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Adobe Illustrator

How to Use Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator, the most popular software of creating vector, has a distinguished feature to make the raster become the vector. Live trace is easy and flexible feature to convert the simply photo to vector.

I use Adobe Illustrator to make the vector design such as making logo, pringting job, advertisign etc. Since Adobe had put this feature to Illustrator I found that it so easy to make my design is better.

Some designers may know the "Live Trace" is like "Corel Trace" in Corel Draw, and I think adobe know well what is useful for users, so they add this functionn to Adobe Illustrator immediately. Even the initial version is not perfect at all, I found that they still try to improve this feature constantly.

This tutorial is quite basic of use Live Trace feature but you need to learn some part by adjust the paramater by yourself

However, to use live trace, you should have high quality object (raster) because it would give you the better result when you convert it.

1. Choose the original photo  File > Place (This is should be good quality of raster like jpeg, gif or png.)

2. It will show your original graphic

 

3. Look for small drop down arrow between Live Trace and Mask square button then choose Tracing Options (in the bottom)

 

4.  There are many options you can test the result by click the checkbox "Preview" then choose OK or change them until you are satisfy.

 

5.  To confirm your result Choose Expand or Live Paint. (You can use whichever)

 

6. The result is black and white becuase I want to add the color by myself that you can Live Trace in the color mode automatically.

 

Source : http://creativeshooter.freehostia.com

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Can someone tell me the differences between Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator?

I use Adobe Illustrator and love it. I have never used Inkscape but am definitely considering it. I want to know what the differences are. And why is Inkscape free and Illustrator so expensive? If they are both useful for the same thing, then I find that very interesting. Also I would like to know which in your opinion is better and what you've used it for. Thanks!

Well, I've only used Inkscape, and the funny thing is I can find all sorts of info about what Inkscape can do and not much about Illustrator. The main difference I think are: Inkscape is easier to use, but Illustrator has a few more advanced tools like animation, maybe automatic 3-D effects.

I know someone who got Illustrator for $3, and they told me to use it instead of Inkscape. They said, after you figure out how to use it, it is better. Well, if I can get it for $3, maybe I'll test it out, too, but I don't want to download a gigabyte just to use a trial. (Why is it a gigabyte? More features? That is too big for any program, and what would it do to my computer?)

2.
I tried a simple test today. I created identical graphics in Inkscape and Illustrator. Both had the same canvas size, same colors, shapes and text. Here's what the simple graphic looked like:

I saved the graphic in both programs as an SVG file. Inkscape created an SVG file that was 3K; IllustratorÕs was a ridiculous 473K. I wanted to know what caused the dramatic difference.

A co-worker suggested I open the SVG files in notepad and take a look. The Illustrator file contains many lines of garbage code, whereas the Inkscape file is simple and streamlined. To quantify it, I pasted the full text file into Word and counted the lines. The Illustrator file totaled 12,512 lines while the Inkscape file was only 89.

Is this sad showing the best Illustrator can do? Fortunately for Adobe, it's not.

llustrator has hidden a very useful option in its "Save for Web" feature. In the thousands of times I've used this feature to quickly create cleanly compacted jpegs, gifs and pngs, I had never noticed that there was another option there for saving as SVG.

Select the SVG option in Illustrator's "Save for Web" screen, and the result is a streamlined SVG file that even beats Inkscape. In my test, the same graphic was saved as 2.3K and only 58 lines of code.

Conclusions: As long as you use the "Save for Web" option, both Illustrator and Inkscape do an excellent job of creating lean, developer-friendly SVG files, with a slight edge going to Illustrator. That being said, if creating SVGs is the main thing you're looking for in a vector art program, the difference isn't worth Illustrator's $599 price tag. Save your money and download Inkscape.

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