I have done a live trace of a somewhat complex GIF that I want to simplify into black silhouette. What I have is a black object filled with dozens of irregularly shaped closed paths within it. I want to get rid of these, and was thinking I could just choose "ungroup," then select all closed paths except the large one enveloping them and delete them. I'm obviously misunderstanding something, though, since Illustrator sees what I have as one object already. The only way I'm able to remove all those little white shapes is to delete their anchor points one by one. There has to be a better way . . .
I did a live trace and it did pretty well. The image I traced was fairly simple. But I ended up with a lot of extra pieces in what should be a solid color. I've tried Select > Object > Stray points, but that didn't work. I have large area that I want to be one solid piece. Within this area, there are lots of little "pieces" that are the same color... How do I merge them all into one piece? I tried "Unite" in the pathfinder, and that didn't work, either.
In case I'm not being clear, basically, I want to do what the "smooth" function does in Photoshop... but in Illustrator.
how to use Live Trace in Illustrator but now instead of the Tracing Options window having a button that says "Trace" it's now showing a button that says "Set to Default." I'm sure something isn't selected right or something similar, but I can't figure it out. why "Trace" is no longer an option?
I'm loving CS6 Illustrator, except for one thing. Image Trace. Here, Adobe seem to have taken away the two most usefull settings from Live Trace, and replaced all the presets with ones that are pretty much unusable. I almost always used either 'Comic Art' or 'Lettering' to trace hand-drawn images, but they're both gone. None of the new settings are good enough, even if I make a custom one. The main issue is that the sliders in Image Trace are for completely different things to those in Live Trace, so it's difficult to translate one set of settings into the other.
With Image Trace, I cannot get the same results as with Live Trace, and so far, have found myself having to have Illustrator CS5 open at the same time as CS6, just so I can get workable traces.
I don't know if it's possible, but is there any way to import the presets from Live Trace, or even the full tool, into CS6, to replace the new Image Trace presets?how to make the equivelant of Comic Art in Image Trace's new settings?This is a close up of a file I was trying to trace, showing the major difference in quality between the two CS versions.
Left: CS5 - Comic Art setting. Right: CS6 - This is a custom setting, but is the closest I have come to Comic Art thus far.
As you can see, the definition of Image Trace is far lower in quality than Live Trace, giving me one large connected blob of colour rather than the distictly separate lines produced in Live Trace.
I just started using CS6, jumping from CS3. A major tool I use is Live Trace, and I have custom settings for that. I cannot find a way to make Image Trace behave the way Live Trace did for black and white line drawings. The results I get in CS6 are far inferior to those I got in CS3 in terms of retaining the look of the original raster image. Otherwise, I will have to leave CS3 installed just to do my Live Trace.
Here is a sample of what I mean. You can see the quality degredation in CS6 compared to CS3. (And it's much more obvious when it's full size and full resolution.)
My settings used in Live Trace (CS3) were:
The settings I tried in CS6 that gave the above result were:
Is it better to use Live Trace with images that have no color and are just black and white and to apply all color in AI with Live Paint bucket or can you get good results with images that have color when using Live Trace?
We have recently updated our office Adobe Creative Suite, and are now using Illustrator CS6 to clean-up hand drawn sketches. When we run any sort of trace on a simple, black and white line drawing, the trace results in a negative image: the white background turns black, and the outline of the sketch is white. We have tried checking the "ignore white" box and several other settings changes. Initially, for our first few times using the new suite this didn't happen:
Out of the blue, whenever I use live trace, it crashes my Illustrator and I have to force quit. I have tried all different sized jpegs, big and small, force quit.
How to recover the Live Trace button as well as the entire option on a CS5 top bar and Objects menu? Mine has vanished, and while i am still able to find Live Trace under the OBJECT section, it won't allow me to use any of the options. I've tried restarting, I've checked if my images were locked, I've opened various files hoping the outcome would be different, but nothing worked. I've even tried going to Keyboard Shortcuts and keying in a new shortcut, but it won't allow me to as no box appears for me once clicked.
I have a fairly good quality image with black text on a white background and I'm trying to trace it using live trace. I want to be able to manipulate it like normal text would allow you to. The font is a serif font and contains some thinner lines, so whenever I live trace it, it comes up quite uneven and all over the place. I've tried tinkering with the settings but nothing I do really seems to make much difference. My question is, are there any specific settings or modes that are best suited for doing traces of text, or any other methods for that matter? I can't recreate the text using a pen tool - it would take way too long!
