you could take the images into photoshop first, crank up the contrast, clean them up a bit, and then try sending them through live trace again..

Use the Pen tool and trace them manually, you're not going to get a super refined tracing with Auto Trace even though it seems pretty handy. I do drawing to vector conversions on an almost daily basis for one of my professors and manually is the only way to go.

Streamline works better than Illustrator's trace features. f you really want the work to be sharp, don't bother with Illustrator.

Streamline works better than Illustrator’s trace features. f you really want the work to be sharp, don’t bother with Illustrator.

Don't bother with Illustrator's Auto Trace is what you mean, yeah? I guess I'm just in the mindset that after becoming quite proficient with the pen tool, primarily vectorizing letterforms which require fairly anal precision, it's just not right unless I do it by hand.

> can anyone help me with techniques?

The best one is to ask the Big Wizard - Mordy Golding (author of Real World Illustrator CS2; product manager - AI 10 & CS ):

http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/

I could help you, if you tell a little bit more exaclty what you want to do with the drawings. Is it letters or pictures? How will they be used in the end? Why do you need them in Illustrator?

i think the live trace function in illsutrator CS2 is fantastic. way better than streamline.

here's one traced using live trace in illustrator CS2.

I didn't mean to sound like I was bashing the feature, it's just not great if you need a clean, one line trace from a drawing. Magnus, your example is a perfect example of what it can do...I just had thoughts in the other direction.

Streamline and Live Trace seem to be about the same to me. They used the Streamline engine and put it in Illustrator for Live Trace.

It doesn't feel like the conversion of Dimensions to the 3D effect in Illustrator. They definitely dumbed down Dimensions to do that. Not that Dimensions was anything fantastic…

The problem with these auto trace programs is the complexity of the vectors they generate. Many of them won't RIP…

peace

The problem with these auto trace programs is the complexity of the vectors they generate. Many of them won’t RIP…

This is a very good and valid point that I forgot to make. I actually had this problem where I was short on time last semester in a class and needed to vectorize a black and white illustration. Auto Trace looked good enough but it wouldn't RIP like you said.

If the resolution on your scan isn't very high, that's the only way I would see livetrace having a problem.

The main thing to bear in mind is that the higher resolution the scan the better autotrace will cope with it (albeit slowly and with too many points). There's a lot to be said for high resolution greyscale tiffs of pencil drawings rather than vector graphics, you will never achieve the same texture by tracing manually or by machine. That said, it is worth looking at the options for live trace in the drop down menu you can get very different results. If the drawings are intended to be smooth and untextured you are better off beziering by hand over a placed scan as trace creates compound paths which to my mind hamper revisions. Magnus' example looks good on screen at that size but zooming in tight there will be all sorts of marks that aren't pencil-like.

I miss Dimensions (and to a lesser extent Streamline), I use it at home in classic mode.
Tim

If you are intending to draw a font and then Live Trace it and then put it in a font creation program I think the vectors are going to be way too complicated to make a working font. There's a good chance that the K you showed us would not RIP by itself.

A laser printer will print just about anything, but when you get into imagesetters and the like, they are much more picky.

peace

You can use the simplify feature to get a point count, but you always seem to get the overlapping loops and nasty bits with the auto trace.

It works great and in another way it doesn't work at all. Weird…

peace

That looks like a good trace, Magnus. I usually scan in and use the scan as a guide to draw vestor on top of.

I've tried that and I've tried using the auto trace and fixing it. It seems faster to just place the photo, lock it, and trace it by hand most of the time…

peace

Live Trace and Live Paint can both be really powerful tools, if you throw the right kind of artwork at those filters.

I never liked Adobe Streamline and have played around with it through several versions, starting with the one that shipped with Illustrator 4.0 back in the early 1990s. The problem is vector trash in the resulting conversions.

Vector trash isn't really all that bad if all you intend to do it send the artwork to print or post it on a web page. I work in a large custom sign manufacturing company. For my purposes, the artwork needs to be really clean or at least consist of all closed paths. Streamline would generate lots and lots of little, stroked 2 point line segments and lots of other open path segments which were absolutely useless.

I agree about the comments on manually digitizing artwork. IMHO, Photoshop has the best pen tool and combination of keyboard shortcuts found in any program capable of making vector objects. Once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts it's fairly easy to accurately digitize sketches and other line art. However, if the artwork is technical in nature and not so "organic" it will be easier to do the work in Illustrator (or Freehand or CorelDRAW).

Photoshop's "Make Work Path" command can do wonders on quickly creating vector artwork from high contrast scanned images -and do so by creating paths which are usually always full closed loops. Naturally, you'll need to tweak the brightness/contrast settings and perhaps even use a few blur and sharpen passes. If the artwork is clean enough, fire up the Color Range dialog, play with the fuzziness slider and then create a selection. Then execute the Make Work Path command and export the resulting path to Illustrator format.

Bah Streamline was horrible. CS2 Live Trace can work miracles I think. As stated uses a much improved streamline engine.

There is some good info in this thread:
http://forums.australianinfront.com.au/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=227737

I've never heard of make work path before... ill have to give that a try, thanks.

Paul,

The Live Trace feature doesn't use a single line of Streamline code. Adobe did not develop Streamline and did not have rights to the code, they just distributed it.

David,

When you refer to "Auto Trace" (which you've done in multiple posts), do you mean the Live Trace feature in CS2, or do you mean the Auto Trace tool in earlier versions?

The two have very different capabilities, so it would be good to know which you mean, especially when making comparisons to Streamline.

I agree that hand-tracing will always give the cleanest results. Personally I would not use any automatic tracing function of any program for letterforms or simple logos or other designs that should have precise geometric contours. Live Trace is at its strongest for posterizing photos or very complex but not precise images, where hand-tracing would be prohibitively time consuming, and some degree of impressionistic distortion is a desired design goal. Which probably is not the most relevant application to a typophile discussion.

Let me light some terms so that everyone is clearer on the concept first and then we'll head to the discussion because I know briefing with you with this will surely answer everyone's questions.
"Bitmaps are made up of pixels, while vector images are composed of mathematical formulas that consist of curves and points." Adobe has stopped upgrading the vector images that was available in the Trace tool in Illustrator, instead to make your drawing more detailed you need to use the Illustrator CS 2.Mainly the illustrator files are composed of vectors and will be best suited for you.

I was following this vector tracing software for awhile:

http://vectormagic.com/home

It was developed by Stanford University. You might want to give it a try.