joefraga 3 Posted February 6, 2015 I have been doing alot of learning on vectoring. But I guess I still don't fully understand it. Hoping someone here may be able to explain it to me like as if I was 10 years old. Heres my issue. I am trying to take a picture of a decal and vector it so I can duplicate it for my customer. I have seen Skarekrow and Mark-s do this several times and it always comes out so clean where as mine do not. Here is a sample of what I am trying to do and my outcome. I use the magic wand in PS 6 and copy it into AI 6. Image trace and expand. What am I missing? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MZ SKEETER 4,709 Posted February 6, 2015 I just read last night that CS6 is not all that great.. http://forum.uscutter.com/index.php?/topic/47918-image-trace-in-cs6-vs/ Maybe you need to try another vectoring software... I have read that SCALP has a pretty good vectoring tool, as well as many use inkscape.org which is FREE and a lot use it... I think you can try Vector Magic a few times on trial... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mb20music 760 Posted February 6, 2015 The quality of the image you are trying to trace is very important. The image you posted is very poor quality. You need a higher resolution image for a good outcome. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wildgoose 4,200 Posted February 6, 2015 I don't go about it the same as Scarecrow but can tell you how I would do this one. The wording is a font and any kind of text is hard to get a clean trace on so i would figure out what font that is and the re-create it. (On more complex things that aren't words this won't work) I would bring the pic into AI and rotate it until the text is running flat and then type out the text over the top (lock the pic first and I like to reduce the opacity of the pic to about 50% too) Once you type the text you may have to adjust the learning or spacing to get it to look the same or similar. If you can't quite get it to space correctly you can still maneuver it in the next step. Cover the text to outlines (Shift/cntrl/O) and then if you need to move any of the letters you can ungroup it and select things and drag them around. At this point you just need to draw a line across the bottom and add stroke until it is the correct width and choose round ends rather than square and then expand the appearance. After that select the text, (not the line) use cntrl>8 or object>compound path>make and then go to object>path>offset and choose a number that you think will be about the amount that is cut out of the line. Using the preview will let you adjust the offset until it creates an new object that is the distance of the space around the letters. Change the color of the new object/outline to something else so you don't get confused which level it is at and bring it to the front of the layer stack either by using object>arrange>bring to front or just grab it in the layers panel and move it up to the top of the stack. At this point select the object and also the line which should be below it in the stack and use the minus front option in the pathfinder toolbox which will remove the outlined object you created along with the portions of the line that it was covering which will create the space that you want around the letters. You are done. If you are doing a design rather than text then you either have to trace it with the live trace options (I rarely do this) or trace it by hand which may take longer but gives you the results you want because you actually draw the lines. Same concept as putting the text on the pic. Load a pic reduce the opacity and lock it then you can draw right over the top. There are some skills you will need to learn about how to turn the tracing into a compound shape but my fingers are tired of typing. You can learn a lot of these by watching youtube or reading more in the Illustrator section of the forum. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mark-s 1,126 Posted February 6, 2015 Gelatina Elemente Regular is the font mark-s 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MZ SKEETER 4,709 Posted February 6, 2015 There ya go Apex Decals a BIG helping hand from Mark-s 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Wildgoose 4,200 Posted February 6, 2015 Here is a little more help. I went ahead and built it so you can compare your results. BTW your pic was skewed so the final product would be skewed if you auto traced it. For information purposes this took about 10-15 minutes to do. Took longer to go find the font that mark so graciously called (spot on as usual) and load it up than to do the rest. Heroin Kills.svg 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
joefraga 3 Posted February 6, 2015 Wild Goose, Thank you! That was such a big help. Normally I do just go looking for the font and recreate it but figured I would try vectoring it for the practice. Again I appreciate all the help! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
