IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi there! My name is Justin Seeley, and
I'm a staff author here at Lynda.com.
| | 00:08 | I want to welcome you to this course on
Tracing Artwork with Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:11 | Tracing Artwork is an essential
part of any designer's workflow.
| | 00:15 | We're going to start off with some core
tracing concepts, wherein I help you set
| | 00:18 | your expectations for what Illustrator
is actually capable of, and I'll walk you
| | 00:22 | through some of the most common
tracing scenarios that you might encounter in
| | 00:26 | the real world as well.
| | 00:27 | From there, I'll walk you through my
personal workflows when it comes to
| | 00:30 | cleaning up your raster graphics for
better tracing results, and scanning
| | 00:33 | original artwork and
getting it into Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:36 | Next up, we'll dive into using
Illustrator's image trace feature, and I'll
| | 00:39 | also show you how to finalize those tracings,
and turn pixels into live editable paths.
| | 00:43 | We'll turn a sketch into
Vector artwork from scratch.
| | 00:47 | We'll also build a logo from a photograph,
and we'll create a pop art style poster.
| | 00:52 | By the end of this course, you should
have all the information you need to
| | 00:55 | recreate almost any piece of
artwork that's put in front of you.
| | 00:58 | Let's jump right in, and begin
this course on Tracing Artwork with
| | 01:01 | Adobe Illustrator.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of the
Lynda.com Online Training Library, you have
| | 00:04 | access to the exercise files
for this course.
| | 00:06 | That means that as we are going
through the course, you'll be able to follow
| | 00:10 | along with the exact same
files you see me using on screen.
| | 00:13 | In order to access the exercise
files, simply download them from the
| | 00:16 | Lynda.com Web site, and then navigate to the
folder for each chapter as you are watching them.
| | 00:20 | You'll also notice that as you watch
a movie that an overlay will appear
| | 00:24 | indicating which file you should
have open during that exercise.
| | 00:26 | If you're not a premium member, that's
okay. You can still follow along using
| | 00:29 | your own files with no problem.
All right!
| | 00:31 | Now that you've got your
exercises ready to go, let's get going.
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|
|
1. Core Tracing ConceptsSetting your expectations| 00:00 | Before getting started with Tracing
Artwork in Adobe Illustrator, it's important
| | 00:03 | for you to understand Illustrator's
limitations when it comes to tracing, so that
| | 00:07 | you can adjust your expectations
accordingly to exactly what it is that you're
| | 00:10 | going to be creating throughout this
course, and in your everyday workflow.
| | 00:14 | Even though Illustrator has one of
the most powerful tracing engines on the
| | 00:16 | market, there are still some
things that it just can't do.
| | 00:19 | For example, Illustrator can trace text,
but chances are, it's not going to look
| | 00:24 | picture perfect each and every time.
| | 00:26 | You're going to have to go in and do some
final tweaks in order to get it just right.
| | 00:30 | Let's take a look at this artboard
here, for instance, and by the way, in
| | 00:34 | the document that I have open,
I'm going to be transitioning form
| | 00:37 | artboard to artboard.
| | 00:38 | If you want to follow along with me,
just open up your Artboards panel, and then
| | 00:42 | double-click each one of
these artboards as I go.
| | 00:44 | I'll show you how I do that as we go along.
| | 00:47 | So, what we've got here is just a piece
of artwork here on an artboard, and I've
| | 00:51 | traced it. It's just a drawing that I
brought into Illustrator of a logo, and
| | 00:55 | what I want to do here is
just take a look at the text.
| | 00:58 | And as you can see, while it did a
great job of doing the trace around the
| | 01:03 | overall shapes of the text, it
really is not usable text at all.
| | 01:06 | I'm really going to have to go in
here and do some serious cleanup work.
| | 01:10 | So, it's very important that I understand
how to use tools like the Pen tool, the
| | 01:14 | Direct Selection tool, and all those
different kinds of things, so that I can make
| | 01:18 | this a usable piece of artwork.
| | 01:19 | This is just a great jumping off point in
terms of where I need to start for this project.
| | 01:24 | It should also be noted that by
tracing text, you are not going to be getting
| | 01:28 | editable text as a result.
| | 01:29 | When you trace, you're merely getting a
vector representation of what Illustrator
| | 01:32 | sees on the screen. There's really no
way for Illustrator to know whether or not
| | 01:36 | something is text, because all it can
see when it comes to bitmap objects like
| | 01:40 | this are shapes and lines.
| | 01:41 | So, if I zoom in on this, this is another
logo concept, and as you can see, it's a
| | 01:46 | scanned in piece of artwork, and if I
click on it, you can actually see that it's
| | 01:50 | not editable at all right now,
because I haven't traced it.
| | 01:53 | If I go up to the Image Trace panel and
I go in and let's just do something like
| | 01:57 | Black and White Logo, it's going to do
its best to trace this, and it's not going
| | 02:02 | to look very good from the start.
| | 02:03 | Well, once it does trace it, in your
head you might be thinking, Oh, I can just
| | 02:08 | grab the Text tool, and I can touch up
this text, but you'll notice it does not
| | 02:12 | give you a live text cursor.
I can't do anything with that.
| | 02:15 | And it doesn't matter how
you adjust the tracing at all.
| | 02:18 | If I open up the tracing presets,
and change this to something even like
| | 02:21 | Grayscale, so that it picks up more of
the detail of the text, it's still not
| | 02:25 | going to give me live
editable text at all.
| | 02:27 | So, what I'm going to have to do is
find a way to recreate this text in some
| | 02:32 | way, shape, or form.
| | 02:33 | And so, once it finishes here, you can
see that even though I've picked up more
| | 02:37 | of this information, I still cannot
come out here and click anywhere. If I
| | 02:40 | choose to click, it's just going to
start with the blank cursor, and I'll just be
| | 02:44 | able to type, just like so. So,
it's not live editable text at all.
| | 02:48 | Let's move on here. And while it's
possible to trace photographs with
| | 02:51 | Illustrator, the end result
will never be "photo quality".
| | 02:53 | Photographs look like photographs,
because of the way that pixels behave and
| | 02:56 | interact with one another, but in
Illustrator, we're not dealing with pixels,
| | 02:59 | we're dealing with
vector paths and shapes.
| | 03:01 | Therefore, a photo can look pretty good, but
it won't ever look as good as the original.
| | 03:05 | But in most cases, you probably aren't
going for photorealism in Illustrator
| | 03:08 | anyway, so this won't
necessarily a deal breaker for you.
| | 03:11 | But let's take a look at this photo
here, if I were to image trace this, and
| | 03:15 | let's do it at the highest quality possible.
| | 03:17 | Let's just go in here, and let's pick a
Preset here like High Fidelity Photo.
| | 03:21 | When I do that, Illustrator is going
to warn me that this might be slow, and
| | 03:25 | that's okay. Just hit Do not show again,
because this is just going to pop up when
| | 03:29 | I do this every time, and then hit OK.
| | 03:31 | It may take a while to process, but
just wait for it to finish, and then take
| | 03:35 | a look at the result.
| | 03:36 | Now, once that process is finished, I'm
going to go ahead and take my Zoom tool,
| | 03:40 | and let's zoom in on this photo.
| | 03:42 | And you can see that it's
done a pretty decent job.
| | 03:45 | This looks relatively photorealistic,
but if I get right in here, you can
| | 03:48 | actually see some of the chunkiness that
starts to happen in and around the face.
| | 03:52 | Now, this was a very high resolution,
high quality photo when I started, but now
| | 03:56 | I've got sort of this mosaic look
about it, and it's kind of a great way to
| | 04:00 | create stylized looks, and things
like that, but it's not the best.
| | 04:03 | It's not something that you're going
to be able to take a photo, put it into
| | 04:07 | Illustrator, and then
turn it into a vector photo.
| | 04:09 | There's no such thing as a vector photo,
so you won't be able to blow this up, and
| | 04:14 | make it look like it was an
actual photograph at any size.
| | 04:17 | So again, it's just about adjusting
your expectations, and seeing exactly what
| | 04:20 | Illustrator is capable of, and
exactly what it's not capable of as well.
| | 04:23 | So, at the end of the day, basically
what I'm trying to tell you is there is no
| | 04:27 | easy button when it comes
to tracing artwork.
| | 04:29 | Sure, there are tools that will get you
anywhere form 50 to 70% of the way there, and
| | 04:33 | the Image Trace panel is a very powerful
tool that will do that, but in the end,
| | 04:38 | you still need to know how to use editing
tools to make up for that last bit of
| | 04:42 | work that needs to be done.
| | 04:44 | You have to understand that this isn't
a 10 second, or even a 10 minute process.
| | 04:47 | In most cases, you'll spend a few
hours getting everything just right.
| | 04:50 | Hopefully, by the end of this course,
I will have given you the necessary
| | 04:54 | knowledge and skills that you need
to make it go as smoothly as possible.
| | 04:57 | But in any case, just slow down, take
your time, analyze your artwork, and do
| | 04:59 | the best job that you can with the
tools that you're given, and then make up the
| | 05:01 | rest of the way with the other tools,
like the Pen tool, the Direct Selection
| | 05:03 | tool, and all of the vector editing
tools that are available to you here inside
| | 05:06 | of Adobe Illustrator.
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| Exploring common tracing scenarios| 00:00 | There are many reasons as to why you
would want to recreate or trace artwork
| | 00:03 | inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:05 | but you might not be aware of all
these reasons, so in this movie, I'm going
| | 00:08 | to be walking you through some of the basic
scenarios that I've encountered over the years.
| | 00:12 | The first is an obvious one, and it's
one that we as designers have to deal with
| | 00:17 | all the time: the hand-drawn sketch.
| | 00:18 | This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Most designers I know do their best work on
| | 00:22 | a napkin before they
even turn their computer on.
| | 00:24 | But turning your sketch into a usable
piece of artwork is a whole other story,
| | 00:28 | so in Illustrator, we want to take
something like this scanned in piece of
| | 00:31 | artwork, and transform it into
something usable that can be scaled infinitely
| | 00:34 | using vector-based design.
| | 00:36 | If you're into the fashion world, you
know how common it is for designers to
| | 00:40 | sketch out their latest
ideas on paper, like this.
| | 00:43 | However, in a modern workflow, fashion
designers are turning to apps like Adobe
| | 00:46 | Illustrator more and more
to get the job done faster.
| | 00:49 | Taking your idea, and transforming it
into a digital piece of art that your
| | 00:53 | can edit and modify as needed can be
a huge productivity booster, and using
| | 00:57 | Illustrator for your fashion designs can
really open up a whole new world of possibilities.
| | 01:02 | The next one is something I am sure most of
us have encountered at one point or another.
| | 01:07 | Let's just say that a client comes
to you, and says, I need a new logo, and
| | 01:11 | they want it to look something like
something they saw on another Web site, or
| | 01:14 | they want it to look something like
something they saw in a magazine, or
| | 01:18 | something to that effect.
| | 01:19 | Then, of course, they send you, inevitably,
a low resolution JPEG example of what
| | 01:25 | they're looking for.
Ugh.
| | 01:27 | This is where your
Illustrator wizardry comes in handy.
| | 01:31 | By being able to take this piece
of artwork, and transforming it into
| | 01:35 | something usable for both you, and
your client, you are able to make both of
| | 01:39 | your lives a whole lot easier.
| | 01:40 | So, in this example here, let's
say that the client sent me this low
| | 01:43 | resolution JPEG of these house icons.
Maybe they are a realtor, for instance,
| | 01:47 | and they're saying, okay, I need a new
logo, and I want it to look like one of
| | 01:51 | these little houses here.
| | 01:52 | Well, you could just trace these little
houses by using the Auto-trace feature,
| | 01:56 | and then spend, you know, a few hours
cleaning it up, and making it look all
| | 01:59 | perfect, or you could just take a look
at this, and see, you know what, these
| | 02:02 | are all just basic shapes.
| | 02:04 | They're all just triangles,
and rectangles, and circles.
| | 02:07 | And so, therefore, you could start to
build this little piece of artwork right
| | 02:11 | here, just by using some basic shapes,
and putting them in the right spot.
| | 02:15 | And so that's hopefully what I'm
going to be able to convey to you
| | 02:18 | throughout this course.
| | 02:19 | Finally, we have the
photo to vector workflow.
| | 02:23 | This is where, for whatever reason,
you're asked to transform a photograph into a
| | 02:26 | vector piece of art.
| | 02:28 | This could be for a
variety of different reasons.
| | 02:30 | Photos make great stylized clipart
pieces, and they can also be used as a base
| | 02:34 | for logo elements, social media avatars,
and a wide variety of other projects.
| | 02:38 | While you won't be getting a pixel
for pixel rendering when you trace these
| | 02:42 | photos, you can come pretty darn close,
| | 02:44 | and with that, you can create
some really awesome artwork.
| | 02:47 | There are many more possibilities and
reasons as to why you would need to trace
| | 02:52 | or recreate artwork in illustrator.
| | 02:54 | These are just some of the more common
ones that I've encountered over the years.
| | 02:57 | In any case, I hope I've given you a
good idea as to the why aspect of why you
| | 03:02 | would want to learn these techniques,
| | 03:04 | and now let's start to focus a
little bit about on the how aspect on
| | 03:08 | the equation.
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| Analyzing existing artwork| 00:00 | Before you start tracing any type of
artwork in Illustrator, it's a good idea to
| | 00:03 | analyze that artwork, so that you can
get a better idea of exactly what you're
| | 00:07 | going to do with it once
you get it into Illustrator.
| | 00:10 | This is the first step in creating
what I call a tracing plan, and it's an
| | 00:14 | essential part of the tracing workflow.
| | 00:15 | When we're analyzing artwork,
we're looking for three basic things.
| | 00:18 | Number one, we're looking to see if the
object that we're tracing has any text in it.
| | 00:22 | Number two, we're seeing, does the
artwork that we're tracing contain any shapes
| | 00:25 | that I can easily recreate with Illustrator
shape tools? And number three, does
| | 00:29 | the artwork look clean enough to trace
without any further editing in an app
| | 00:33 | like Photoshop, for instance?
| | 00:34 | Once we've determine these three things, we
can begin to formulate our tracing plan.
| | 00:39 | Now, I'm going to go into detail about my
tracing plan a little bit later, but now
| | 00:43 | let's just talk about how
we can analyze some artwork.
| | 00:46 | So, in the Exercise Files folder, if you
have access to those, go into the analyze
| | 00:50 | folder, and let's take a
look at logo01, and logo02.
| | 00:52 | I'm just going to open these up temporarily
on the Mac by pressing Spacebar.
| | 00:56 | You can also just double-click them to
launch your default image editing application.
| | 00:59 | And so, once I open this up, I'm going
to take a look at it, and I'm just going
| | 01:02 | to analyze the different areas of this
logo, and see exactly what it is that I
| | 01:08 | can recreate easily, and what's
going to take me a little bit more time.
| | 01:10 | So, in this case these things right here,
these little flares over here on the
| | 01:15 | left hand side; I think I can easily
recreate those using the shape tools in
| | 01:19 | Illustrator, because these are nothing
more than circles that appears to me, or
| | 01:22 | at least some form of the distorted
circle that I can then layer together, and
| | 01:26 | then use the Shape Builder tool to
recreate this shape just as it appears here.
| | 01:30 | Then I can use transparency and
other things to make this interlocking
| | 01:33 | pattern down here at the bottom.
| | 01:34 | So, I'm fairly certain that this is
going to be easy to recreate using shapes.
| | 01:38 | We'll find out a little bit later, but
at least I can mark that off my list of
| | 01:42 | things that I need to recreate
inside of this piece of artwork.
| | 01:45 | Now, the text itself, the first thing I
need to do is determine, okay, is this
| | 01:49 | text going to be easily recreated in
vector format by just using the Image
| | 01:53 | Trace panel in Illustrator?
| | 01:55 | Chances are no, it's not.
| | 01:57 | There's a lot of extra sketchy parts
to this text, there's a lot of lines
| | 02:01 | that don't need to be there,
| | 02:02 | and so this serves as a great template
for where the text needs to go, but it's
| | 02:07 | not going to be easily recreated with
just vectorizing it using image trace.
| | 02:11 | Now, could I use the Pen
tool, and recreate this text?
| | 02:14 | Yes, I could in theory, but then again,
the Pen tool is probably not going to
| | 02:18 | be as fast, and probably not going to be as
accurate as just simply resetting the type.
| | 02:22 | So, what I need to do with the type is
figure out whether or not this text is
| | 02:27 | something that I have in my font
portfolio on my computer already.
| | 02:31 | I can reach out to the person that
designed it, or if I'm the person that
| | 02:34 | designed it, I can determine
exactly what font needs to be use there.
| | 02:37 | Same holds true for this small text
down here. Can it be easily recreated in
| | 02:41 | vector format? Yes it can.
| | 02:42 | Is it going to look as
good as it does here?
| | 02:45 | Absolutely not, because it's so small, it's
just not going to be picked up very well.
| | 02:49 | Now, let's open up logo02, and I'm
just going to temporarily open that up.
| | 02:53 | This one is going to be even
easier to recreate than the other one.
| | 02:56 | Once I get the text set the way I need
it to be -- again, that's kind of a whole
| | 03:01 | different animal -- but the rest of
this is nothing more than a couple of
| | 03:03 | rectangles that has been skewed a little
bit to the right. I can easily recreate
| | 03:08 | those by using the shape
tools inside of Illustrator.
| | 03:11 | So, I've already gotten marks on here
indicating exactly how tall they need to
| | 03:15 | be, and then all I have to do is set
up a rectangle to be exactly that tall,
| | 03:19 | approximate the width, and then I
can skew them and adjust the size
| | 03:22 | accordingly afterwards.
| | 03:23 | So, by taking inventory of the artwork
that you are going to be "vectorizing"
| | 03:28 | before you get into Illustrator, you can
actually formulate a very decent plan
| | 03:32 | of attack when it comes to turning a sketch,
like what you see here, into usable vector art.
| | 03:38 | So, the next time you start off with a
project like this, I recommend that you
| | 03:42 | go in and analyze the artwork extensively.
| | 03:45 | Write down on a piece of paper, or
keep notes in a notepad document, or
| | 03:48 | something like that to let you know
exactly what it is you are working with,
| | 03:51 | what parts are going to take up the
most of your time, and where you need to
| | 03:55 | focus most of your attention.
| | 03:56 | You'll be really glad you did, because
it's going to make this process go that
| | 04:00 | much smoother in the future.
