How do I use compound paths after image trace? Vector seems locked up after I create it. I have tried unlocking, ungrouping, etc. I want to knockout portions of the art. I only created part of the vector in image trace, and the knockouts are self-created.
View 4 Replies I used to use freehand as my defacto drawing tool until I switched to AI. Back in those days, I also used "Streamline" (URL...) to perform the functions image trace does today. While it's results were somewhat crude, the software provided me the vector points, paths and acnhors i needed. After every trace, I could manually edit the resulting vector traces.
I have been using CS6's tracing feature, but the one thing I cannot figure out for the life of me is the "Bounding box" issue for an imported image. Everytime I trace a drawing, AI's tracing results always place a bounding box around the traced image area. My goal: To trace an item, get rid of the bounding box and extract the outlines and paths so that I can then modify these to my linking.
Can this be done? Im sure it can,... I just cannot find out how. (Or am I making crack wishes?) All I'm saying, if Streamline allowed me to edit paths from a trace, then it'd be a shame if AI CS6 does not.
The best way I can describe what I want to do is, how do I use shapes like cookie cutters? I already know how to use clipping masks in order to achieve the visual equivalent of this, but I want to take the resulting viewable area and turn it into its own object/path. The problem is, when I, let's say, create a circle clipping mask over an image, the visual effect is a circular cutout of the image, but in Illustrator terms, what I'm actually left with is a group made up of the clipping mask and the image behind the mask. All I want is the cutout, and I want to me able to turn that into a (compound) path.
I've read a hundred different blogs/posts/tutorials, but they only teach you how to create a clipping mask, which is only half of what I want to do.
I have applied simple gradients to shapes. When I try to select the object with the direct selection tool, it selects paths made from the gradient, not the object itself.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI'm a novice here so here's my script. It works really well like it sits. It basically takes two objects in a large group and aligns them. I want to make each two objects combined into a single compound path. I have tried multiple things and they all just kick out errors and what not. I can't seem to get my head around the vocabulary for the scripting but the darkness is starting to fade the more I do.
#target Illustrator
var idoc = app.activeDocument;
var pi =idoc.compoundPathItems;
var numn = prompt ("How Many Names?", "Enter Number of Names");
var dd = prompt ("How far below name is the number?", "Enter Drop Distance");
var nH = prompt ("How tall are the names?", "Enter Name Height in Inches");
dd = parseFloat (dd);
numn = parseInt (numn);
nH = parseFloat (nH);
[code]...
Would Like to combine the aligned items into a single compound item.
Platform: PC/Windows XP SP2Adobe: Illustrator CS3 (13.0.2)
Is it possible to release all compound paths in an illustration at the same time (and if so - how)?
I receive drawings from engineering in either PDF or CGM format, which I edit in Illustrator and save as AI. I have to release compound paths in order to delete specific parts of the drawing.
This isn't difficult, but it is very time-consuming because the CGM(or PDF)-to-Illustrator conversion results in quite a few compound paths.
A strange thing happened just now that I don’t recall having seen before.
I have a number of simple objects, all the same fill colour, no stroke and none of them overlapping.
When I make them into a compound path they sometimes lose all their colour.
I have checked winding order, even/odd fill and that sort of thing but since none of the objects overlap, that shouldn’t make any difference anyway.
This doesn’t happen every time, so what could be causing it?
I'd like to be able to make Clipping Paths out of (unexpanded) Compound Shapes. We can't do that already.I'd also like the Expand button to work like it did in CS4 again.
View 9 Replies View RelatedDoes the scissor tool NOT work on compound paths? I am guessing it does not being it does not work when I use it on them, but the Adobe help section didn't specify.
Also, sometimes when I am using the pen tool, I will place an anchor point but it shifts away from where I want to place it. For example, I will put it at x = 72 & y = 1000 and it will place it at x = 95 & y = 1050.
I thought maybe it was from something I accidentally selected like snap to grid or point, but changing the settings does not correct the issue. I have to close out of the program and restart to fix it.
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.
Image trace shifts artwork once the trace is finished. Have to nudge art back into place each time.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'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:
I have some negative space I created(black area, see first image) that I want to fill with type, not just a simple fill.
Basically I want to create the negative space from a bunch of small minus signs(-) that need to line up as they go across. If I type on each path one at a time as the text doesn't line up that way. This needs to be one continuous path. (see second image)
Unfortunately if I add them together, it creates a compound path, which you cannot type on, unless I am mistaken? So I need them to be a path, not a compound object.
I'm clipping out a bike wheel in photoshop with path. So after 1 hour of painstaking clipping, I have a nice compound path, a large circle path with about 20 smaller closed paths to take out each spoke. Alll paths are on one path layer. In previous Photoshop versions, I can control click(PC) this path to load a compound selection which will let me to mask out the background. But in CS, after I control click(PC), it only loads the outer circular path but not the entire compound paths.
View 4 Replies View RelatedImported some type from Illustrator as a path and trying to use Repousse to make a 3D layer from it. However, the letters that are usuallu "punched out" (a,o,r,p,etc) are solid. How do you convert so that they look correct?
