://virtualclues.com/illustratorCS2.php

andrew

 

[ccuny]

Thank you for this. I am already extracting from the background in Photoshop. I haven't tried posterize yet but will. I suspect it will make the tracing simpler, but since there are not many different colours in the picture (face of a gorilla was my example), I don;t think posterizing will help. What I need to do, I think, is to find a way to emphasise the hue differences between what appear to be very similar colours. So, for example, the brow, eyes and nose are all very similar indeed so it is difficult for Trace to find contours and place highlights. I will try to convert to black and white in Photosop and see what I can do to emphasise (exagerate) differences.

Any further suggestions welcome.

 

[ccuny]

Oh and the klink came through as I was posting the response so thank you for the link too. I am off to read it now.

 

[apepp]

...here is a pdf file that details the live trace tool...

http://www.zen63258.zen.co.uk/PDF/

andrew