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| Scanning original artwork| 00:00 | Chances are there's going to come a
time when you receive a graphic from
| | 00:03 | somebody that's been sketched on a
napkin, or a piece of paper, or if you're as
| | 00:06 | lucky as I was, you might even get
a patch off of an old baseball cap,
| | 00:10 | and you'll be expected to somehow
transform that into a usable piece of vector
| | 00:14 | artwork for a logo, or business card, or
whatever it is that your client might
| | 00:18 | be asking you to do.
| | 00:20 | When this happens, what you'll need
to know is how to scan this artwork
| | 00:23 | into your computer, and how to
optimize that scan for the best possible
| | 00:26 | tracing results later on.
| | 00:28 | So, here I am inside of Photoshop, and
what we're going to do here is we're going
| | 00:31 | to scan in some artwork.
| | 00:32 | I've got a scanner attached to my
computer, and I'm just going to import a
| | 00:34 | scanned image in here.
| | 00:35 | I don't expect you to follow along
with this necessarily, unless you have a
| | 00:38 | scanner, but eventually, when you run
into this problem, hopefully I will
| | 00:40 | give you some insight in this movie
on how to best deal with artwork when
| | 00:44 | you're scanning it in.
| | 00:47 | So, let's go up to the File menu here,
and let's go down to Import, and I'm going
| | 00:49 | to choose Images from Device. And as
long as you have a scanner hooked up that
| | 00:53 | uses this command, you should
be able to launch up, and do this.
| | 00:55 | And so, in this case, what I'm going to
do is I'm going to make sure that I'm
| | 01:00 | working on Black & White, because I
don't need to get any shades of color. I
| | 01:03 | just want to work in terms of shades of
gray, especially when I'm working with
| | 01:06 | hand drawn sketches.
| | 01:07 | Now, if I was working with something
like a photograph, or a colored piece of
| | 01:09 | artwork that I really wanted to sample
the colors from, or something like that,
| | 01:14 | then I would switch this over to color,
but in this case, it's just a sketch
| | 01:17 | black and white logo concept, and so
nine times out of ten probably what
| | 01:20 | you're going to be dealing with;
| | 01:22 | something that's somebody sketched,
and brought to you, and you're scanning
| | 01:26 | it in to get a little bit better result, or to
refine it, and turn it into actual usable art.
| | 01:30 | So, Black & White is
usually the way to go.
| | 01:32 | For the Grays, in this case, you have
256, or Thousands. I think 256 is fine.
| | 01:36 | Resolution is the big one.
| | 01:37 | So, for Resolution, I would recommend
getting anywhere between 300 and 400 pixels
| | 01:42 | per inch, or dots per inch, in this case.
| | 01:45 | And I say that, because the higher the
DPI, the more likely you are to pick up
| | 01:50 | those subtle little markings that are
put down by pencils, because if you're
| | 01:55 | dealing with hand drawn sketches,
chances are, some of the more fine details
| | 01:57 | aren't going to be picked
by lower resolution scans.
| | 02:00 | So, in this case, I'm going to push
this up all the way to a 400 DPI.
| | 02:04 | Now, for this, it's also using a custom
size, and it's also set to Detect Separate
| | 02:08 | Items, and that's fine, but I want to
make sure that this bounding box includes
| | 02:11 | all of the information in the scan.
| | 02:13 | So, I don't want to miss any of these
lines, or anything like that, so I'm
| | 02:16 | just going to enlarge it a little bit until
everything that I need is included in there.
| | 02:21 | And so, once I have that done, I'm
going to set it to Scan To my Desktop. I'm
| | 02:25 | going to call it logo_scan.
| | 02:28 | It's going to be a JPEG. I'm going to
create a new Photoshop document out of it.
| | 02:30 | There's all different types of
things you can do here. You can do Unsharp
| | 02:32 | Mask, and things like that, but I'm not
worried about any of this stuff right now,
| | 02:36 | because I can always fix a lot
of this stuff after I get it in.
| | 02:39 | So, the first thing I want
to do is Overview scan it.
| | 02:42 | Once that scans out, you might get an
extra bounding box around that, and that is
| | 02:45 | okay, and all you've got to do here
is just adjust accordingly, like so.
| | 02:54 | So, just make this subtle adjustment to
get everything in there, and then what
| | 03:00 | we're going to do here is, once we
have that done, I'm going to click Scan.
| | 03:08 | Once the scan is finished, as you can
see here, I've got two documents. That's
| | 03:11 | because there were two
bounding boxes for whatever reason.
| | 03:13 | So, I can just close the one that I
don't want; in this case, it's this one,
| | 03:17 | because it kind of cuts off, so I'm
just going to close that up, and here's the
| | 03:19 | one that actually includes all of the
different sketch items that I needed.
| | 03:24 | So, in this case, I want to rotate it
around, so I'm going to go to Image > Image
| | 03:29 | Rotation, and I'm just going to
rotate it, and I'm going to rotate it
| | 03:29 | counterclockwise to get it
straight up and down like I need it to go.
| | 03:33 | And so, once I have that in here, I can
sort of zoom in on it, because right now
| | 03:36 | I'm only at 25%, and you can see
just how detailed this sketch goes.
| | 03:40 | So, this is at a 100%, you can see all
those subtle areas of gray that I've
| | 03:44 | picked up; areas that I'm going to be
able to use in my Illustrator tracing once
| | 03:49 | I've got it out of
Photoshop, and into Illustrator.
| | 03:53 | So, what I'm going to do here is I'm
going to save this out as a Photoshop
| | 03:57 | document, and then we're going to
place that Photoshop document into an
| | 04:00 | Illustrator document a little bit
later on, so that we can then access
| | 04:04 | this any time we want.
| | 04:06 | We can update it in Photoshop, it will
update in Illustrator; it's going to be
| | 04:08 | a great one-two combination, where we'll
be able to make edits of this inside of
| | 04:11 | Photoshop, and it will reflect over in Illustrator.
It's going to be a great little workflow tool.
| | 04:15 | So, let's go back and fit that into the
Window. I'll just use Command+0 or Ctrl+0
| | 04:18 | to fit that, so I can see it.
| | 04:20 | And then I'm just going to Save it, and
I'll just save this out onto my Desktop
| | 04:27 | as a Photoshop file, and I'm going
to call this cleanup, and hit Save.
| | 04:34 | And so that's basically all there is to
it when you're scanning an artwork into
| | 04:38 | Photoshop, and then put it into Illustrator.
| | 04:39 | Now, if for some reason this was
crooked, or anything like that, you could use
| | 04:43 | Photoshop's tools to kind of straighten
it out, or whatever it is you need to do.
| | 04:47 | But I think it did a pretty good
job of getting everything straight.
| | 04:48 | If you want to check that, all you have
to do is just grab some of Photoshop's
| | 04:51 | tools, like the Ruler tool, and see
exactly how straight, or how crooked it is.
| | 04:54 | You can adjust that with the Crop tool,
or whatever you need to do, and you can
| | 05:00 | also spend a lot of time in here
cleaning this thing up, so that it does a little
| | 05:02 | bit better in the tracing as well.
| | 05:04 | I'm going to talk about how to clean
up raster artwork in a future movie, but
| | 05:07 | for now, I just wanted to give you a
better understanding of how to get artwork
| | 05:10 | from a physical piece of paper, or a
napkin, or the patch off of an old hat, and get
| | 05:17 | it into Photoshop, so that you can start
to clean it up, and make it more usable
| | 05:20 | for a trace in Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up raster artwork| 00:00 | Once you've gotten your artwork scanned
into Photoshop, or you simply receive a
| | 00:03 | file from somebody that's been
scanned in, or otherwise transformed into a
| | 00:07 | digital format, you're undoubtedly
going to need to do some cleanup work to it.
| | 00:11 | This means that you're going to be
using some of the tools inside of Photoshop,
| | 00:15 | or whatever your chosen image editor is,
to cleanup the artwork, and make it look
| | 00:19 | its best before you put it into an
Illustrator document for tracing.
| | 00:22 | So, a couple of things that we're
looking for here is we want to make sure that
| | 00:26 | if we are scanning in just a black and
white logo like you see here, that we
| | 00:30 | make this as clean as possible.
| | 00:32 | So, the goal here is to make the logo,
or the artwork, or whatever it is that
| | 00:36 | you're bringing out of Photoshop, and
into Illustrator, you want it to be nice,
| | 00:40 | clean, and sharp, so that you are able to
easily trace that, or recreate it using a
| | 00:44 | variety of different
tools inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:46 | So, for this particular piece of artwork,
a couple of things that we would like
| | 00:49 | to do here is clean up the shapes that
we're working with, and also remove some
| | 00:53 | of the sketchy lines.
| | 00:54 | We can do a lot of this through some just
some simple Levels commands inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:58 | So, what I am going to do here is
I'm just going to bring up the Levels
| | 01:03 | command by using Command+L or Ctrl+L
on my keyboard, and what I'm going to do
| | 01:07 | is I'm just going to punch up the
highlights on this, and I'm also going to
| | 01:11 | bring down the midtones.
| | 01:12 | As you can see, this is making it
pretty easy for me to see the basic shapes
| | 01:14 | that I'm going to need to
recreate inside of Illustrator.
| | 01:17 | It is also getting rid of a lot of the
extra gray noise that might be present
| | 01:23 | inside of this document.
| | 01:24 | Now, I don't want to push this too much,
because I can get some serious artifacts
| | 01:28 | going on in here, but I think pushing
it where I get a nice clean line all the
| | 01:32 | way around the outside of the main
areas of the artwork is pretty good.
| | 01:36 | Now, I might decrease the highlight
punch just a little bit to bring back
| | 01:39 | some of the detail.
| | 01:40 | You notice, as I drag this to the left,
look down in here in this region.
| | 01:44 | Watch how much detail I
lose by pushing this too far.
| | 01:46 | If I bring some of that back, I get a
better understanding of what these shapes
| | 01:51 | are actually suppose to be, and I
also bring back some of the type.
| | 01:54 | And so for this, I think 0.45 for the midtones,
and 227 for the highlight works pretty well.
| | 01:57 | You could also just use these little
sampling tools over here. So, you can click
| | 02:00 | somewhere where you want it to be pure
white. You can click somewhere where you
| | 02:04 | want it to be pure black.
| | 02:07 | That works out really well as well.
| | 02:09 | Now, once you have this done,
you hit OK.
| | 02:09 | Now, the problem with using just the
regular Levels command inside of here is
| | 02:14 | that it's a static change, it's
nothing that you can come back and fix later.
| | 02:18 | So for instance, if I hit OK
right here, it's done, it's over with.
| | 02:21 | Now, I can hit Command+Z immediately to
undo it, and it goes back to its original
| | 02:24 | state, but if I happened to save it in
that state, and then exit out, and try to
| | 02:28 | come back and fix it later, I can't.
So, rather than just doing a static
| | 02:34 | adjustment with the Levels command,
let's come down here and do something with
| | 02:37 | the Adjustment layer.
| | 02:39 | So, let's go down here at the Adjustment
Layer icon, and let's choose Levels, and
| | 02:41 | that's going to bring up the levels.
| | 02:43 | And remember here, let's just
remember those that we had before.
| | 02:45 | Let's take that down to about 0.45
something like that and this was about at
| | 02:52 | 227, something like that.
| | 02:57 | So, it's the same effect essentially,
but as soon as I close the Properties
| | 03:01 | panel, I see it, it's there, but I
can turn it off and on anytime I want.
| | 03:05 | And then if I got this into Illustrator
as a PSD file, and then wanted to come
| | 03:09 | back and make changes to it,
I could certainly do so.
| | 03:12 | So, in this case, if I double-click, I
can always go back in and make changes to
| | 03:16 | this. So, if I want to punch that
shadows a little bit more, if I think, man, I
| | 03:21 | need to bring back some
midtone detail, I can decrease that.
| | 03:24 | I mean, there are all different types of
things that I can do with this in order
| | 03:28 | to make it look its best for
when it gets into Illustrator.
| | 03:30 | So, in this case, I think I'll punch
the Shadows maybe something like 20. There
| | 03:34 | we go, and then let's close
that up, and there we have it.
| | 03:37 | So we've got some nice, really clean,
well-defined lines, there's still some
| | 03:40 | stuff in here that I
might want to clean up, though.
| | 03:42 | So for this, I'm going to zoom in, and
then I'm simply going to switch over to
| | 03:45 | the Eraser tool for this.
| | 03:47 | So, I'm going to switch over to the
Eraser tool by pressing letter E, and then I
| | 03:50 | want to make sure I'm working
on the Background layer here.
| | 03:52 | And what I want to do is just start to
erase some of this extra stuff that's in
| | 03:57 | here, and this could be a long or short
process, depending on how much time you
| | 04:00 | have, and how much time you're willing
to spend on it, but this is just extra
| | 04:04 | noise that you won't have to deal
with once you get inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:08 | So, I've got a really small brush and
I'm just cleaning up these little areas
| | 04:10 | here to get all of the
extra stuff out of the way.
| | 04:13 | Now, this is going to be very helpful
for me because, A, it's going to be paths
| | 04:17 | that I don't have to clean up later in
Illustrator using something like the Pen
| | 04:20 | tool, and it's also going to make for a
much cleaner trace when I use the
| | 04:24 | autotrace feature to get
this whole thing started.
| | 04:27 | So, I'm just going through and I'm
making these small adjustments all through
| | 04:30 | here. Anywhere that I see that I
need to remove anything, I can do that.
| | 04:34 | I can also go in and I can use the Pencil
tool to sort of enhance certain lines as well.
| | 04:39 | So, if I wanted to grab, let's say, the
Pencil tool over here, and then make sure
| | 04:44 | my foreground color is set to black, I
can come in here, and I can start to sort
| | 04:47 | of brush up on these.
| | 04:49 | Now, I might want to increase the size
of my brush just a little bit, and then
| | 04:51 | just sort of put in a line.
| | 04:53 | You can hold down the Shift key to make
sure you're drawing a straight line all
| | 04:57 | the way down, and so I could
just come in here, Shift, and draw.
| | 05:01 | You can see the nice little dark lines
that I am able to create here. So, it's
| | 05:04 | actually really good,
| | 05:08 | as I am going around this thing, just to
kind of enhance the lines a little bit.
| | 05:11 | Now, obviously, these lines did not need
that much enhancing, so I could step back
| | 05:14 | on these, but just the ones that might
be a little faint, the ones that I might
| | 05:18 | need a little bit of work on, like
right here, for instance, I might click and
| | 05:23 | then Shift+Click down to make that, and
you just have to line it up properly to
| | 05:26 | get it exactly like you want it to go.
| | 05:28 | But cleaning up these lines is a
very, very necessary part of this.
| | 05:32 | So, I'll just go back through, I'll grab
my Eraser tool again, and zoom back, and
| | 05:35 | let's just clean up some
more of these really quickly.
| | 05:38 | So, I'll erase this one.
| | 05:40 | Anything that doesn't have anything
to do with the shapes that I need is
| | 05:44 | basically what I'm
trying to remove here,
| | 05:46 | and so most of these guidelines
I'm going to try and get rid of.
| | 05:48 | Now, I'm not going to spend a whole lot
of time on this, and make you watch me
| | 05:51 | remove all these lines, but just know
that what we're doing is just cleaning
| | 05:54 | up the basic areas that we think we
need to clean. And notice I'm leaving
| | 05:59 | these shapes, the big squares that have been
sort of tilted over; I'm leaving those alone.
| | 06:04 | I'm just removing the guidelines around
the text, so that it's easier for me, once
| | 06:07 | I start either resetting the text, or
recreating the text, for me to go in, and
| | 06:11 | actually see what those
shapes actually are.
| | 06:13 | So, like I said, you can spend as much
time or as little time on this as you
| | 06:18 | want, but in the end, if you take the
time to clean up your artwork inside of a
| | 06:21 | program like Photoshop, or any other
image editing program, it's going to serve
| | 06:25 | you really well, because it's going to
allow you to then have a much cleaner
| | 06:28 | trace whenever you start it
inside of Adobe Illustrator.
| | 06:31 | So, from here what you would do
is just save this as a PSD file.
| | 06:35 | So, just File > Save. and once you save it,
it's now ready to be placed inside of an
| | 06:39 | Illustrator document, where you can
test it out, see how good the trace is, and
| | 06:43 | you can always come back in, and
make modifications to this later on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding tracing terminology| 00:00 | As we continue to explore the tracing
capabilities of Adobe Illustrator, it's
| | 00:03 | important for you to understand some
basic terminology that I'll be using as I
| | 00:07 | describe certain operations associated
with Illustrator's image trace feature.
| | 00:12 | In this document I have open here,
I have five artboards, each of which
| | 00:15 | represent one of the terms that
I'm going to be talking about.
| | 00:17 | In order to follow along, all you have
to do is open up your Artboards panel --
| | 00:21 | you can do that by going to Window, and
selecting Artboards -- and then inside of
| | 00:25 | the Artboards, as I talk about each term,
just double-click on each artboard, like
| | 00:28 | for instance, Limited Palette, and that
will jump you to that particular artboard,
| | 00:32 | and put it in a full frame view, so
that you can see it, and that way, you can
| | 00:36 | sort of understand and follow along with
each one of these slides, if you will, as
| | 00:40 | we go through this exercise.