I am new to Illustrator - I am scanning simple components on a technical drawing. These are line drawings - closed contours (for example, the outline of the cross-section of an aircraft wing). I am attempting to use Illustrator to convert the jpg scan to vector form - am saving the result as a .dwg file. I am then importing this into SolidWorks where I am attempting to extrude the form of the component prior to 3D printing.
In Illustrator I am using live trace to create the vector representation. However I'm finding that the vector representation appears to take the form of a number of segmented vector representations. As a result, in SolidWorks I can obviously not extrude the component.
Are there are additional steps within Illustrator that I should be using so as to clean up/unify the vector representation?
So I am making a logo and I am trying to vectorize it. But, when I use the Live Trace, it messes up the lines, and makes it look like it was painted. So is there another way to vectorize my logo without the Live Trace?
I created an image using live trace and saved it as a ".ai" file. I thought that saving it like this would allow to have the same quality in After Effects. However the After Effects image looks pixilated. I am still new to both programs. Attached are two images, one from After Effects and the other from Illustrator.
I use live trace quite a bit and have created several custom tracing options in CS4. How di I get them into CS6. When I open a scaned document in CS6, The custom field in the trace menu is greyed out so I don't know how I could recreate them from scratch.
I used illustrator to live trace an image and then copy it to photoshop and paste as a shape layer. Usually, it fills in the paths with the foreground color and it's exactly what I want. For some reason, this time though, when i paste as a shape layer, the entire selection becomes the foreground color and when the layer is simplified it's just a big block with the same color as the foreground color. Why is this working on some of my traces and not others?
best way of converting some inked line drawings into vectors. I currently do a lot of fabric designs which consist of very simple line drawings, which I then ink up. What I'd like to do is scan these in and then fill them. I'd also like to be able to resize them, hence the vector conversion.
I've had a play with the Live Trace feature in Illustrator, but have to admit that it baffles me slightly. I currently can't find a setting within Live Trace that will trace the image without increasing the size of the stroke - e.g. all the presets just turn my nice fine sketches into big fat black splodges.
I am also having trouble in taking the converted Vectors and transfering them over to Photoshop - any time I either try to copy the layer directly over or open the saved Illustrator file in Photoshop it comes out all jagged.
someone will be able to describe the steps I need to take to do the following:
1. Convert a line drawing into a Vector without drastically increasing the line weights.
2. Take this new Vector from Illustrator to Photoshop without losing any image quality.
I can make the button profile and spin it around its axis just fine..getting the holes into such a shape is another matter..Is this beyond AI's 3D tool capability?
And to be clear, I mean the clothing type of button, with holes for thread, as opposed to an interactive button pushed by a user on a web page.
I'm working on I've drawn a dragon using the pen tool. Now I want to use the live paint tool, however, after I select my dragon it won't let me "make" the live paint. I also can't expand, not sure if that's related.
I tested another simple drawing and was able to both expand and use live paint, so it must be something weird that I've done to my dragon.
I have a trial version of CS6. Also attaching a screen cap.
I'd like to use boxes to punch holes into the layered artwork below them. I want the result to look exactly like this image, but with the white boxes being transparent holes.
This seems so simple, but I can't find any combination of layers/pathfinder tools/compound shapes/or clipping masks that will produce this result. No matter what, I end up losing part of the artwork (usually the topo lines and the black bar).
I'm excited to use the new Illustrator Live Corner Feature but for some reason using the Direct Select tool does not bring up the live corners on any shape I make. I am using Illustrator CC 64 bit on a PC runnign Windows 7.
i have a layout that i made into a PDF to show my client. the layout has a pattern and when you view the PDF, the pattern moves around as you Zoom in and out of the pdf. i have never experienced this before.
i tried saving with different settings to different versions but they all do it.
i have layers off, and illustrator editibility off.
edit: the pattern only moves when viewed in Preview. still i don't understand shouldn't be doing it.
In Illustrator CC every time I click Merge Paint I need to go back to Live Paint > Gap Options > and reset Gap Detections to "Paint stop at Small Gaps". Despite I set "Paint stop at Small Gaps" as my default many times now, it seems that Illustrator CC does reset it automatically to "Custom Gaps" and therefore Merge Paint doesn't work correctly. A nightmare, I am forced to use Illustrator CS6!
I am relatively new to Illustrator. I am using CS6.
I am trying to punch holes in a circle using compound paths, as you can see here :
The tadpole shape and the human shape are the holes I need created in the large circle behind them. Both the tadpole and the human are at the front and all objects are on the same layer. When I select everything and choose CRTL+8, only the tadpole gets cut into the circle. the other shape just stays white.
