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[How to work with Live Trace | Illustrator CS5 and earlier
Trace an image · Choose one of the default presets by clicking the icons on top of the panel. For details, see Specify tracing options | Preset. Several options determine the result of your image trace. To give you a start, some presets offer solutions for different kind of results.
Image tracing presets
All the presets can be fine-tuned in the Image Trace panel and it pays off to do so. For deatiled information about the presets that you can use to generate a good-quality image trace, see Image tracing presets. The Image Trace feature shares most of the options, but they have been implemented differently.
The source image optimization options in the left side of the Live Trace panel, such as the blur, have been integrated into the function and are applied automatically based on image analysis. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Adobe Illustrator Features What’s New. Buy now. Optimize results using Image Trace Search. Adobe Illustrator User Guide. Select an article: Select an article:. On this page Preparing files for image trace Placing Files in Illustrator and applying the feature What to do if the Trace command is not active?
How is Image Trace different from the live trace? Learn how to vectorize pixel-based images automatically in Illustrator using Image Trace.
Preparing files for image trace. Isolate the subject from the background. Preparing an image with the levels function in Photoshop — keeping slight anti-aliasing around the edges top vs. Large image warning. Placing Files in Illustrator and applying the feature. The steps to apply the function to a raster image are the same for all image types. In Illustrator, create a new file in the desired document color mode and size.
The presets menu in the control panel. What to do if the Trace command is not active? In case the Image Trace command is not active, there might be a couple of reasons: The image needs to be selected: Select the image you want to trace by clicking on it with the selection tool.
If that is not possible, check if the layer or the image itself is locked. If everything is already unlocked, check if the selected image is a clipping group. Then delete the mask and select the image. Image Trace is not the best method to choose when you want to vectorize the following images:. Geometric shapes: When you need to trace a logo, icon, symbol, or the like that has exact geometric shapes such as triangles, hexagons, or even straight lines in it, you’d better do it manually.
Humans can recognize these shapes even in a badly compressed JPEG or on crumpled paper. Software just sees a bunch of pixels even in the best quality source file.
Text: When you need to vectorize Text, it’s always best to identify the font, for example, using Adobe Capture or Adobe Photoshop and then use that particular font to typeset the text. After typesetting and formatting in Illustrator, outline the text if necessary such as, for cutting vinyl or generally before sending out logos.
Photos: Using autotracing to be able to scale up the photos most likely fails. The Image Trace module can capture hundreds of thousands of colors contrary to the old Live Trace, which could only do colors. To get a photorealistic autotrace, start with the High Color Preset.
In the Info section, notice that your trace has thousands of colors. To improve the result, try to get even smoother color blending by increasing the number of colors: move the Colors slider to the right. The preset has a low Noise value thus tracing a lot of small detail. Increasing it might cause some abstraction of your image, so this option needs to be treated with caution. You can further decrease the number of colors by using the Colors slider.
When doing so, you actually determine the number of colors you want to have in the result. You can check in the Info section that the number of colors matches your input. Next comes the fun part: applying different colors to the artwork. To do so, open a swatches library that contains the colors you want applied, e.
The library needs to be open. Then in the Image Trace panel you can select your library from the Palette menu. In case your library contains a number of color groups, you can select one of them from the Colors menu. If you want to assign colors differently, you need to Expand the Image Trace and then use the Recolor Artwork function to exchange colors.
Gradients can be split in many solid colored shapes, so your effort in this case must be to adjust the options in a way that you get a single shape instead of multiple ones. The first step is to try and adjust the source image in Photoshop in a way that eliminates the gradients. The goal must now be to unite as many of the gradient colors as possible, because this gives you smoother paths and causes therefore less work than editing afterwards. Try and move the Colors slider to the left to reduce the number of colors.
When done with optimization, you need to Expand the Image Trace and apply a gradient to the shapes. Mechanical drawings and clean, reduced maps can also be autotraced. It creates a completely different trace than the other Presets by tracing not with shapes, but with strokes.
You can check that by selecting Outlines with Source image from the View menu. The human mind can interpret detail in images that actually isn’t there — computers are limited in that regard. The minimum size you need for a decent result depends on the nature of the image. A cartoon sketch works in smaller sizes than a lettering. The result needs a lot of adjusting. Start off with the Noise slider and decrease the value.
Then increase the accuracy of the Paths. The trace still needs some editing, which most likely can only be done manually. To prepare this, you need to change the Method to Overlapping. This creates stacked shapes where possible.
This example image and many images like it, it would possibly be much more efficient and of course give you better results to trace the image manually. After having completed the trace if you want to edit the paths, you need to Expand the Image trace artwork. Hit the button named Expand in the Control panel or the Properties panel. You then get editable paths that you can further edit.
It’s always better to optimize the Image Trace options than to edit the paths afterwards. Especially for many multi-color artworks editing is close to impossible.
For other types of images, it might be time-consuming. Create logos , icons, sketches, typography , handlettering , and other vector art with Adobe Illustrator. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Adobe Illustrator Features What’s New. Buy now. Image tracing presets Search. Here are some examples of image types:. Of all kinds of imagery, cartoon characters work best with the Image Trace function.
Brush or pencil strokes. Brush strokes are difficult to vectorize because you need a lot of detail and smooth paths. Start off with the Black and White Preset. Press the View Source button to check the result. Use the Noise slider to try and catch some more of the intricate detail.
Adjust the Threshold to balance the dark and light areas. Using the Corners slider you could try to get nicer curves by decreasing the number of corners.
Check the Ignore White option to only generate black shapes. As in almost any trace you also need to balance detail and smoothness by using the Paths slider.

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