| | 00:42 | So, I'll start back here on the first one,
and let's take a look at some of these terms.
| | 00:44 | So, the first one is something called
the Tracing Palette, and the tracing
| | 00:47 | palette refers to the set of colors
that the image trace algorithm chooses to
| | 00:50 | use for vector output.
| | 00:52 | That's going to be different, depending
on the type of image that you work with.
| | 00:55 | So, for instance, the palette for this
object over here on the left, the sketch
| | 01:00 | of the fashion model, is going to be
somewhat limited when compared to that of
| | 01:03 | this full photograph over here.
| | 01:06 | So, depending on which preset you chose
for each one of these, you would get a
| | 01:09 | different looking result for each one.
| | 01:10 | So, for instance, if we did Black &
White for this one, it would probably be
| | 01:13 | better suited and it would
choose just the blacks and the whites.
| | 01:16 | Here, if we chose something like low
fidelity photo, it would pick and choose
| | 01:19 | certain colors, and things to keep,
and certain ones to get rid of, and the
| | 01:24 | algorithm really does its own thing in
the background, without any explanation of
| | 01:27 | why or how it's doing it.
| | 01:30 | Then you get the ability to adjust that
output via the sliders in the advanced
| | 01:33 | options of the panel itself.
| | 01:34 | Now let's move on here to Limited Palette.
| | 01:38 | Limited palette artwork is basically
referring to an input image that has a
| | 01:41 | small number of flat colors in it.
| | 01:44 | This includes artwork where there is a
slight variation in the flat colors, or a
| | 01:48 | slight bleeding, or mixing
where the colors meet.
| | 01:51 | So, this background of this little
slide that I've prepped here is actually a
| | 01:55 | good example of what we
call limited palette artwork.
| | 01:57 | So for instance, if I was turning this
into a vector piece of art, let's say I
| | 02:01 | scanned it in, this light green and this
darker green on the outside represent a
| | 02:05 | limited color palette, or a
limited palette artwork example.
| | 02:10 | If I move on to the next line, and talk
about Full Tone Artwork, this refers to
| | 02:14 | an input image that does not have a
limited palette, as I had described before.
| | 02:18 | For example, this piece of artwork
here with the guy with the basketball has
| | 02:22 | several different gradients, and textures,
and a whole lot of natural colors, and
| | 02:26 | interactions happening in
it, because it is a photo.
| | 02:29 | So, this refers to a full tone artwork,
and full tone artwork is basically what
| | 02:34 | you would see in a natural
photographic scene.
| | 02:37 | So, that's what we talk about when
we talk about full tone artwork.
| | 02:40 | The Input Image; this is the
image that is selected to be traced,
| | 02:44 | no matter what that is. Whether it's a
sketch, a photograph, a scanned in piece of
| | 02:48 | blueprint, whatever it might be, the
input image is simply what you click on
| | 02:53 | inside of Illustrator, so like this
image here, it's the object you click on, and
| | 02:57 | then the object from which you have
selected that you click Image Trace.
| | 03:00 | And once you click that, that becomes
the input object, and then once the image
| | 03:04 | trace is complete, it
actually becomes a tracing object.
| | 03:07 | Now, the final term that you're going
to hear me say is something called Flat
| | 03:11 | Color, and flat color refers to a
color in an image that doesn't change.
| | 03:15 | For example, a gradient would change,
because it would go from one color to another.
| | 03:20 | This example, this
background color here, is a flat color.
| | 03:23 | It is one single color; just an orange
that is the same, top to bottom, side to
| | 03:27 | side, as it is all over.
| | 03:29 | Whereas, if I were to choose something
like a gradient swatch, like this, this
| | 03:33 | is not a flat color. This is a color
that fades from one color to another.
| | 03:37 | You can see the white in the middle, fades
out to the dark orange around the outsides.
| | 03:41 | So, flat colors referr to just single,
flat colors that are easily traced, and
| | 03:45 | easily repeated, just like this.
| | 03:48 | Gradients, on the other hand, are much
more difficult to deal with, because they
| | 03:52 | do deal with subtle gradations in tonality,
and color, and one color fading into another,
| | 03:56 | and so gradients are not considered to
be flat colors, and objects with gradients
| | 04:01 | are not considered to have
a flat color palette at all.
| | 04:04 | So, these are the five basic terms that
you're going to hear me talk about quite
| | 04:09 | a bit throughout this course, and so I
wanted to give you an example of each one,
| | 04:13 | and talk about them, so that you
understand them as we move forward, and so that
| | 04:17 | you wouldn't be confused if you hear
me reference these in another movie.
| | 04:20 | So again, the five terms that
we need to pay attention to:
| | 04:23 | Tracing Palette, Limited Palette,
Full Tone, Input Image, and Flat Color.
| | 04:29 | So, take the time to get to know these,
understand what they mean, and as you
| | 04:33 | continue to go through this course,
hopefully you'll understand how and why we
| | 04:37 | use these terms as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Preparing Your TraceAutotracing vs. manual creation| 00:00 | Throughout this course, you're going to
hear me refer to several things that I
| | 00:03 | call auto tracings and manual tracings,
| | 00:06 | and so what we're going to do is talk a
little bit about the differences between
| | 00:10 | what an auto trace is,
and what a manual trace is.
| | 00:13 | Now, chances are, in whatever project
you work on, you're actually going to have
| | 00:17 | a hybrid workflow, wherein you do a
combination of both auto tracing and manual
| | 00:21 | tracing, but on occasion, you will run
across something that is either just a
| | 00:25 | standard auto trace,
or a standard manual trace.
| | 00:28 | So, let's start off with the auto trace.
| | 00:30 | The auto trace refers to something
that you're able to trace here inside of
| | 00:33 | Illustrator that is just done using the
Image Trace feature, meaning you don't
| | 00:37 | need to go in and do any external work
with the Pen tool, or the Direct Select, or
| | 00:41 | anything like that. Basically, you're
just coming in, you're getting the results
| | 00:44 | that you're getting, you're adjusting
some sliders, and whatever it gives you is
| | 00:47 | whatever it gives,
and you're happy with that.
| | 00:49 | So, in an auto tracing scenario,
basically a photograph is a great example of
| | 00:53 | that, because chances are, if you're
trying to get as close to a photorealistic
| | 00:57 | representation as you can, you're not
going to try to manually trace that object,
| | 01:01 | because it would take seriously hours
and hours to recreate this apple to make
| | 01:06 | it look like it does right here.
| | 01:08 | But if you use the Image Trace
feature, it can be somewhat easy to do so.
| | 01:12 | So, what I would here is I would
actually go in, and I would pick a preset for
| | 01:16 | something like High Fidelity Photo, and
then it would go ahead and it would run
| | 01:19 | its thing, and do all of the works that
it need to do for me, and go through this
| | 01:23 | whole process, and once it's finished, it
would then bring me the tracing result.
| | 01:28 | And so once it completes the auto trace,
you can see here that it's pretty much
| | 01:33 | got a really decent representation of that
apple, without me having to do a whole lot of work.
| | 01:38 | It was basically a one click fix,
and I got a pretty nice photorealistic
| | 01:42 | rendering of that apple just
by clicking that one button.
| | 01:45 | Whereas, if I were to move over to
the other artboard, and take a look at
| | 01:49 | something that I would probably need
to manually trace, like this logo, for
| | 01:53 | instance, this is a whole another story.
| | 01:55 | Now, this logo would actually be a
great candidate for a hybrid workflow; both
| | 02:00 | in image trace and actually a manual
trace workflow, but let's say that you
| | 02:04 | wanted to just manually trace this
thing. It wouldn't take that long, and it
| | 02:08 | would be actually quite easy to do.
| | 02:10 | So, the first thing you do with this is
you would actually have to set it up as a
| | 02:15 | manual tracing document, and I'll talk a
little bit more about that later on, but
| | 02:18 | the basic premise is that you want this
to be a layer of its own, and then on top
| | 02:23 | of that, you want to use the
top layer as a tracing layer.
| | 02:26 | And so, once you do that, you would
grab a tool, like the Pen tool, for instance,
| | 02:31 | and you would start to make lines and
paths along the edges of this, so that you
| | 02:35 | could recreate the shapes that it has.
| | 02:37 | You can also use the Illustrator
shape tools to recreate this as well.
| | 02:40 | So, for instance, these shapes in the
background would be something like a
| | 02:43 | rectangle, so what I would do is just
start right about here, and I would start
| | 02:47 | to create a rectangle that's roughly
the same size as this, and then you would
| | 02:52 | use something like the Shear tool over
here, and you would then take this, and you
| | 02:57 | would just shear it until it matched
that slant that you have going on here.
| | 03:03 | So, once you get that, then you could
take that, and you could move it into the
| | 03:08 | right position, like so. And you can see
it needs a little bit of work, but that's
| | 03:13 | a great starting off point.
| | 03:15 | But a manual trace is basically
something that you're not relying on
| | 03:18 | Illustrator to do the work for you.
You're actually going in, and you're doing
| | 03:21 | the grunt work, you're putting in the
time to recreate the shapes and paths
| | 03:25 | that make up whatever it is that you've
brought into Illustrator to convert it
| | 03:28 | over into a vector format.
| | 03:30 | The auto tracing feature actually uses
the same object you bring in, and turns it
| | 03:35 | into a vector object, whereas the
manual tracing component actually takes an
| | 03:39 | object, uses it as a reference point,
and then you are recreating the artwork on
| | 03:44 | top of it for use in vector application.
| | 03:47 | So, the auto trace versus manual trace;
it's two totally different worlds. Most
| | 03:52 | of the time they're married somewhere in
the middle in this hybrid type workflow
| | 03:56 | wherein you're going to use auto trace
for some of it, and then complete the rest
| | 03:59 | of the trace using the tools in Illustrator.
| | 04:01 | Hopefully, by the end of this course,
you'll have a better understanding of
| | 04:05 | why and how I accomplish both of those.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Developing a tracing plan| 00:00 | As I said before, chances are, you're
going to be using a hybrid workflow, wherein
| | 00:03 | you rely on Adobe Illustrator, and
also your skills as a vector artist to
| | 00:08 | recreate the artwork that you're
working on inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:11 | And so, it's because of that that you
need to develop a specific plan for each
| | 00:15 | one of these pieces of artwork
that you're trying to recreate.
| | 00:18 | It doesn't matter if you're trying to
create a logo element from a photograph,
| | 00:22 | or if you're trying to turn a sketch
that was done on a cocktail napkin into a
| | 00:26 | usable logo, either way, you have to
have a plan of action in terms of what to
| | 00:30 | do, and how to do it before you get
started. Otherwise, you're just going to
| | 00:34 | find yourself doing a whole lot of trial and
error, and it's really going to be frustrating.
| | 00:38 | And so, the first thing that I do
whenever I bring something into Illustrator for
| | 00:42 | conversion into a vector format is I
take a look at it, and I analyze it.
| | 00:46 | Now, if you want to go back and
watch the analyzing artwork movie in this
| | 00:50 | course, I invite you to do so, because
that's a great example of the kind of
| | 00:54 | things that I do to evaluate
artwork, first and foremost.
| | 00:55 | But the fact of the matter is, I've
already vetted this piece of artwork, and so
| | 00:58 | I already kind of know what's going on
in here, but I also need to set up my
| | 01:01 | document in order to be
consistent with what this is going to be.
| | 01:04 | This is part of the tracing plan.
| | 01:06 | And so once we have our artwork
evaluated, and I know for a fact that I'm going
| | 01:09 | to be using shape tools over here,
| | 01:11 | I'm going to be resetting the type over
here, and I might just try to trace these
| | 01:16 | little objects down here with,
maybe, the Pen tool for instance;
| | 01:20 | any of that stuff that I have, I need
to be sure that my document is set up
| | 01:24 | to accommodate that.
| | 01:24 | So, I'm going to start over here in my
Layers panel, and the first thing I'm
| | 01:28 | going to do is I'm going to lock this
layer, because I don't want to disturb the
| | 01:32 | original artwork at all.
| | 01:34 | The original artwork is my basis for
this. It's my blueprint; it's what I'm
| | 01:38 | going off of, so we want to just wipe
that out and make it untouchable, so I
| | 01:43 | cannot accidentally delete it, or
change it, or skew it in any way.
| | 01:45 | Next, I'm going to create a brand
new layer, and since I'm going to be
| | 01:48 | meshing the auto trace and manual trace worlds
here, what I what to do is create two layers.
| | 01:53 | So, in this case, I'm going to create
this first layer that's going to be called
| | 01:57 | Shapes, and that's going to be for
everything that I think I can recreate in this
| | 02:02 | particular piece of artwork from an
Illustrator shape, whether that would be a
| | 02:05 | rectangle, circle, whatever.
| | 02:06 | So, that's where my
shape layers are going to go.
| | 02:09 | I'm going to create another layer on top
of that, and I'm going to call that Text,
| | 02:12 | and that's going to set up to set the
text, and then after that, we're going to
| | 02:15 | do one called Image Trace.
| | 02:20 | And so, anything that I think I need to
image trace, I can do so after the fact.
| | 02:23 | But the fact of the matter is, I'm
probably just going to start off with text and
| | 02:27 | shapes, and then once I start to build
up my artwork, I put each one of these
| | 02:32 | individual items on its own layer, and
then at the very end of the process, I can
| | 02:35 | just take the base layer, Layer 1,
which I actually need to rename, so let's
| | 02:39 | rename that Original.
| | 02:42 | Once my entire process is completed, I just
take that original layer, and I can throw it away.
| | 02:47 | You can also take this original
artwork layer, and I'll unlock it here.
| | 02:50 | You can take that, select the image, and
you can unembed it from Illustrator if
| | 02:55 | it is embedded into the document.
| | 02:56 | And once you unembed it, you can save
that out as a JPEG, or a PSD, or whatever
| | 03:01 | file you want it to be saved as, and then
you can include that with your finished
| | 03:05 | artwork, so that your client, or your boss,
or whomever can review it, and say ok,
| | 03:09 | they got pretty close, or no, they
really need to do some serious work here.
| | 03:13 | It's a great way to sort of review, and
see exactly where you are in the process.
| | 03:17 | So again, you want to take the time to
analyze the artwork as much as you can,
| | 03:21 | determine what it needs, and
how you're going to get there.
| | 03:24 | Then go over into your document in
the Layers panel, and start setting up
| | 03:28 | individual areas for you to sort of set
this up, and then after you create these
| | 03:32 | layers, you can then start putting the
pieces of the artwork together, and you
| | 03:36 | can see exactly how far you're going,
what you have left to do, and you can sort
| | 03:40 | of take inventory of the
whole process as you go.
| | 03:42 | It's not going to be something that's
done in five or ten minutes, usually.
| | 03:46 | It's not going to be something that
might even be done in five to ten hours, but
| | 03:50 | this is a great way to start off, and it's
always what I do when I start to trace things.
| | 03:54 | Make out a plan, stick to the plan, and
follow through all the way to the end.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up your artwork for autotracing| 00:00 | Although on the surface it seems that
the image trace feature inside of Adobe
| | 00:03 | Illustrator is simply a one click
fix, it's not exactly how it works.
| | 00:08 | There are little things that you can do
in order to make sure that the tracing
| | 00:12 | goes as smoothly as possible,
| | 00:13 | ane of which is to set up your document
properly when you're trying to trace a certain object.
| | 00:17 | Now, chances are, the object that you
are trying to trace is actually going to
| | 00:21 | fit inside of another piece
of artwork or another document,
| | 00:24 | but it helps to actually start off
with this item in its own document, so that
| | 00:28 | you can properly trace it, and get the
maximum amount of quality out of it.
| | 00:31 | So, the first thing you need to do is
open up the document, whatever it is;
| | 00:35 | the piece of artwork, if it's a
Photoshop valid JPEG, whatever it is, you need
| | 00:39 | to open that up in an Editor, like
Photoshop, or something like that, to
| | 00:43 | determine it's exact size.
| | 00:44 | And so, this document that I've
opened here called silhouette, I'm going to
| | 00:47 | go up to the Image menu,
and choose Image Size, and I'm
| | 00:49 | going to look at not the Width and Height in
terms of inches, but actually in pixel values.
| | 00:54 | So, in this case,
it's going to be 3740 by 5607.
| | 00:58 | And so, that's going to be the Width and
the Height of this particular document.
| | 01:01 | It is at 300 pixels per inch, but as
we know, inside of Adobe Illustrator,
| | 01:05 | resolution means very little,
because of the fact that vectors can scale
| | 01:09 | infinitely without any problem.
| | 01:11 | So, in this case, I've got my numbers,
I just wrote them down on a piece of
| | 01:14 | paper right here, so I'm just going to
hit OK to this, and now I'm going to keep
| | 01:19 | this open in here, in case I need to
come back and make changes, but I'm going
| | 01:23 | to jump back over into Adobe Illustrator, and
we are going to create a brand new document.
| | 01:25 | File > New, and in this case, I'm going
the call this silhouette_trace, and make
| | 01:32 | sure my artboard is set to 1, and we're
going to do just a custom size here, so
| | 01:36 | I'm just going to type in the exact
dimensions that I wrote down. So it's going
| | 01:40 | to be 3740 wide, and we're
going to do 5607 tall. There we go.
| | 01:48 | And so, once I do that, I can also
set up advanced options if I want to.
| | 01:53 | I don't necessarily need to change
the Color Mode, or the Raster Effects,
| | 01:56 | or anything like that.
| | 01:57 | Align new Objects to pixel grid,
that's fine, and I'll hit OK.
| | 02:00 | So, that creates a brand new document
for me, with the exact dimensions of the
| | 02:04 | trace object that I've created.
| | 02:06 | Now, I'm going to go to File > Place,
| | 02:10 | and I'll navigate out to that Photoshop
document, and I'm just going to place
| | 02:14 | it into my document.
| | 02:17 | And once I place it in there, it
should be at its native size, and
| | 02:20 | everything should be all good.
| | 02:22 | Now, I can scale it up if I want. I can
kind of see exactly what's going on with it.
| | 02:28 | And so we'll zoom in; you can see that it's
still pretty high quality. Looks pretty good.
| | 02:32 | And so what I want to do is make sure
that this is the exact size that it was
| | 02:36 | inside of Photoshop, so I know
that I'm working at a 1 to 1 ratio here.
| | 02:39 | And so, once I get that right where I
need it to be, what I can do now is start
| | 02:44 | to work on this in terms of auto-tracing
it, using the Image Trace feature.
| | 02:48 | What this has done is brought it in at
its native size. It's also making sure
| | 02:52 | that I get as much detail
from it as possible;
| | 02:54 | I didn't have to scale this down,
or scale it up, or anything else.
| | 02:56 | It's right where it needs to be,
| | 02:58 | and so I'm all set up
to do my auto trace.
| | 03:00 | And now, actually, what I would do is
go over to my Layers panel, and create
| | 03:03 | brand new layer, and I would
rename this layer Image Trace.
| | 03:06 | And basically what this is going to be
used for, this is going to used to put
| | 03:10 | the actual duplicate of this image on
that's going to be an image trace object.
| | 03:14 | And so what I'll do now is I'll take
the original object here, and I will copy
| | 03:19 | it to the clipboard.
| | 03:22 | I want to make sure that I am targeting
the Image Trace layer, and then I'm
| | 03:27 | simply going to paste it in,
just like so.
| | 03:30 | So, that appears in
the Image Trace layer.
| | 03:32 | Now, what I can do is lock the original
layer. You can rename it Original if we
| | 03:36 | want to, and I'm also going to turn off
the visibility of that layer as well.
| | 03:41 | And I'm doing that because I want a
reference for this, so that I can get back to
| | 03:44 | it at any time I want.
| | 03:46 | Now, one other point that I want to
make here is that when you are dealing with
| | 03:49 | external files, like PSD files, for
instance, if you are going to be keeping this
| | 03:54 | on your system, and not sharing it with
anyone else, it is totally fine to leave
| | 03:58 | this as a linked object, because it's
going to stay in the same place on your
| | 04:02 | system, chances are, and you're
not going to move it in any way.
| | 04:05 | However, if you are sending this to
someone else, you will either have to send
| | 04:09 | this file here along with the Photoshop
file in order for it to work, or you
| | 04:13 | would have to embed this
object into the document.
| | 04:16 | If you want to embed a PSD into a document,
all you have to do is select it, like
| | 04:20 | I have right here, and click the Embed button.