View 2 Replies View RelatedIllustrator cs6 - I have used image trace to create a 3 colour image of a photograph. Is there a way to create layers based on the three colours? (One layer for each of the three colours)
View 2 Replies View Relatedhow 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?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have been able to do this in the past, but today illustrator cs6 will not let me do an image trace. I go under window, then over to image trace and it shows up, but it is light and it can't be opened. I also tried going under Object, then to Image Trace and the same thing.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI'm trying to outline an image. In photoshop, I did find edges (save), then opened the image in illustrator and did image trace. I obtained a perfectly outlined image.I can't obtain the same results using illustrator image trace alone.I've adjusted the advance settings a few times to get the same result but with no luck. Threshhold and corner settings are ok, but I'm getting more paths and noise than I want, with the settings at low/1 respectively.I also tried the gray scale setting since the image is mostly gray, expand, etc, but no dice).
View 6 Replies View Relatedi used to trace QR-Code images because I often need them as scalable vector data. That worked nearly perfect in the old versions. I just had to to a little clean-up to some corners but every anchor-point was perfectliy in place. The new Tracer in CS6 places the anchor-points not at the "Black-Square-corners" of the original image. The attaced image shows the Tracer-Preview and settings. The orange points indicate the not correct traced areas.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm just now getting into using illustrator (currently on trial for illustrator cc) and I've taken a couple of my illustrations and attempted to use the image trace. The only way I can seem to get the image trace to actually produce an accurate trace is if I use a very large file size. So I take my scanned image (600 dpi 2000x 1891) and load it into illustrator, and here's where the problem comes in. Illustrator will not show my entire image on the screen. I zoom out as far as I can go and it's still cutting off the bottom and top of the image. When I try to scale the image it won't let me scale it down to even 90%.
So my question, is there anyway I can load my full size image into illustrator, image trace it, and then scale it down so I can see the whole image on my screen? It's very hard to paint and work around the image when it's getting cut off.
The first picture is what the whole picture looks like, but it's such a small file size it's blurry and won't image trace correctly.
The 2nd image is what happens when I load my full image size in, I'm scrolled as high as the page will go and the top is still cut off.
i try and use live trace in simple trace it works but if i use any of the color options to trace my image just goes white cant see a thing ?? Ive tried several different jpegs a photoshop file etc etc tried placing, importing dragging image to illustrator with the same results call adobe they want 50 bucks.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI had a lot of good presets and actions that I've come to rely on. Now that I have Illustrator CC, I'm not using it :-( because I can't find where to migrate the presets from CS6 to CC.
One in particular that I need are my Image Trace presets... I have looked for them in the Presets folder, and even tried moving the "ImageTracing.jsx" script from CS6 to CC, but I don't understand how this is supposed to work.
Presets are so much easier to handle in Photoshop!
For my work I use the Image Trace a lot. When I Image Trace something and then expand it, it shifts the art over. Every once in a while I wouldn't mind but it does it every time and I have to go back and nudge it back into place by setting the original layer as a template and then looking at it in Outline mode. Here is an example of the shift...
I never had this issue in any other version of Illustrator and I have been working with it since 8. When I have multiple items to Image Trace on one of my jobs and I Image Trace on each one individually, it does it in random directions. Sometimes down and to the right, sometimes up and to the left and sometimes it doesn't do it at all.
Here are the settings I am using...
I am image tracing 1200ppi bitmaps and I don't need it to be any more exact than it is now becuase I am then offsetting it .05" and using that as a relief for our products. But ignoring the shift would make one of our CNC machines mill through the art. Anything to stop "THE SHIFT" would be great. I am using up precious time in my pre-production schedule to be constantly doing this.
I am new to Illustrator, but know that I need to select the object I'd like to trace before using Image Trace. The problem is every time I used the selection tool, the entire picture is selected, and then traced.
View 3 Replies View RelatedWe 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:
View 1 Replies View RelatedI am trying to use Illustrator to create source files for a CNC cutting machine, it requires a single path or paths to be created and exported a as. DXF file.
The trouble I am having is that when I use image trace to create a path, I am getting multiple paths stacked. I have the image trace set to create fills.
All I do is place image, trace image with settings that give good results, expand trace, remove fill, apply stroke and save.
Is there a way to create one single path in illustrator, I am using the demo version with a view to buy but if this cannot be done then it's a non-starter.
I place the image in AI then hit the live trace button. The image changes into what appears to be vector, but remains a solid image. i.e. can not select any of the shapes or use magic wand tool?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI'm working on an assignment for my concept stratagies class were we have to design a logo for assigned company. My logo needs a brushed look to it that i could only recreate with image trace. Completely new to this technique and so is my professor. Here's the issue:
Scanned in my tight pencil logo design and saved as a jpeg since there was no other option
Opened in Illustrator and used image trace... default everything except the threshold is set to about 102 or so to get the brushy look... also it's black and white
Extracted the image which gave me the vector that i needed
Selected the whole image to change the color to red and it turned gray.... that's not what I wanted...
I need to be able to change the color of this vector by 9/18/13...
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!
View 3 Replies View Related