That's going to embed it into the document.
| | 04:25 | Now, embedding files into an Illustrator
document does increase the file size
| | 04:29 | significantly. Leaving it as an
unlinked file allows you to have a smaller
| | 04:33 | Illustrator file, with the
linked file living outside of it.
| | 04:36 | Also, by having a linked file, you
retain the ability to go in and edit
| | 04:40 | that file any time you want, and
then have that file able to be updated
| | 04:44 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:45 | So now, if I were to click right here
on silhouette.psd, I can Relink it, Go To
| | 04:50 | Link, Edit Original,
Update it; do whatever I want.
| | 04:52 | So, let's say I want to edit the
original. That's going to jump me over into
| | 04:56 | Photoshop, and so now, let's say that I
wanted to do something to this inside of
| | 05:00 | Photoshop, like maybe add a
layer down beneath this, like so.
| | 05:04 | So, you just create a new layer, and
drag it down underneath, and let's say I
| | 05:08 | wanted to fill that with a color.
| | 05:09 | Let's say I want to fill that with
something like green. Maybe we are working
| | 05:13 | on some sort of advertisement, where I
need this guy to be silhouetted on a
| | 05:17 | green back ground. Okay.
| | 05:18 | So, we just Save that, and once it saves,
I can jump back over into Illustrator,
| | 05:22 | and inside of Illustrator, it's going to
give me a warning telling me that some
| | 05:26 | files have been missing or
modified; would I like to update them?
| | 05:29 | Hit Yes, and once I do that, the green
automatically appears. Not only does it
| | 05:33 | appear on the Image Trace layer I've
created, but if I turn on the visibility
| | 05:37 | for the other layer, it's
in the Original as well.
| | 05:40 | So, there are pros and cons both to
leaving the file linked, and to embedding
| | 05:43 | it into the document.
| | 05:44 | I'll leave that up to you, but I just
wanted to give you a better understanding
| | 05:48 | of how I set up my documents for an
auto trace, using the Image Trace feature
| | 05:52 | inside of illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up your artwork for manual creation| 00:00 | Setting up a document for using
manual tracing is a little bit different
| | 00:04 | than setting up one that you're just
going to use the image trace feature to
| | 00:07 | auto trace something.
| | 00:08 | This time, what you are going to be
doing is actually setting up a piece of
| | 00:12 | artwork, and then tracing it by hand,
whether that's with the Pen tool, a brush,
| | 00:16 | a pencil, the blob brush; whatever it is
that you are going to be using, you're
| | 00:20 | going to be doing the work,
not Illustrator.
| | 00:22 | So, what you have to understand here is
that you need to set up a workspace and
| | 00:24 | a document that allows you to
work the way you need to work.
| | 00:27 | So, this is just my personal choice
for how I set up a manual tracing
| | 00:33 | document. In the end, it's a personal
choice for you, and I invite you to
| | 00:35 | explore, and do this on your own.
| | 00:36 | If you need more information about how
to set up your own workspace, I suggest
| | 00:39 | watching the Illustrator Essentials
course, so that you can get up to speed on
| | 00:42 | how to re arrange these panels and
things like that to make it correspond to
| | 00:45 | your personal workflow.
| | 00:47 | But in any case let's go ahead and
create a new document here, so I can show you
| | 00:51 | exactly how I set up
my manual tracing document.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to File > New, and I'm just
going to pick a size. The size of a manual
| | 00:57 | tracing document is ultimately up to you.
It depends how much detail you need to
| | 01:01 | see in the object that you are working with.
| | 01:03 | In this case, I'm going to be drawing out
a silhouette of an apple, theoretically,
| | 01:07 | and so I don't really need to
see all the detail in the apple.
| | 01:11 | I don't need to see the detail on
the skin of the apple or the leaf;
| | 01:14 | I don't need to see all the
ridges, or anything like that.
| | 01:16 | So, I just need the basic shape of it, so it
really doesn't matter what size I bring it in it.
| | 01:22 | So, I'm just going to design it at 1024
by 768. That's a pretty middle of the road
| | 01:25 | size, which I can then take it and put
it into things like Web banners, or icons,
| | 01:27 | or whatever I need to put it in.
| | 01:30 | And so I'm going to create 1024 by
768, and hit OK, and then once I do that,
| | 01:33 | I'm pretty much ready to go, aside
from the fact that I need the original
| | 01:37 | piece of art in here.
| | 01:39 | So, I'm just going to go to File > Place,
navigate out, and grab the apple.jpg, and
| | 01:44 | place it in. It should pop in just
like that. And the first thing I do is I
| | 01:48 | always rename the layer
that it comes in on.
| | 01:50 | So, I either rename this Base, or I
name it Original, one of the two.
| | 01:55 | Then I like to lock
this layer completely.
| | 01:58 | Some people like to just lock the object,
and if you're the people who like to
| | 02:00 | lock the object, you just click the
object itself, go to Object, choose Lock,
| | 02:05 | and choose Selection.
| | 02:06 | And once you do that, that object will
be locked, and you cannot mess with it.
| | 02:10 | The point of that is to lock this
object down to the point where you can't mess
| | 02:16 | with it anymore, and so that you have a
rock solid base from which to trace from.
| | 02:19 | We're just locking this down, and then
we are putting another layer on top of
| | 02:22 | it, so that that's out tracing paper,
essentially that goes over the top, and
| | 02:26 | that way we can kind of paint over
the top of it, while still looking at the
| | 02:30 | original piece of art.
| | 02:33 | And so what I want to do here is just
lock down this layer, and then create a new
| | 02:34 | layer on top of it, and
I'll name this layer Trace.
| | 02:38 | And so once I do that, my document is
pretty much all set and ready to go.
| | 02:41 | Now I'm able to then start to make my
tracing, so if I've got a Wacom tablet, or
| | 02:45 | something like that, I can just zoom in,
and I can start going to town around this
| | 02:48 | thing with the brush tool. Or if I'm
more of a Pen tool person, I can just come
| | 02:52 | out here, and I can start making
adjustments with the Pen tool.
| | 02:55 | You see how easy it is just to come
out here and just kind of follow the
| | 02:59 | curvature of the apple with the Pen tool?
| | 03:02 | And so you can do this too. Just get
the Pen tool, start making adjustments, and
| | 03:06 | seeing what works, and what doesn't
work. If it works for you, great. If it
| | 03:09 | doesn't work for you, that's okay.
| | 03:11 | You can find other ways to do it.
That's the great part about this is the fact
| | 03:15 | that you set up the document the way
you want to, and then you make the tracing
| | 03:18 | the way you want to.
| | 03:19 | The point here is to just set it up for
a way that works for you, and that easily
| | 03:23 | allows you to do whatever it is you
do to recreate this type of object.
| | 03:29 | And so this is how I set up my documents.
I encourage you to explore and learn
| | 03:31 | ways that work for you, and
implement it into your own personal workflow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Auto Image Tracing BasicsExploring the three steps of tracing| 00:00 | When dealing with the Image Trace
feature inside of Adobe Illustrator, there
| | 00:03 | are actually three steps that are
needed to convert an image into vector
| | 00:06 | artwork using this feature.
| | 00:08 | In this movie, I am going to be
exploring these three steps that you have to go
| | 00:12 | through in order to complete the
vectorization process of artwork in
| | 00:16 | Illustrator, and then I am going to be
diving deeper into each one of these in
| | 00:20 | their own respective movies
in a later chapter.
| | 00:22 | So, let's first start off with the
first step that you have to deal with when
| | 00:26 | you're talking about vectorizing
artwork inside of Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:28 | The first one is called palette
selection. So, when we talk about palette
| | 00:32 | selection, we are referring to a
palette of colors that is used for the traced
| | 00:36 | artwork, or actually something called
the tracing palette, which you heard
| | 00:40 | me refer to in the terminology
movie earlier in this course.
| | 00:43 | So, basically, if I have an object
selected, and I want to adjust this, or trace
| | 00:47 | it, what I need to do is go up to the
Window menu, and then go down and choose
| | 00:51 | Image Trace, and once I bring up the
Image Trace options here, you'll notice that
| | 00:55 | I do have the ability to change the
palette based on what type of Preset I
| | 00:59 | choose in this dialog box.
| | 01:01 | And so, if I wanted to choose something
like High Fidelity Photo, and once that
| | 01:08 | has finished rendering, you will see
here that the Palette is set to Full Tone.
| | 01:12 | That means that because I
chose the High Fidelity Photo, it's
| | 01:15 | automatically switching to Full Tone
to give me the full tone palette used
| | 01:19 | to trace this image.
| | 01:20 | If I change this from something like
Automatic, or Limited, or I can choose from a
| | 01:24 | document library, I can actually switch
the palette that is used for this image.
| | 01:28 | Each time you switch the palette,
it's going to change the look and feel of
| | 01:31 | the tracing result.
| | 01:32 | It's going to change it from photo
realistic to maybe something a little bit
| | 01:36 | more stylized, or maybe something a
little bit more representative of a mosaic, or
| | 01:39 | something like that.
| | 01:40 | So, the palette is, in essence, the
heart of this tracing, because it tells
| | 01:44 | Illustrator exactly what is supposed to
be used in terms of color when dealing
| | 01:48 | with the object that it's dealing with.
| | 01:50 | The next piece of the puzzle is
something called pixel assignment,
| | 01:56 | and when we talk about pixel assignment,
we're talking about assigning groups
| | 01:59 | of adjacent pixels of an image to individual
fill or strokes inside of the traced artwork.
| | 02:06 | And so, basically, what this means is we
are adjusting the overall appearance of
| | 02:11 | each individual pixel inside of this
document. Because of the fact that there is
| | 02:15 | going to be sort of shades of gray in
certain parts of these pieces of artwork
| | 02:19 | that we're creating,
| | 02:20 | we need to know exactly what to do
with those pixels that are sort of in
| | 02:24 | between. Do they go to the left side of the
spectrum, or the right side of the spectrum?
| | 02:28 | Let's say we're taking this black and
white image here, for instance, and I bring
| | 02:32 | up the Image Trace panel.
| | 02:33 | Let's go to Window, and we'll go back
down and choose Image Trace to bring that
| | 02:37 | up, and I'll just move it
over here into this empty space.
| | 02:40 | So, once we have this open, basically
what we're adjusting here is the amount
| | 02:44 | of stuff that we're allowing
to stay within this document.
| | 02:47 | What are we keeping? What are we
getting rid of? That kind of thing.
| | 02:50 | And so one of the most important
sliders in this is going to be
| | 02:53 | something called Noise.
| | 02:54 | So, the Noise slider actually is
going to go in and determine how much of the
| | 02:59 | extra stuff is capped, and how
much of it is actually thrown away.
| | 03:03 | You'll notice when you hover over
this that it tells you that a higher
| | 03:06 | value means less noise.
| | 03:07 | So, the higher this value, the less of
the small little pencil strokes, and pen
| | 03:11 | marks, and things like that that Adobe Illustrator
is going to pick up, and add to the trace.
| | 03:15 | The lower this number, the better off it is
for picking up those smaller bits of information.
| | 03:19 | So again, this is just another way
that we are determining the overall pixel
| | 03:23 | assignment of the image.
| | 03:24 | So, determining what to do with these
pixels that may or may not fall within the
| | 03:28 | realm of, okay, yes, for sure
this is part of the trace.
| | 03:31 | You know, we know that this big black
area here is definitely part of the trace.
| | 03:35 | We know that the hard outlines over
here are definitely part of the trace.
| | 03:39 | But what about these small
details here in the pants?
| | 03:41 | What about the individual little lines
around the fingers; things like that?
| | 03:45 | That's where the pixel assignment
comes in handy, so that's where you will
| | 03:48 | come in, and adjust things in the
advanced slider like Paths, Corners, and
| | 03:52 | Noise in order to determine exactly
what to do with all of those extra little
| | 03:56 | bits of information.
| | 03:59 | The final item on the three step process
of converting these over from pixels to
| | 04:04 | vectors is something called curve fitting.
| | 04:07 | So, when we talk about curve fitting,
basically what we are talking about is
| | 04:13 | representing the outline of a group of
pixels as a Bezier curve, or Bezier path.
| | 04:19 | So, that is something that we refer to
as curve fitting, and some examples of
| | 04:23 | this would be the Paths slider.
| | 04:25 | So, the Paths slider refers to how well
the Bezier paths hug the pixel boundary, or
| | 04:31 | as we say, how good the fit is
around the external parts of this object.
| | 04:37 | So, when we are adjusting things like
the Paths slider, that's like, how closely
| | 04:41 | should I follow the actual layout of
these pixels, or how loose can I be with
| | 04:47 | this and still get away with it?
| | 04:49 | When it is to the left, the fit is sort of
loose, and to the right, the fit is more tight.
| | 04:55 | The number for the sliders go from 1 to
100, and don't correspond to anything in
| | 05:00 | particular, but they do provide you
with a good way to remember the setting if
| | 05:03 | you need to go back to it.
| | 05:05 | So, when I'm looking at this thing,
and we are looking at the paths here, so
| | 05:09 | lowering this to the left is actually
going to make it a little bit more loose,
| | 05:13 | a little bit more artistic, whereas if I
push that to the right, it makes it a
| | 05:17 | little bit more of a
sort of technical drawing.
| | 05:19 | It really adheres to the individual
pixel values that are there, and says, okay,
| | 05:23 | this pixel is here, I need to put
something here; this pixel's here, I need to
| | 05:27 | put it there, and so forth.
| | 05:28 | Now, you also can adjust things
like the Corners slider here as well.
| | 05:31 | The Corners slider will actually
determine how tight or how loose the fit is,
| | 05:35 | because it is actually determining, oh
okay; if it's close to a corner, do I
| | 05:39 | automatically snap it to be an exact
corner, or can I let it be a little bit
| | 05:43 | round? Totally up to you.
| | 05:44 | The same holds true for
something like Snap Curves to Lines.
| | 05:47 | That means, okay, if something is just
slightly curved, do I go ahead and just
| | 05:51 | say, okay, that's close enough to a
straight line; let's snap it into a
| | 05:54 | completely straight line?
That kind of thing.
| | 05:55 | Those are all different aspects, and we
are going to go through each one of these
| | 05:59 | individually later on, but that's all
aspects to something called curve fitting,
| | 06:00 | which basically just means, how well
does this tracing adhere to the overall
| | 06:06 | look and feel of the original artwork?
Can we be loose? Can we be tight? It's
| | 06:10 | totally up to you, and you have full control
over that inside of the Image Trace options.
| | 06:15 | Okay, so let's review the
three steps of Image Trace.
| | 06:18 | We have number 1, which is palette
selection, which refers to what type of
| | 06:21 | palette we are going to
be using to make our trace.
| | 06:24 | Number 2 is pixel grouping, and that
means what do we do with pixels that are
| | 06:28 | right next to each other; do they become
one color, or the other? Depending on the
| | 06:32 | settings we choose, one might look
different than the other, and so forth.
| | 06:35 | And finally, curve fitting; the third one.
How tight or how loose are we with the
| | 06:39 | original artwork's look and feel?
| | 06:41 | Do we adhere to it strictly, or are we
allowed a little bit of creative freedom?
| | 06:45 | These three steps are the three
things you must adjust and must tweak in
| | 06:49 | order to get your tracing just right
by using the Image Trace feature of
| | 06:53 | Adobe Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the Image Trace panel| 00:00 | Now that we've got the basics of the
terminology and operations of the Image Trace
| | 00:04 | feature all under our belts, it's time
to explore the actual Image Trace panel.
| | 00:09 | This is, after all, where we are going
to be doing a majority of our legwork
| | 00:12 | inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:13 | So, in order to bring this up, the first
you need to do is have a document open,
| | 00:18 | and then you also need to have an
image placed with in that document.
| | 00:21 | Now, I've gone ahead and done that for
you, but if you don't have this, you can
| | 00:24 | go ahead and just create a new document,
and then place some sort of JPEG file in
| | 00:27 | here, so that you can get a
reference of exactly what's going on.
| | 00:30 | And so, I'm going to go to the Window
menu, and choose Image Trace, and once
| | 00:34 | that's open, I'm just gong to move my
document over to the left, and zoom out
| | 00:37 | just a little bit, just so we can have
them both of them onscreen at the same time.
| | 00:39 | And so, when you first open up the
Image Trace panel, it's going to look
| | 00:41 | something like this.
| | 00:42 | There's a whole lot more to it than
what meets the eye here at the very
| | 00:44 | beginning, but let's just talk about
it from the top, and work our way down.
| | 00:48 | So, at the very top, you're going to
notice a row of icons across the top,
| | 00:52 | and this is just the basic shortcuts
for various preset workflows that the
| | 00:56 | Illustrator team thought
was the most popular.
| | 00:58 | And so, if you really want just the
most minimal interaction with this tool as
| | 01:02 | possible, you simply click on one of
these icons that uses the workflow closest
| | 01:06 | to that of what you are looking for.
| | 01:09 | So, you can hover over these to
see exactly what each of them does.
| | 01:11 | And so this one is Auto-Color.
| | 01:13 | And so, basically, this creates a posterized
image from a photo, or a piece of artwork.
| | 01:17 | So, if I were to click this, you would
see that it gives me sort of a stylized
| | 01:23 | representation of this guy's photo.
| | 01:26 | It's not necessarily photorealistic,
but it does give it a pretty decent little
| | 01:30 | rendering of what the guy
looked like, so not too bad.
| | 01:32 | I can hit Command+Z
or Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:35 | The second one is something called
High Color, which is supposed to create a
| | 01:37 | photorealistic representation of
the artwork in a high fidelity way.
| | 01:42 | So, if I click on this, it's going to
take a little bit longer to render, but
| | 01:44 | once it's finished, you
should see some decent results.
| | 01:48 | And so, once that render is out,
you're going to be hard pressed to even
| | 01:51 | notice the difference.
| | 01:53 | But if you zoom in quite a bit on
this, you will start to see some of the
| | 01:56 | vector edges that it has created.
| | 01:58 | As you can see here, it's not as
photorealistic as it appeared on the
| | 02:01 | surface, but it does do a really,
really good job at turning this photo into a
| | 02:06 | vector piece of artwork,
| | 02:07 | so I really think that is a great preset.
| | 02:10 | The third preset -- and let me undo that
one; as you can see, not much difference.
| | 02:14 | The third preset is
something called Low Color,
| | 02:16 | and Low color is supposed to create a
simplified photrealistic piece of artwork.
| | 02:20 | So, this should be almost like the other
one, but just a little bit simpler; not
| | 02:23 | as many colors being used.
| | 02:26 | So, let's click that one,
and see how it reacts.
| | 02:28 | And when that finishes, you can see that
it does a little bit better job than the
| | 02:33 | Auto Color, but not quite
as good as the High Color.
| | 02:35 | So, it's sort of an in between those
two. It picks up a lot more tones than
| | 02:38 | Auto Color, but not quite as many as
the High Color, and so you are left with
| | 02:43 | some banding issues, and
things like that around the edges.
| | 02:46 | Not exactly what I'm looking for either.
| | 02:49 | So, let's undo that, and let's
take a look at the fourth one here.
| | 02:51 | The fourth one is Grayscale, and so
basically, this just traces the artwork
| | 02:54 | with shades of gray.
| | 02:56 | It's basically like going up the Image
menu and choosing Adjustments > Desaturate
| | 02:59 | in Photoshop. That's
essentially what you're doing here.
| | 03:01 | You're just desaturating the image,
and then converting it into a vectorized
| | 03:04 | version of that grayscale image.
| | 03:07 | So, when I click this, it's going to
suck out all the color, and then it's going
| | 03:11 | to convert it to a vector.
| | 03:13 | And so, once that finishes
there, you can see it, it's a pretty
| | 03:16 | decent representation.
| | 03:17 | And again, if I zoom in, though, you
can start to see some of the vector edges
| | 03:21 | around there, so it's not as
photorealistic as you might want it to be,
| | 03:24 | but it still does a pretty decent job
of converting that over to grayscale, and
| | 03:28 | also vectorizing it as well.
| | 03:29 | So, let's undo that, take it back to
the original, and let's take a look at the
| | 03:31 | fifth one. This is the
Black and White preset.
| | 03:33 | The Black and White preset simplifies the
image into simple black and white artwork.
| | 03:36 | That means anything north of 50% gray
is going to become completely white;
| | 03:41 | anything south of 50% gray is
gong to become completely black.
| | 03:44 | And so, if I click this, it's going to
be a pretty quick operation. It's just
| | 03:47 | going to go through, and boom!
There you go.
| | 03:49 | So, everything that was lighter than 50
% gray is now white, everything that was
| | 03:52 | darker is now black, and we get this
sort of poster stamp kind of image, which is
| | 03:56 | pretty decent for what it does.
| | 03:58 | And a lot of people go for looks like
these for different things; posters, and
| | 04:01 | all that kind of stfuf.
| | 04:03 | So, it's our pretty quick and easy way
to get that sort of stylized look that
| | 04:07 | people really start to go for.
| | 04:08 | And so let's undo that, and let's
take a look at the very last one here.
| | 04:10 | This is something called Outline.
| | 04:12 | This is best for just creating strokes for
line or curve elements in a piece of artwork.
| | 04:16 | This is black on white only,
| | 04:18 | and so, when I do this, you're going to
see it, comes through really quickly, but
| | 04:22 | it doesn't really leave a whole lot there.
| | 04:24 | This meant for line drawings, logos,
hand drawn sketches, things like that to
| | 04:28 | just get a really quick
and easy trace of those.
| | 04:30 | So, not a whole lot being picked up here.
| | 04:32 | You could adjust it after the fact
using some of the advanced sliders, but
| | 04:36 | again, not the best choice
for tracing a photo.
| | 04:38 | Now, directly underneath that, you're
going to see a dropdown of presets, and
| | 04:42 | these presets are really a superset of
the presets above, and these are seemingly
| | 04:47 | the ones that are not as popular as the
ones that are above in these icon forms.
| | 04:53 | There's a lot more to choose from,
and I really like some of these,
| | 04:56 | and so you can go through
and check them out yourself.
| | 04:58 | I'm not going to go through each one
individually, but there are some that are
| | 05:01 | really great, like High
Fidelity Photo is really good;
| | 05:03 | Shades of Gray, Black and White Logo,
Sketched Art, Silhouettes, Line Art,
| | 05:08 | Technical Drawing; all of these, they
aren't necessarily the best for every
| | 05:11 | scenario, but they do give
you a great starting off point.
| | 05:14 | Another great thing to note about this
panel is that in the Presets menu, as you
| | 05:19 | are going through here, if you were to
click on one -- let's say that I clicked on
| | 05:23 | Black and White Logo, for instance --
| | 05:25 | it goes ahead and it applies the settings
for that, and it does the trace for me.
| | 05:29 | But what if I don't want
it to do the trace for me?
| | 05:32 | What if I know, okay, I know Black and
White Logo is where I want to start, but
| | 05:35 | it's not at all where I want to finish.
| | 05:36 | I just want to load in the preset values
first, and then make my adjustments, and
| | 05:39 | then perform the trace.
| | 05:40 | Well, that's actually pretty easily done.
| | 05:42 | I'll undo that, and go
back to the Preset menu.
| | 05:44 | This time when I go down to Black and
White Logo, I'm going to hold down the
| | 05:46 | Option key on the Mac, the Alt key on
the PC, and I'm going to click right here.
| | 05:51 | And what that's going to do is it's
going to load in the values for me, and as
| | 05:54 | you can see it loaded everything in.
Mode, Black and White; Threshold, 128;
| | 05:58 | everything like that. It
just didn't perform the trace.
| | 06:00 | So, what I can do is just come in here,
if I think, okay, High Fidelity Photo is
| | 06:03 | where I want to start.
| | 06:05 | I'll Option+Click or Alt+Click, and
it's going to load in everything into
| | 06:08 | the panel. Notice it didn't do anything
here; I didn't have to wait for it to render.
| | 06:11 | And so I can come in and make all of
the tweaks I want by holding down that
| | 06:14 | Option or Alt key and clicking, and then
come down to the bottom. I can turn on
| | 06:17 | the Preview, or hit the Trace button,
and it would perform the trace with those
| | 06:21 | new settings that I create.
| | 06:23 | So, if you know where to start, this
is a great way to sort of bypass that
| | 06:27 | initial tracing that you always have to sit
through when you're choosing those presets.
| | 06:31 | Directly underneath that you can
choose what you're viewing. So, the viewing
| | 06:34 | options includes Tracing Result,
Tracing Result with Outlines, just the
| | 06:38 | Outlines, Outline with a Source Image, or
you just want to view the Source Image.
| | 06:42 | Chances are, you're going to review the
tracing result, because you want to see
| | 06:45 | exactly what this is doing.
| | 06:46 | You can also choose a mode; either,
Color, Gray Scale, or Black and White. That
| | 06:49 | corresponds, of course, to the
preset that you've chosen at the top.
| | 06:52 | You can also adjust the palette, we're
going to explain in full detail later on
| | 06:56 | exactly what all of these
mean and how you would use those.
| | 06:58 | Then you get into Colors.
| | 07:00 | How many colors do you want to use,
less or more; depending on where you drag
| | 07:03 | this slider, that's going to adjust the
amount of colors that are inside of your image.
| | 07:08 | The advanced section is just that; it
is the advanced section where you go to
| | 07:12 | adjust all of the advanced options of
the Image Trace panel. So, you've got
| | 07:15 | things like Paths, Corners, Noise,
the Method, where you choose a different
| | 07:21 | tracing method; either a
Abutting or Overlapping Paths.
| | 07:24 | You can also choose whether or not to
create Fills and Strokes. You can choose
| | 07:27 | the Stroke Width, if you do in fact
choose to use Strokes. You can snap your
| | 07:31 | curves to lines, which we
talked about in our previous movie.
| | 07:35 | And you can also, if you're scanning in
a black and white logo, choose to ignore
| | 07:37 | white, and only keep the black
area, which is very helpful.
| | 07:43 | At the bottom here, you're going to get
a big information panel that gives you
| | 07:45 | information about the
trace you are performing.
| | 07:48 | It's going to show things like the
number of paths, the number of colors, and
| | 07:49 | also the number of anchor points.
| | 07:52 | There's nothing really to this other than
the fact that it's good information to know.
| | 07:55 | So you could say, okay, I've made this
trace, it's 3,000 paths, or whatever; it's
| | 08:00 | got 2,200 anchor points, and 300 colors.
| | 08:02 | It's totally up to you what you do
with this information. It's just there.
| | 08:06 | The Preview button; turning this on and
off, of course, adjusts whether or not you
| | 08:10 | see the preview result, and then the
Trace button actually performs the trace.
| | 08:14 | So, the Image Trace panel can be as
simple or as complex as you want it to be,
| | 08:20 | and I suggest going in, exploring all
of these different options on whatever
| | 08:24 | image you have access to, and trying
to learn exactly what each one of these
| | 08:28 | things does. Seeing, okay, if I drag
this here, then it does this. If I drag
| | 08:31 | this here, then it does that.
| | 08:35 | As you do that, just putting yourself
in a seat, and making yourself learn this
| | 08:39 | by trial and error is the best way
to go about it, seriously, because even
| | 08:41 | these little descriptions don't
really tell exactly what these things do to
| | 08:45 | each individual image.
| | 08:46 | Each project is different, each image is
different, and that's why exploring this
| | 08:50 | panel is so very important.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Quick tracing with presets| 00:00 | As you start to explore the possibilities
that the Image Trace panel inside of
| | 00:04 | Adobe Illustrator holds for you, it's
important to go ahead and explore the
| | 00:07 | presets that it ships with in order to
get yourself in a good position starting
| | 00:12 | of with each individual trace.
| | 00:14 | Now, the presets aren't going to be
necessarily a one click fix, although in
| | 00:18 | some cases they might
provide you with just that.
| | 00:21 | These are meant more as a jumping off
point with the Image Trace feature that
| | 00:24 | gets you anywhere from 50% to 75% of the
way to where you need to be, and then
| | 00:29 | you can go from there to sort of finish off
the trace using a variety of different methods.
| | 00:34 | Like I said, in some cases, it works out
perfect, where the trace you get from the
| | 00:38 | Preset works just fine, but
in some cases it does not.
| | 00:41 | Let's go ahead and take a look at some
of the best presets for given situations,
| | 00:45 | and how you can use those
here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:47 | So, I'm going to start off here on
Artboard 1, and I'm just going to work with
| | 00:51 | this hand drawn logo, and when I click
on it, you're going to notice that I
| | 00:53 | automatically get the option in the
control panel up here to do Image Trace.
| | 00:56 | Now, I can also open up the presets by
dropping this menu down here, and I get
| | 00:59 | all of the different presets
available to me.
| | 01:02 | Now, if I go up to the Window menu and
choose Image Trace, I can actually bring
| | 01:07 | up the Image Trace panel,
which is I want to do.
| | 01:09 | And so, I'm going to leave this over
here on the right, and what we're going to
| | 01:12 | do is just go through the presets that
I would normally use to sort of start to
| | 01:17 | decode this piece of artwork.
| | 01:20 | So, the first thing that I would try
here is I would drop down the presets, and I
| | 01:24 | would go down, and I would choose
something like Black and White Logo,
| | 01:26 | and when I do that, it's going to be
pretty quick, because it's just reading
| | 01:28 | black and white values.
| | 01:30 | And once I do that, you're going to see
it's not exactly what I'm looking for,
| | 01:34 | so what I would need to
do is try something else.
| | 01:37 | So, let's jump off here and
try something like Sketched Art.
| | 01:42 | Once I that, it's a little bit better,
but still not exactly what I'm looking for.
| | 01:45 | So, Line Art; let's try that,
| | 01:49 | and when it renders through, it's going
to give me something that looks like this.
| | 01:53 | And again, it's picking up some of
the shapes, but not really all of them.
| | 01:57 | And so, maybe I want to start of
with something like Shades of Gray.
| | 02:02 | And so, once that processes, you're
going to see that that's a pretty good
| | 02:04 | representation of what I'm looking for,
but it does include 50 shades of gray,
| | 02:09 | so in this case, I would really want to
start backing that down in order to get
| | 02:13 | exactly what I want.
| | 02:14 | Now, if you find that none of the
presets are getting you anywhere close to
| | 02:18 | where you need to be, chances are, you
need to go and refine that artwork a
| | 02:22 | little bit more anyway.
| | 02:23 | So, in this case, there might be too
many levels of gray in this particular
| | 02:27 | document, and I might need to
actually take it back into something like
| | 02:30 | Photoshop, and darken it up.
| | 02:31 | If you want more information about how
to sort of clean up artwork like this,
| | 02:35 | I suggest going back and watching the
movie that I have called Cleaning Up
| | 02:38 | Raster Artwork, which walks you
through the process of taking something like
| | 02:41 | this into Photoshop, cleaning it up,
making adjustments, so that it gives you a
| | 02:45 | better tracing result.
| | 02:46 | Now, let's move on here. I'll move over
into Artboard 2, and let's take a look at this.
| | 02:50 | This is a really well done sketch that
has nice, thick, dark lines. It's going
| | 02:52 | to be pretty easy to trace, I think.
| | 02:54 | But I need to try out some
presets just to make sure.
| | 02:56 | So, let's go to the Preset menu, and
the first thing I'm going to do is try
| | 03:00 | Black and White Logo.
| | 03:01 | And once I do that, you can see that it
gives me a pretty decent representation
| | 03:05 | of the original piece of artwork.
| | 03:08 | Now, I can switch back and
forth to see the original.
| | 03:10 | So, let's say View, and let's say Source
Image, and then View, Tracing Result.
| | 03:15 | That's pretty darn close.
| | 03:17 | So, in this case, it's just about given
me that one click fix that I'm looking
| | 03:20 | for, and I'm pretty happy
with that result.
| | 03:22 | And again, that was just by going
and picking a preset from this menu.
| | 03:26 | So, learning the presets, and what they
do, and how they interact with artwork is
| | 03:30 | a big piece of the puzzle when
it comes to doing these things.
| | 03:33 | Let's go to Artboard 3.
| | 03:34 | Artboard 3 has these icons on it.
| | 03:36 | Again, I think this is going to be a
great example for Black and White Logo.
| | 03:40 | Once that finishes, you see there, it
does a pretty good representation of all
| | 03:43 | of those different little icons.
| | 03:45 | It also helped get rid of
those reflections underneath them.
| | 03:47 | That's something I didn't necessarily want.
| | 03:49 | So, getting rid of those was an
essential part of this, and I've done just that.
| | 03:52 | Again, it was just a one click little thing.
| | 03:54 | I might need to go in and modify
some of these paths, and things like that,
| | 03:58 | especially around this barn right here;
you can see it's got some kinda curvy
| | 04:01 | lines, and things like that where, I
would need to kind of straighten it up.
| | 04:05 | Maybe the bushes need
a little bit of attention,
| | 04:07 | but overall, it looks pretty darn good.
| | 04:09 | So, let's now go over to Artboard 4.
| | 04:11 | I'm just double clicking these artboards
each and every time to go over there.
| | 04:14 | Artboard 4 is a little different. It's
got a person's face on it, and so with
| | 04:18 | this, what I want to do is just pick a
preset that corresponds to what it is I'm
| | 04:23 | trying to get out of this photo.
| | 04:25 | If I want this to be somewhat
photorealistic, then maybe I'm going to try
| | 04:28 | something like High Fidelity photo.
| | 04:30 | Once that renders out, you're going
to see it does a pretty decent job of
| | 04:33 | rendering a photorealistic
representation of this image.
| | 04:36 | If I zoom in, you're going to be hard
pressed to even see, until you get in this
| | 04:40 | close, that this is a vector
representation of that photo.
| | 04:43 | So, it's actually done a really good job.
| | 04:45 | But let's say I didn't want the
photorealistic. Maybe I wanted it a little bit
| | 04:49 | more stylized. Well, I could come
back in here, and I could pick something
| | 04:52 | like, let's say, Six Colors, and when I
do that, it's going to go through, and
| | 04:56 | it's going to read all of these
information, and it is going to break this
| | 05:00 | image down into six individual colors,
and then show me a representation of
| | 05:03 | that after the fact.
| | 05:05 | And there we have it. So once it wraps
up, you can see it does a pretty decent
| | 05:08 | job. There are only six colors in
there, making it easy for me to modify it.
| | 05:12 | I only have to modify six colors once I am
finished, if I want to make any changes to it.
| | 05:17 | So, it does a pretty
decent job of doing that.
| | 05:20 | You've seen this sort of look on
different posters, and different designs, and
| | 05:23 | things like that; very cool
| | 05:24 | little representation of it there.
You can also switch this over; let's do
| | 05:28 | something even more simpler, like
Three Colors, and see how it handles that.
| | 05:31 | And once we finish, you can see that
it does a pretty decent job with that.
| | 05:35 | It's removed most of the blue from the
shirt, and stuff like that, so it's just
| | 05:37 | kind of skin tone, and kind of a
dark gray, but still a very decent
| | 05:40 | representation of the overall image.
| | 05:42 | I can still tell what it is,
and it's really well done.
| | 05:44 | And it did it fairly quickly as well,
| | 05:46 | but it should be noted here that your
mileage may vary when it comes to how fast
| | 05:50 | or how slow this is.
| | 05:51 | It's all dependent on your system,
and how much RAM you have in here.
| | 05:54 | This is a pretty time and pretty
labor intensive operation that Illustrator
| | 05:58 | is performing here,
| | 05:59 | so don't be surprised if it takes a
little bit longer. We are actually going to
| | 06:02 | speed this up when we are
showing it back you in this course,
| | 06:04 | so my result is going to come through a lot
faster than yours probably will on your screen.
| | 06:08 | But just wait for if to happen, and that way
you can see the final result, and go from there.
| | 06:13 | Again, these presets are just made
to be a jumping off point for you.
| | 06:17 | It's by no means the finished product,
unless of course this is what you're going for.
| | 06:20 | If this is exactly what you were
looking for when your first came into
| | 06:23 | Illustrator, great! Congrats, you are
done. But if it's not, that's okay. You
| | 06:28 | don't have to get all
the way there right now.
| | 06:29 | I'm going you through walk several
methods of refining all of the settings
| | 06:33 | inside of this panel, as well as most
of the advanced options here to get an
| | 06:36 | even better tracing result
after you've picked a preset.
| | 06:39 | But for now, I just wanted to give you
a better idea of how to jumpstart your
| | 06:43 | next trace by using some of these presets,
and analyzing your artwork to find out
| | 06:46 | which preset works best for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Advanced Tracing OptionsAdjusting the tracing palette| 00:00 | Now it's time for us to dive into each
of the individual phases of using the
| | 00:04 | Image Trace feature inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | The first phase is something called the
tracing palette Selection, and what this
| | 00:10 | refers to is the actual color swatches
that Illustrator would use during the
| | 00:13 | tracing operation itself.
| | 00:15 | There are four different algorithms
that are in play here, and I'm going through
| | 00:18 | each one of those, and explain exactly
what they mean, and how they affect the
| | 00:21 | overall tracing result.
| | 00:22 | Now, depending on which preset that you
choose when you're messing around with
| | 00:25 | your trace, you may get a different
palette selection each time, and that's okay,
| | 00:30 | because different palettes work in
conjunction with different presets.
| | 00:34 | Now, in this particular case here, if I
select this image, and I just click on the
| | 00:37 | Image Trace button, the default is to
use a basic black and white trace, and once
| | 00:43 | that is completed, you will see that it
just gives me a straight black and white
| | 00:46 | representation of this image;
pretty simple.
| | 00:48 | You will also see over here in the
Image Trace panel -- and if you don't have this
| | 00:51 | open, you can go to Window,
Image Trace, and bring that up.
| | 00:54 | But in the Image Trace panel, I have a
Palette area here, and the Palette area is
| | 00:58 | actually grayed out at the moment.
| | 01:00 | That is because the Color mode is
currently set to Black and White.
| | 01:03 | When the Color mode is set to Black and
White, Illustrator says, you know what, I
| | 01:07 | can only use black and white, so there's
really no point in me giving them access
| | 01:11 | to the Palette, because after all,
it's either black, or it's white.
| | 01:14 | So, in this case, if I wanted to switch
this, what I would do is actually drop
| | 01:18 | this down, and before I switch it
over to color, I'm going to hold down the
| | 01:22 | Option key on the Mac, the Alt key on
the PC, and click that, and basically what
| | 01:26 | that allows me to do is load in a
preset into this dialogue box without
| | 01:30 | actually going to the trace.
| | 01:31 | Because, as you know, the tracing
process is actually quite long, especially
| | 01:34 | as you start adding complexity to it,
and so I just want it to be as quick as
| | 01:39 | possible for right now.
| | 01:40 | I'll go through some renders in a moment,
but for right now, I just want to talk
| | 01:44 | about the different Palette options.
| | 01:45 | So, we have Limited, Automatic,
Full Tone, and Document Library.
| | 01:48 | So, I'm going to start with the
Limited Palette. Basically what the Limited
| | 01:51 | Palette is; Illustrator does its best to
analyze an image, and it looks for
| | 01:55 | what it calls significant colors, and
that basically means that it looks for
| | 01:59 | large, flat areas of color that
take up a visible area in the image.
| | 02:02 | Insignificant colors, the ones that
it's going to ignore, will include things
| | 02:06 | like JPEG artifacts, noise, or if one color
happens to bleed into another along an edge somewhere.
| | 02:12 | So, if there are more significant
colors in the image then the number of colors
| | 02:16 | that you've selected that are able to
be present in the trace, then Illustrator
| | 02:20 | will have to make a choice
based on two factors.
| | 02:22 | So, basically what that means is -- and
you see this slider right here that goes
| | 02:26 | underneath the Limited Palette?
Basically what you're determining here is how
| | 02:29 | many colors are there in this trace.
| | 02:31 | Are there 30? Are there two?
| | 02:33 | It's totally up to you.
| | 02:35 | You get control over
how many colors it uses.
| | 02:37 | You don't get to say
what those colors are;
| | 02:39 | you just get to say
how many of them there are.
| | 02:42 | So, Illustrator is going to make a
judgment call here. So, let's say I picked
| | 02:45 | three colors; basically what Illustrator
is going to do is either a, use one
| | 02:50 | color to match a number of colors
that are closely related to it, or b, it's
| | 02:54 | going to try to match colors that
take up most of the area first, and that's
| | 02:59 | going to sometimes lead to smaller
areas of color being left out of the
| | 03:02 | trace all together.
| | 03:03 | So, for instance, if I were to pick
just three colors for this, and let's switch
| | 03:07 | back over to my source image for just
a minute, and I'll turn the preview on,
| | 03:12 | this has to render, so we'll just give
it a second to render, and once it's done
| | 03:16 | rendering, we'll actually be able to
see our source image. And so once that
| | 03:20 | source image pops up, you'll actually be
able to see most of the colors that are
| | 03:23 | present in this image.
| | 03:24 | So, you can see here, we have a large
area of red. Also, his skin tones are
| | 03:29 | going to be a predominant color, because
of the fact that he is in shorts, and a
| | 03:32 | sleeveless t-shirt, so a lot of those
colors are going to be predominant as well.
| | 03:36 | The blue may or may not get picked up,
depending on how many colors I have,
| | 03:40 | because it's just this small little
square right here. It's also going to ignore
| | 03:44 | things like probably the black of his
shoes, on his knee brace, that kind of
| | 03:46 | thing, and so based on that little
assessment that I made right there, I can
| | 03:50 | pretty much say what this is gong to look
like in my head before I actually do it.
| | 03:53 | So, let's go ahead and see, okay, 3 Colors;
let's change this from Source
| | 03:56 | Image to Tracing Result, and you can
actually see here that's its picked up a
| | 04:00 | little bit of that red color, it's
picked up some of his skin tones, it's
| | 04:03 | picked up a darker color from the
shadows, and you see here it's kind of just
| | 04:06 | unified those colors all throughout,
so it's just using those, and it's also
| | 04:09 | using white for the highlights.
| | 04:12 | And so those are the three
colors that it's chosen to do.
| | 04:15 | If I were to increase this to something
like 6 Colors, when I do that, it's
| | 04:18 | going to have to go through
and render again,
| | 04:20 | so we'll give it a moment to do that,
and once it does that, you'll actually be
| | 04:24 | able to see the details significantly
increases, and it also increases the amount
| | 04:27 | of colors that I'm able to see, and
the difference that I'll be able to tell
| | 04:30 | between different areas of the photo.
| | 04:33 | Okay, so now that it is rendered out, you
can actually see here, I've got 6 Colors here.
| | 04:37 | I'm actually able to tell a lot of the
different areas now. I can see, okay,
| | 04:40 | he's got a shoes, his socks have some
different colors in them, the skin tone is
| | 04:45 | still predominantly all over the place,
and then I'm also bringing back some in
| | 04:48 | the red shirt, and a little bit
of the red in the ball as well.
| | 04:51 | I'm still ignoring the blue, so Illustrator
is making the judgment call there,
| | 04:54 | and saying, okay, this blue is not
actually covering enough surface area of the
| | 04:57 | photo for me to consider a significant
amount of color, but the shirt, yeah,
| | 05:00 | it's covering a significant amount,
| | 05:02 | so I'll add that in. I'm also
going to add in the skin tones. So
| | 05:05 | illustrators just making
this judgment call for you.
| | 05:08 | You don't get to pick these
colors with limited color palette;
| | 05:11 | you just get to choose how
many of the colors are present.
| | 05:15 | Now, this is not going to be the best
choice for doing photographs, unless of
| | 05:18 | course you are trying to trace it for
some sort of special effect, like an
| | 05:21 | advertisement, or some sort of
silhouette icon, or something like that.
| | 05:25 | So, what you would want to do for a
photograph is actually switch the Palette
| | 05:28 | from something like Limited to that of
Full Tone. So, I'm going to click on
| | 05:32 | Full Tone. It's going to take a moment
for this to load, and once it finishes
| | 05:35 | loading, we'll get right back into it.
| | 05:39 | As you can see, once that finishes up,
this actually looks pretty darn close to
| | 05:43 | the original photo, and I actually have
to zoom in quite a ways before I can see
| | 05:48 | that it is indeed
a vector piece of artwork.
| | 05:50 | You can sort of see some of the banding
issues, and things like that, that are
| | 05:53 | happening around the face where the
gradient is not as smooth, but it does a
| | 05:55 | really good job of making a photo
realistic representation of this photo, just
| | 06:00 | by choosing the Full Tone.
| | 06:02 | Now, you will also notice underneath
the Full Tone that there is a slider here,
| | 06:05 | and this slider is called an accuracy
slider, and basically this is going to
| | 06:08 | be what's present in the Full Tone, as well
as something called the Automatic Palette.
| | 06:13 | And so I'm going to talk about a
little bit more in the Automatic Palette
| | 06:16 | section here in just a minute, but just
to know that this basically controls how
| | 06:20 | many colors are in this artwork, and
how complex, or how simple the artwork is.
| | 06:26 | So, you don't get to pick the number
of colors; you just get to choose on
| | 06:29 | a scale of 1 to 100 how accurate the colors
are, comparably speaking, to the original photo.
| | 06:34 | So, in this case, remember I had six
colors in the last representation of this
| | 06:38 | photo that I traced.
| | 06:40 | Now there are 3,804, so quite a bit
different than the six colors I had before,
| | 06:46 | and it also gives me a much
better representation of them.
| | 06:49 | Now, I mentioned the next algorithm;
that's something called Automatic. So,
| | 06:52 | if I switch to Automatic, the color
slider underneath, it indicates the
| | 06:56 | desired level of simplicity and/or
accuracy tradeoff that you would like to
| | 07:01 | have in your artwork.
| | 07:02 | And so once this finishes rendering,
I'll go into exactly what that slider
| | 07:05 | actually does,
and I'll show you two examples.
| | 07:09 | Alright, now once I switch that over
to Automatic, you are going to notice a
| | 07:13 | little bit of a difference here,
but not much.
| | 07:15 | You're also going to notice that the
colors are significantly reduced from
| | 07:18 | 3,000 to just over 500, and that is because the
Automatic Palette is not a full tone palette.
| | 07:23 | You can get pretty close, but
it's not necessarily full tone.
| | 07:26 | And so this is where the
accuracy slider comes into play.
| | 07:29 | Dragging this more to the left is
going to simplify the artwork, and limit the
| | 07:33 | palette, but dragging it more to the
right is going to expand the palette, and
| | 07:37 | give it a little bit more accuracy,
making it close to photorealistic.
| | 07:40 | And so, based on this, you can make some
pretty descent adjustments with this.
| | 07:43 | Let's drag this to the left, and
something like, maybe, 5 for this, and we'll
| | 07:49 | let that render. It's going to be a
little bit faster render, but it's still
| | 07:52 | going to take some time.
| | 07:54 | Once that is finished up, you are
going to see the overall result is pretty
| | 07:58 | simplified, actually, so dragging it
back down to less, basically what you've
| | 08:02 | switched to is something that's
akin to the Limited Palette of artwork.
| | 08:05 | Notice it's not five colors; it's
just the amount of accuracy based on a
| | 08:09 | percentage from 1 to 100, and so this
is about what they consider to be in the
| | 08:13 | five range for accuracy, and even though
the Automatic Palette does use a limited
| | 08:19 | palette, when it's tracing, when the
slider is pushed over to the left, the
| | 08:23 | colors used for that tracing will be
different than those if you had just choose
| | 08:27 | Limited Palette to start with.
| | 08:29 | The main difference, according to Adobe,
is the fact that the Automatic algorithm
| | 08:32 | will be much more likely to include
more colors, and even brighter colors in
| | 08:37 | small areas, as supposed to the Limited
Palette algorithm, which just limits to a
| | 08:42 | specific number of colors, and goes
off that whatever covers the most area
| | 08:47 | algorithm to determine
exactly what colors it shows.
| | 08:49 | So, the Automatic algorithm is usually
better suited for posterizing a photo, or
| | 08:53 | reducing the number of colors in
other artwork, rather than just using the
| | 08:58 | Limited Palette, in this case.
| | 09:00 | So, if I drag this somewhere around the
middle, for instance, let's do something
| | 09:03 | like 25, we will let that render out,
and see what it does. And once that
| | 09:09 | finishes, you are actually going to
see that it has indeed improved the
| | 09:12 | accuracy. You're also going to notice
that it's bringing back some of the more
| | 09:16 | bright colors, like the blue in the
pants, and the highlight areas on his
| | 09:20 | shoulder, and things like that. It's
doing so more than the Limited Palette of
| | 09:24 | artwork did before, so I actually
think this is a pretty cool way to start of
| | 09:28 | most of your traces.
| | 09:29 | So, I would actually recommend starting
off with the Automatic Palette selection
| | 09:33 | here, because this is going to give you
the brighter, the more vibrant colors;
| | 09:36 | it's also not going to just base it off
what covers the most area, and then you
| | 09:40 | can make that adjustment based on, okay,
I need this to be a little bit more
| | 09:44 | accurate, or not as much accurate,
| | 09:46 | and so you can just drag that left or
right, and you can see how many colors are
| | 09:49 | being distributed right here at the
bottom, so every time you drag it, you got a
| | 09:52 | new report down there underneath it.
| | 09:54 | Now, if you really want full control
over the colors that are being exported out
| | 10:00 | during a trace, then you are going to
use the last item on my Palette selection
| | 10:04 | list here, and so that is something
called Document Library, or external.
| | 10:08 | So, basically this is an external
palette that you're choosing for the trace,
| | 10:13 | so, you get to choose something Document
Library, and then underneath there, it is
| | 10:17 | actually going to go out, and it's
actually going to list all of the color
| | 10:21 | groups that you have available to
you inside of Adobe Illustrator.
| | 10:23 | Ando so if I drop this down now, I can
see, okay, I've got the Web color group,
| | 10:28 | I've also got some grays, I can also
open up more color groups, or create my own.
| | 10:32 | So, let's say I created a new color group,
and I call this Ball Player, so he is a
| | 10:39 | basketball player, so we'll hit OK, and
so what I'm going to do here is I'm just
| | 10:44 | going to start dragging
some colors into this.
| | 10:46 | So, let's say that we
wanted him to be sort of blue.
| | 10:49 | Let's increase the size
of this, so I can see it.
| | 10:52 | And I'll just drag this into
there, drag this into there,
| | 10:56 | and I'm just dragging colors in, and
basically what you're trying to do here is
| | 11:00 | find that little blue line that appears,
and just drop the colors right on top of it.
| | 11:04 | And so now when I choose this, I can
choose Ball Player color group, and this
| | 11:08 | is going to go through and render one
more time, and it's only got four colors
| | 11:12 | to do, so it should be a fairly quick
process, and once it does that, I get a
| | 11:16 | really cool look at this right here, and you
can see I kind of use them in succession there.
| | 11:23 | I can add a color to it any time I want
just by dragging it in, and once I do
| | 11:28 | that, I can come over in here, and I can
choose a different color palette, or I'll
| | 11:33 | stop that; I can choose it again. Let's
choose the Ball Player, and it's going
| | 11:37 | to go through and do it again.
| | 11:39 | Let's see what the difference is now
that I've added a color. There we go. So
| | 11:43 | you can just kind of see the difference
each and every time; you can add, or
| | 11:47 | subtract colors away. So, I can just
kind of move this one out of that, and then
| | 11:51 | let's turn preview on and off again.
| | 11:53 | You may have to go up and switch the
color palette, and then hit Stop, and then
| | 11:58 | switch it back in order for it to make
the change, and that's okay. Once you
| | 12:02 | get it switched over, you should see the original
representation; something kind of like that.
| | 12:08 | And so if you really have a specific
amount of colors, or specific group of
| | 12:12 | colors that you want to use for this
tracing, then I would suggest using this
| | 12:16 | Document Library, or external Palette
option, because you get infinite control
| | 12:21 | over what colors go in here.
| | 12:22 | You can also just switch back and forth
between Tracing Result and Source Image,
| | 12:27 | and you can actually go in and sample
colors from this using your Eyedropper
| | 12:31 | tool, and create your own swatch group,
and then have that applied to the image.
| | 12:36 | It's very quick, and very easy, and
it's a great way to control all of the
| | 12:40 | different aspects of the
color that you are working with.
| | 12:42 | So, you just come down, you drop it,
you pick a color, and it's going to go
| | 12:47 | through, and it's going to apply all of
those colors to your artwork, based on how
| | 12:51 | many colors there in that color group,
and once it finishes rendering, you are
| | 12:54 | going to get some really cool results.
| | 12:56 | And so each and every time you change that,
you get a different result, and it's a
| | 13:00 | pretty exciting way
to work on these as well.
| | 13:02 | So, this is definitely my favorite mode,
because it does give me the most amount
| | 13:06 | of options, and the most amount of
flexibility, but it's certainly not the best
| | 13:09 | mode for every situation. That's
why they give you these options.
| | 13:13 | So, again, you have the Automatic
Palette, which basically just goes in,
| | 13:17 | analyzes the artwork, and based on your level
of accuracy, chooses what colors to go in there.
| | 13:22 | You have the Limited Palette of
artwork, which you choose how many colors you
| | 13:26 | want in the piece of artwork, and
Illustrator says, okay, based on those number
| | 13:29 | of colors, I deem these to be the necessary
colors, and it just puts them in there for you.
| | 13:34 | You also have Full Tone, which is
more on for photorealism pictures,
| | 13:38 | photographs; things like that. And
then finally, the Document Library, which
| | 13:41 | allows you to determine and set your
own colors, any number that you want, to be
| | 13:46 | applied to the artwork as well.
| | 13:48 | So, this is how you change your tracing
palette, and hopefully I've given you a
| | 13:53 | better understanding of what all of
these things mean, so that when you start to
| | 13:56 | make your next trace, you can have
full control over it, and get exactly the
| | 14:00 | result that you are looking for.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting pixel assignment| 00:00 | The second phase of using Image Trace
inside of Adobe Illustrator is something
| | 00:03 | called pixel assignment, and pixel
assignment refers to the process of
| | 00:07 | deciding which pixels in a given
image will become which fills and which
| | 00:12 | strokes upon output.
| | 00:14 | And so, in layman's terms, what that
means is that when I select an image like
| | 00:18 | this, you can see when I zoom in on this,
that it's not just a black and white
| | 00:23 | image; there are all types of grays, and
different shades of black and white, and
| | 00:26 | things like that all through here, right?
| | 00:28 | So basically what we're saying is, okay,
if I were to trace this, what determines
| | 00:32 | which one of these pixels in here gets
converted to a white pixel, or a black
| | 00:35 | pixel, or a gray pixel, or something like
that; how do we make that determination?
| | 00:39 | Well, ultimately it is determined by
the palette that is selected, based on the
| | 00:42 | preset that you select when
you start to make your trace.
| | 00:45 | So, for instance, if I were to select
this image here, and then go over in my
| | 00:50 | Image Trace options -- and you can open
these up by going to Window, and then
| | 00:53 | selecting Image Trace, by the way. Once
you have that open, just switch this
| | 00:57 | over to Black and White Logo, and watch
what happens to the gray areas in here in
| | 01:02 | the details. Watch this.
| | 01:03 | I'll switch this over, and I'll turn
Preview on, and as you can see, a lot of the
| | 01:10 | detail went away. It has switched over
to the Limited Palette, and if you need
| | 01:13 | more information on exactly what these
palette algorithms are, then go back and
| | 01:17 | watch the previous movie, where I
explained those in detail, but just know that
| | 01:21 | this palette is predetermined for me
because of the fact that I'm using the
| | 01:24 | Black and White mode.
| | 01:25 | So, therefore, anything in this particular
piece of artwork that was lighter than
| | 01:30 | 50% gray has been converted to white;
anything that was darker than 50% gray has
| | 01:36 | been converted over into completely black.
| | 01:38 | And so basically, I don't get a whole lot of
control over what gets converted and what doesn't.
| | 01:44 | What I can control is the Noise
level down here at the bottom.
| | 01:48 | So if I were to drag this to
the left, watch what happens.
| | 01:53 | When I do that, you're going to notice
some of details starts to come back in,
| | 01:56 | because it's saying, okay, I want a
little bit more of that noise to come back
| | 02:00 | in; you're basically
adjusting the tolerance for noise.
| | 02:03 | So, the farther you drag this to the
right, the less noise there will be.
| | 02:06 | If I drag this all the way to
the right, watch what happens.
| | 02:11 | Notice there that a lot
of the noise has gone away.
| | 02:14 | So, this Noise slider
is your main area of control.
| | 02:19 | The other area of control is based on
the preset and the palette that you select.
| | 02:23 | If you're working with something like
a photograph, I suggest using something
| | 02:26 | like the Full Tone Palette, or selecting
the Auto Color preset from up here at
| | 02:29 | the top, or you can also pick
something like High Fidelity Photo from this
| | 02:33 | dropdown. That's going to give you
a lot of color; a lot of options.
| | 02:37 | It's also going to give you the
highest amount of tonality in the palette,
| | 02:40 | and then you can adjust the Noise
to the left, or to the right, how much
| | 02:44 | information you want to
pick up or let go of.
| | 02:46 | That's basically what you're doing here.
You're saying, okay, the more I drag
| | 02:50 | this to the right, the less I care
about the small minute details; just give me
| | 02:54 | the overall big picture details in this image.
| | 02:56 | Dragging this to the left says, you know
what? I'm really concerned about every one
| | 03:00 | of those little pencil marks, so give
as many of them as you can, while still
| | 03:04 | respecting that black and white
rule that I've set up at the top.
| | 03:07 | And so, by adjusting this, you are
adjusting what is called the pixel
| | 03:11 | assignment in the image.
| | 03:12 | You are assigning pixels to a specific
fill and stroke value, based on this Noise
| | 03:18 | slider, and also the preset, and
palette that you select up here at the top.
| | 03:22 | So, like I said, 90% of it is controlled
by Illustrator, and it's out of your
| | 03:27 | hands based on the Preset and the
Palette that you select up at the top.
| | 03:31 | So choose very wisely up in this
section here, but just know that you do have
| | 03:34 | the final say down here at the bottom
on just how much detail you're letting go
| | 03:39 | of or keeping in, based on dragging
this slider to the left or to the right.
| | 03:43 | So, at the end if the day, the pixel
assignment is probably one of the smallest
| | 03:47 | portions of the Image Trace feature,
but it is one of the most important,
| | 03:51 | because it is the one that controls
the level of detail that is maintained
| | 03:55 | inside of the Image Trace.
| | 03:57 | So, as you continue to explore this
feature, make sure that you're careful with
| | 04:01 | the Preset, the Palette, and also the
amount of Noise that you're introducing
| | 04:05 | into each individual image, because that
is the way that you control the details.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the curve fitting| 00:00 | The third, and perhaps most important
phase of an image trace is something called
| | 00:04 | the curve fitting process. So,
basically what this refers to is how closely
| | 00:09 | or how loosely does the traced artwork
fall in line pixel for pixel with the
| | 00:14 | original artwork? How close does it
have to line up with the original?
| | 00:18 | You have a couple of different controls
that actually determine how tight
| | 00:22 | or how loose the fitting is, and so
I'm going to show you those right now.
| | 00:26 | So, I'm going to select this piece of
artwork in the middle here, and then go
| | 00:30 | to the Window menu, and choose Image
Trace, and once I get the Image Trace
| | 00:34 | dialog box open, I want to expand out the
Advanced section, if you haven't done that already.
| | 00:38 | So, once you expand out the Advanced
section you're going to see these two
| | 00:42 | sliders right here: Paths, and Corners,
and you're also going to notice a
| | 00:45 | Method area right here.
| | 00:46 | So, those are the three areas
that are most important for this;
| | 00:49 | Paths, Corners, and Method
down here at the bottom.
| | 00:52 | So, the first option is going to be for
Paths, and so the Paths slider controls
| | 00:57 | how well the Bezier paths hug the pixel
boundary, or how good the fit is on the
| | 01:03 | overall trace,
versus the original image.
| | 01:05 | So, when this slider is taken to the left,
the fit is very loose, and if it is to
| | 01:10 | the right, it's set to very tight.
| | 01:12 | So you can think of it
more along lines of this:
| | 01:14 | as you drag this to the left, you
get more of a loose, sort of artistic
| | 01:18 | representation of whatever
it is you're seeing on screen.
| | 01:21 | If you drag this more to the right,
it's more of a tight, technical fit.
| | 01:24 | So, it's sort of like on the left, it
would be an artistic representation; on the
| | 01:28 | right it would be more like a
technical drawing, so to speak.
| | 01:31 | And so the number goes from 1 to 100,
and it doesn't really correspond to
| | 01:35 | anything in particular, but it does
provide you with a good way to remember a
| | 01:37 | setting if you need to go back to it.
| | 01:40 | So, if you drag this to like 25%, and
it looked okay, and then you drag it to
| | 01:43 | 30, and you are like, oh no, it's looks
better at 25, it's just basically a way of
| | 01:46 | letting you kind of jump back and
forth easily by remembering numbers.
| | 01:49 | So, you should keep in mind here
that the looser the fit, the fewer curve
| | 01:52 | segments or control points there will be
in an image, and the tighter the fit, the
| | 01:56 | more control points
you're actually going to have.
| | 02:00 | And also, when the fit is loose, the
curve will generally be smoother, and it will
| | 02:03 | ignore tiny details around
the pixel boundaries.
| | 02:06 | So if you have a lot of jagged edges,
and anti-aliasing going on, it might be a
| | 02:09 | good idea to kind of turn this Paths
section down a little bit in order to kind
| | 02:13 | of smooth out those areas.
| | 02:15 | Remember, you can always
go back in after the fact.
| | 02:18 | You don't have to get this
right exactly inside of this panel.
| | 02:21 | You can get it close, and then go back
in with tools like the Pen tool, Direct
| | 02:25 | Select tool, things like that, and make
adjustments to this to make it look even
| | 02:30 | better down the road.
| | 02:31 | So, let's take a look
exactly what this looks like.
| | 02:33 | I'm going to go up here, and
let's go and choose a preset up here.
| | 02:36 | Let's just do a Grayscale, and once
that is finished rendering, you're going to
| | 02:41 | see that it looks pretty good.
| | 02:44 | There are some areas that could
probably be improved, but I'm going to zoom in
| | 02:46 | quite a bit, so you can actually
see what all these little sliders do.
| | 02:50 | So, I'm going to go right in here
somewhere around the face, where we have a lot
| | 02:53 | of curved areas, and things like that.
| | 02:56 | So, I'm going to right here. Right now the
Paths is set to be right here in the middle.
| | 03:00 | And so what I want to do, I want to
drag it all the way to the left first, and
| | 03:03 | then I'll drag it all the way to the right,
so you can see the difference between the two.
| | 03:06 | So let's drag it all the way over to
the left first to create what's called a
| | 03:09 | loose fit on this image.
| | 03:11 | So I'll drag it to the left, and once
that finishes rendering, you're going to
| | 03:15 | see that it becomes
a little bit more loose.
| | 03:17 | It's not really even as
detailed as it was before.
| | 03:20 | So, somewhat more of an artistic
representation of what's going on there,
| | 03:25 | whereas if I drag that all the way to
the right, you can see there that it is
| | 03:30 | picking up even the finest of
details, and it is really adhering to each
| | 03:35 | individual piece of this, and getting
it as close as it can to be a pixel for
| | 03:38 | pixel rendering of this.
| | 03:41 | So, let's go here, and let's change
this from the Tracing Result back to the
| | 03:44 | Source Image, and when I do that, you
can see it follows it pretty darn close.
| | 03:49 | So, Tracing Result; Source Image.
That's pretty close right there.
| | 03:54 | So, if I drag that over to the left, and
let's do that back and forth one more
| | 03:57 | time, you can see here that when I
switch over to the Tracing Result, it is quite
| | 04:04 | different from the Source Image. You're
not getting quite as much detail. It's
| | 04:08 | very loose fitting,
especially around the eyes.
| | 04:10 | Look right in here in the eye. Watch
this when I switch from Tracing Result to
| | 04:14 | Source Image.
See the difference there?
| | 04:15 | And so by doing that, you are changing
the complexity of this image, and you are
| | 04:21 | changing, I think, the
fidelity of the trace itself.
| | 04:24 | So, if you want this thing to be almost
like a pixel for pixel rendering of the
| | 04:28 | artwork that you are scanning in, or
that you're putting into Illustrator, you
| | 04:31 | need to drag this
farther over to the right.
| | 04:33 | If you're looking for more of an artistic
kind of stylized representation of
| | 04:37 | whatever this is that you're bringing in, then
you need to drag this slider over to the left.
| | 04:41 | By default, this is set to 50%, which
is somewhat middle of the road, which is
| | 04:45 | great starting point, but chances are
you're going to want to go either one way
| | 04:49 | or the other, instead of
just right down the middle.
| | 04:51 | Now, the Corners slider is directly
underneath that, and the Corners slider
| | 04:54 | controls how likely a sharp
bend will be turned into a corner.
| | 04:59 | So, basically if you drag this to the
left, that means that you don't want it to
| | 05:04 | have quite as many sharp corners.
| | 05:05 | If you drag it to the right, you want
to make sure that every time you see some
| | 05:10 | sort of sharp bend anywhere, it turns into a
sharp-edged corner, with an angle and everything.
| | 05:14 | And so let's switch back over to Tracing
Result, and then we'll put these paths
| | 05:19 | back in the middle of the road, and
then we'll take the Corners, and we'll take
| | 05:27 | that down all the way to the left.
| | 05:30 | Once that renders out, you should see a
slight reduction in the amount of corners
| | 05:34 | that are present in your image; things
that used to be sort of a sharp point
| | 05:37 | should sort of round themselves off.
| | 05:39 | If I take that slider, and drag it all
the way to the right, you should see
| | 05:45 | a significant increase in the amount of
sharp edges that appear inside of this image.
| | 05:50 | So, if I zoom in here, you can see that
I've got some more jagged edges here, and
| | 05:55 | some of these little pieces, they have
got really sharp little corner pieces, and
| | 05:58 | things like that on them, and that's
really more representative of what the
| | 06:01 | original artwork looked like in the first
place, and so I might actually drag that
| | 06:05 | a little bit higher when I'm actually
doing this trace, depending on what level
| | 06:10 | of realism I actually want; how tight
I want the fit to be all the way around
| | 06:15 | this image based on the original photo.
| | 06:17 | Now, let's reset this back to 50%, and we
will wait for that to render, and while
| | 06:23 | that's rendering, let's talk a bit about
the Method area down here at the bottom,
| | 06:27 | which actually has two options,
| | 06:29 | one of which is called Abutting, and
one of which is called Overlapping.
| | 06:33 | And so, you'll notice when you hover
over these that Abutting says that it
| | 06:36 | creates cutout paths, and Overlapping
says that it creates stacked paths.
| | 06:41 | So, basically what that means is that
your are creating an abutting path,
| | 06:45 | meaning that paths that actually run in
to one another, they are just sat right
| | 06:50 | next to one another, and one shape fits into
the other shape, much like a puzzle piece does.
| | 06:55 | If you were to move one piece, versus
the other piece, you would actually see the
| | 06:59 | white background behind them. There is no
overlap; there is no background behind them.
| | 07:03 | Choosing the Overlapping method actually
means that every single path in here
| | 07:08 | slightly overlaps its neighbor, and
therefore, if you were to move one slightly,
| | 07:12 | you won't see any
white background behind it.
| | 07:14 | It's also kind of a quasi
method of trapping, if you will.
| | 07:18 | Now, you should also note that when you
are using the Overlapping method, if you
| | 07:23 | have one path that is completely
inside another path, then moving that path
| | 07:28 | does not leave a hole behind it.
| | 07:29 | There is no cutout with one path being
overlapped over another, as long as you
| | 07:34 | choose the Overlapping method.
| | 07:35 | Now, there are some pros and con
of Overlapping versus Abutting.
| | 07:39 | So, number one, anti-aliasing
artifacts will go away when you're
| | 07:42 | using Overlapping paths,
| | 07:44 | but with Abutting paths, sometimes you
might notice a faint or lighter color
| | 07:48 | around the boundary shapes when they
are viewed onscreen, and that's because
| | 07:52 | each of the two shapes is anti-aliased
against a white background, which
| | 07:56 | produces pixels on the screen that
are slightly lighter than either of the
| | 08:00 | colors of the abutting path.
| | 08:01 | With Overlapping shapes, this
problem is completely eliminated.
| | 08:05 | So if you choose Abutting paths, and you
have two things that are right up next to
| | 08:09 | eachother, chances are, because they
are up against the white background
| | 08:12 | usually, you're going to see some light
pixelization happen in between those two
| | 08:15 | paths, and that is because there's no
overlap there, so there might be a slight
| | 08:20 | gap, and because that white is somewhat
bleeding through, you are kind of get a
| | 08:24 | light little line in between those.
| | 08:26 | You do not have that
happening with the Overlapping paths.
| | 08:29 | With Overlapping shapes, though, there are
no holes in any of the resulting fills,
| | 08:33 | and sometimes that can be a problem.
| | 08:35 | So, let's say, for example, that your
image has a font, and then if you try to
| | 08:40 | select and move a fill for a letter A,
for example, the hole in the A would not
| | 08:45 | move with the fill, because of the fact
that, you know, there is no hole when you
| | 08:49 | are doing the overlapping paths.
| | 08:50 | On the other hand, sometimes the
organization of a fill for overlapping makes
| | 08:55 | editing an image a little bit easier,
because of the fact that there is no hole
| | 08:58 | drilled through the middle.
| | 08:59 | So, it's just kind of a give and take
kind of situation; it just depends on which
| | 09:04 | one you want to try.
| | 09:05 | Let me create a new document to
show you exactly what I mean here.
| | 09:08 | I'm going to create a New document, and
hit OK, and let's just draw out two squares.
| | 09:13 | So draw out a square here, and I'll fill
it with, let's say, red, and we'll get rid
| | 09:18 | of the stroke, and then I'll copy that,
and paste another one onscreen, and we'll
| | 09:23 | make this one blue just for demo sake.
| | 09:26 | And so basically what we're talking
about here is with an Abutting path, these
| | 09:30 | two guys would actually line up right
along the edge of one another, and when
| | 09:34 | that happens, though -- you can kind of
see it here happening a little bit --
| | 09:38 | there's a little almost like faint
white line that comes into play, and so
| | 09:41 | sometimes it might look like this.
| | 09:43 | I just moved it over one little nudge,
and you might see something like this
| | 09:46 | with an abutting path, and if you
happened to move it even further away, there's
| | 09:50 | nothing behind it that is
going to cover up that gap.
| | 09:53 | However, if this was an Overlapping path,
then they would overlap; something like this.
| | 09:58 | And so even if I moved it --
watch when I move this.
| | 10:01 | See when I move it left, or to the
right, you still see the path behind it?
| | 10:06 | That's because when they overlap, there is no
gap; there is no color missing from behind it.
| | 10:10 | Also, if you have something like this
happening in a tracing piece of artwork --
| | 10:17 | I'll align these up really quickly.
| | 10:20 | So, if we have something like this
happening, where one is completely inside
| | 10:23 | of the other, if you are using Abutting
paths, there's going to be a hole behind this.
| | 10:28 | So, let's say that I
temporarily remove the blue square.
| | 10:32 | If I did that, then there would
actually be a white hole through the middle of
| | 10:37 | the red square after the fact.
| | 10:39 | If I'm using Overlapping paths, I can
get rid of the blue square anytime I want,
| | 10:43 | and I would still have a
whole shape back behind it.
| | 10:47 | So again, there are pros
and cons to using both.
| | 10:49 | At the end of the day, it is up to
you which one you use, but that is just
| | 10:53 | another way to sort of control the fitting --
the curve fitting, if you will -- of
| | 10:58 | your artwork that you're
producing in Illustrator. All right!
| | 11:01 | So let's review.
| | 11:02 | We've got our Paths slider up here
at the top, which controls the overall
| | 11:05 | fitting of this, and so that means to
the left, we're kind of getting a loose,
| | 11:09 | almost stylized representation; if
we're dragging it to the right we're getting
| | 11:13 | a much tighter, more realistic fit that
looks almost pixel for pixel like what
| | 11:17 | were trying to trace.
| | 11:18 | We've got the Corners slider, which
basically says, okay, if I sharply change
| | 11:22 | directions on a path, do I want that to
automatically snap to a corne, or do I
| | 11:26 | want to leave it as a curve?
| | 11:28 | If you drag that slider to the left,
the more likely you are to have a round
| | 11:32 | corner, as opposed to a sharp edge corner.
| | 11:34 | If you drag that over to the right, the
more sharp edge corners you will have.
| | 11:38 | And then finally, of course, we have
the two methods down here at the bottom:
| | 11:41 | Abutting, and Overlapping.
| | 11:42 | Again, at the end of the day,
that is a personal choice for you.
| | 11:46 | If you feel like you need to have
abutting paths, because you like things to fit
| | 11:50 | together with, you know, like a puzzle
piece type fit, choose Abutting, but if
| | 11:53 | you're going to be moving things around,
adjusting things on the fly using your
| | 11:57 | Pen tool, Direct Select, that kind
of stuff, you might want to choose
| | 12:00 | Overlapping. That way you avoid that
inevitable hole that would be left behind
| | 12:03 | when you're moving the paths around.
| | 12:05 | So, at the end of the day, it's totally
up to you what all of these settings turn
| | 12:09 | out to be, but at least now you know
exactly what each of them does, so that you
| | 12:14 | can gain more control over the
end tracing result of your artwork.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Basic tracing: Photos| 00:00 | All right. Now that we've got the
three phases of Image Trace under out belts,
| | 00:04 | and understood, and we're ready to go,
it's time to actually put that into play a
| | 00:08 | little bit, and start tracing some stuff.
| | 00:10 | So, what I'm going to do first is create a
new document, and we're going to trace a photo.
| | 00:15 | So, I'm going to go up to the File
menu, and go to New, and it really doesn't
| | 00:19 | matter how big or how small this is; it
just depends on the photograph itself.
| | 00:23 | So, what I'm going to do is I'm
just going to create something that
| | 00:27 | I'm going to use, maybe a print
profile, and let's just do it on a letter
| | 00:31 | sheet of paper; hit OK.
| | 00:32 | Then I'm going go to up to the File menu,
choose Place, and I've got a photo out
| | 00:37 | here, and I'll just place it right there.
| | 00:39 | And so the photo is a little bit bigger
than the piece of paper; that's okay. I
| | 00:43 | can just shrink that down, something
like that, and then press Command+0 or
| | 00:47 | Ctrl+0, so I can see my whole document.
| | 00:49 | All right, so what I'm going to do now is
I'm going to bring up the Image Trace panel,
| | 00:54 | so I'm going to go to the Window menu,
and do Image Trace, and once I get the
| | 00:58 | Image Trace panel open, I'm going to
first close the Advanced section, because I
| | 01:02 | don't really need that right now. All I
need to worry about is, what Preset am I
| | 01:06 | going to start with?
| | 01:07 | This is always a tricky bit of
business for me, because I always choose
| | 01:11 | different presets, based
on each and every project.
| | 01:13 | Now, depending on what I want
to do with this at the very end,
| | 01:16 | that determines the
Preset that I'm going to use.
| | 01:18 | In this case, what I think we're going
to do is just create some sort of
| | 01:23 | stylized look to this, and so I don't
necessarily need it to be photorealistic.
| | 01:26 | So, in this case, I would like to actually
just change this to be something like,
| | 01:30 | maybe, let's do 3 Colors.
| | 01:31 | So, I'll choose 3 colors, and when
I do that, it's going to go through and
| | 01:35 | it's going to render that for me.
| | 01:38 | And once that renders, you're going to
see exactly what it gave me, and based
| | 01:42 | off of the Preset that I chose, it has
selected the Limited Palette for me, and
| | 01:47 | then selected three colors.
| | 01:48 | And if you remember, when you select
the Limited Palette, it automatically goes
| | 01:52 | through and looks for significant colors;
colors that cover a significant amount
| | 01:56 | of area in the photo, and then uses those
to sort of make the image look as close
| | 02:01 | to realistic as it can with
just using those three colors.
| | 02:04 | And so, in this case, it does a
pretty decent job, but it's still not
| | 02:07 | exactly what I want.
| | 02:08 | I would love some separation
from her and the background here.
| | 02:11 | So, what I might do here is just
actually increase the number of colors.
| | 02:15 | So, I might actually change
this from, let's say, 3 to 6.
| | 02:18 | All right, once that renders out, it's doing a
pretty decent job of what I think I need here.
| | 02:25 | It's giving me a nice separation
between her and the background;
| | 02:27 | that's exactly what I'm looking for,
| | 02:28 | so I think I'm definitely
on the right track.
| | 02:31 | But now I'm pretty much done with the
top half of this, because I've got the
| | 02:35 | look that I want, but I need
to also refine it a little bit.
| | 02:38 | So, what I'm going to do is open up the
Advanced panel, and let's do a little bit
| | 02:41 | of tweaking in here.
| | 02:44 | Now, remember the Paths section, that's
going to be how tight or how loose do I
| | 02:48 | want his to adhere to the original.
| | 02:49 | Well, I do want this to be a stylized
representation of this, so what I'm going
| | 02:52 | to do is actually take this
slider, and drag it to the left,
| | 02:54 | but first what I want to do is I want
to turn the preview off for a second,
| | 02:57 | and what that's going to do is that
is actually going to allow me do make
| | 03:01 | adjustments to these sliders without having
to wait for it to render each and every time.
| | 03:04 | So, in this case, I'm going to
drag this down to something like 15%.
| | 03:07 | And again, this is just an estimate in
my head as to what I think I might need.
| | 03:13 | Now, I also want to sort of
reduce the amount of corners.
| | 03:15 | I want this to look sort of painted,
| | 03:18 | so I want to kind of bring that down
to maybe about 25%; something like that.
| | 03:20 | And also, I want to make sure that I'm
not picking up a whole lot of noise in here.
| | 03:26 | I want this to be, you know, kind
of a stylistic representation,
| | 03:29 | so we night push this up, the Noise, to
something maybe like 55% to 60%; something
| | 03:37 | like that. All right.
| | 03:38 | Now, I can also choose down here at
the bottom if I want to Ignore White, and
| | 03:41 | Snap Curves to Lines.
| | 03:42 | Snap Curves to Lines means anything
that's close to a straight line, but not
| | 03:45 | really straight, you snap it
automatically to a straight line.
| | 03:48 | I'd never want to do that, chances are, just
because I like having these gradual curves.
| | 03:51 | If something was meant to be a straight
line, then it should come through as
| | 03:53 | such, but I'm not going to
worry about that now.
| | 03:56 | I am going to choose
to Ignore White, though.
| | 03:58 | That's going to help me ignore some
of the white areas of this, and it won't
| | 04:00 | output that as one of my
swatches, so let's ignore that.
| | 04:03 | And then what we're going to do
here is click the Preview button.
| | 04:08 | And now once that finishes up, I'm
getting pretty much what I want. I'm getting
| | 04:12 | this sort of a
silhouette outline of this person.
| | 04:14 | I'm also getting some nice
smooth edges around the outside.
| | 04:18 | I might argue that there's too many
colors present here, and so what I might do
| | 04:23 | is actually back that down to something,
maybe, like 4, because at this point,
| | 04:26 | I'm getting what I want, but it's not as
really as smooth as I would want it to be.
| | 04:30 | So, maybe backing this down to something like
4 colors would actually be more appropriate.
| | 04:34 | And so, let's do that; let's hit Enter.
| | 04:37 | And once that renders out, actually
removing that one color does make quite a
| | 04:42 | bit of a difference, but it
doesn't give me the separation from the
| | 04:45 | background anymore.
| | 04:46 | And so, that's one of the things about
this is that you have to just kind of try
| | 04:50 | your way around it, because all of
these things are going to give you a
| | 04:54 | different result for each project.
| | 04:55 | So, I would actually argue that we
need to move that back up a notch.
| | 04:57 | So, I'll just move this
back up one color, to 4.
| | 05:02 | And once that renders out, you see
that brings back some of the slight
| | 05:05 | detail around there, but again, still not
giving me that separation from the background.
| | 05:09 | So, I guess I'm going to have to take
that back up to 6, and that's okay.
| | 05:11 | So, once I do that, it should
render out just like it did before, giving me
| | 05:14 | that nice separation from the background,
| | 05:16 | and I can just deal with it from there.
| | 05:19 | So, once this renders out,
we should be ready to go.
| | 05:22 | And so once that renders out, we've
got exactly what I'm looking for here.
| | 05:26 | And so, the main problems that I have
with this image from right here are the
| | 05:29 | big highlights, right here on her arms,
but luckily we can easily remove those,
| | 05:33 | and as long as we choose to do Overlapping
paths, we will have no problem here.
| | 05:38 | So, what I'm going to do is switch
this to Overlapping Paths, and once that
| | 05:43 | renders out, as you can
see, it looks pretty good.
| | 05:45 | Everything is separated from
the background like I want.
| | 05:47 | Again, the highlights; those aren't
going to be a problem, because I can always
| | 05:51 | remove those after I turn this into
live editable paths, and since I used
| | 05:54 | Overlapping paths as opposed to Abutting
paths, when I remove these, there won't
| | 05:58 | be a hole there, it will actually
just show this underlying color.
| | 06:02 | It might make the artwork look a little
bit more flat, and lose a little bit of
| | 06:05 | depth, but it will also get rid of
these gigantic highlight areas that I have
| | 06:09 | here that I think somewhat distract
from the overall quality of the image.
| | 06:12 | So, once you are finished with your
tracing result, you're pretty much good to go.
| | 06:16 | There are ways to turn this into live
editable paths, where you can go in and do
| | 06:21 | some further tweaks, like removing
these extra pieces, and things like that, and
| | 06:24 | I'm going to cover how to
do that in a future movie,
| | 06:27 | but for now, what I'm going to do is
just save this document. As long as I don't
| | 06:32 | turn this into paths, it's a live image
tracing object that I can come back and
| | 06:36 | make changes to each and every time I
open Illustrator, if I want to, as long as
| | 06:40 | I don't get rid of this tracing object.
| | 06:42 | Now, if you wanted to get rid of it,
you would have to do something called
| | 06:44 | expanding it, and like I said, I'm going to
explain exactly what that is and how it
| | 06:49 | works in a future movie, but I just
wanted to give you a better idea of my
| | 06:51 | process when I go through tracing a photo;
things I look for, things that I need to
| | 06:56 | adjust, and all that kind of stuff.
| | 06:58 | So, it starts of much the same way I did
in this chapter, where I break down each
| | 07:00 | phase. I go through, I pick a Preset,
I chose a Palette, then I work on the
| | 07:04 | pixel assignment, and then finally, I
worked on the curve fitting settings to get
| | 07:08 | everything exactly like I like it,
| | 07:10 | and then once I'm finished, I can then
turn that into a vector object, which I
| | 07:12 | can continue to edit anytime I want.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Basic tracing: Line art| 00:00 | Perhaps the most popular use for Illustrator's
Image Trace feature is converting
| | 00:03 | line artwork into vector form.
| | 00:05 | Now, exactly what is line art?
| | 00:07 | Well, line art can mean
anything to many people.
| | 00:10 | In this movie, I'm referring to something
that somebody drew by hand on a piece
| | 00:13 | of paper that I need to
covert into an Illustrator file,
| | 00:16 | but it could be anything, from blueprints,
to napkin sketches, to old JPEG logo files.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to be walking you
through my personal workflow for line art,
| | 00:23 | but remember, there is no real right or
wrong when you're working with Image Trace panel.
| | 00:27 | It's all subjective, and at the end of
the day, as long as you're getting to
| | 00:30 | where you need to go, the method you choose
to get there is really not that big of a deal.
| | 00:33 | So, the first thing I do is I
always open up the Image Trace panel.
| | 00:35 | So I'll just go to Window > Image Trace, to
make sure that is out on my screen somewhere.
| | 00:40 | And then once I get that open, I'm also
going to go to the File menu, and choose
| | 00:44 | New, and for this particular project,
what I'm going to do -- this is going to be
| | 00:47 | something I'm putting on the Web, maybe,
so let's just choose one of the Web
| | 00:50 | presets, and let's do 1024 x 768.
| | 00:53 | That should be okay.
| | 00:55 | Everything else is fine, I'll
hit OK, and there's my new document.
| | 01:00 | I'm just going to move this over a
little bit, so I have a little bit more room
| | 01:03 | to work with, with my
gigantic Image Trace panel there.
| | 01:06 | Then I'm going to go the
File menu and choose Place.
| | 01:10 | Then I'm going to go out and find my
line art, and place it in, and I'll place it
| | 01:14 | right there in the middle of my document.
| | 01:17 | I'll kind of zoom out so you
can see exactly what's going on.
| | 01:19 | So, it's just this little kind of flower
design here, and what we want to do is
| | 01:23 | trace this. And actually, I'll zoom out a
little bit more, and resize it, so it fits in
| | 01:29 | my document window; it's a little
bit big. There we go. Now I've got it.
| | 01:33 | What we're going to do is make sure we
have it selected, and then we're going to
| | 01:38 | open up the Image Trace panel.
| | 01:39 | The first place I start with the
Image Trace panel, when I'm tracing lin eart
| | 01:43 | work like this is I go up. and I choose from
the Presets, and I choose Black and White Logo.
| | 01:48 | I choose this because I want to see just
how close it can come to recreating the
| | 01:52 | artwork that I see here.
| | 01:53 | I see mostly black and white in this,
but there may be shades of gray, so I want
| | 01:57 | to know how much detail I'm going to
lose with the Black and White Logo preset.
| | 02:01 | If I can get what I need out of the
Black and White Logo preset, I'm pretty
| | 02:05 | much ready to go, and then I can convert it
into paths, and continue editing it after the fact.
| | 02:08 | But if it doesn't get close, I know
I'm going to have to do some serious work
| | 02:10 | inside of the Image Trace panel.
| | 02:13 | So, let's go Black and White Logo, it's
going to convert it over into a tracing
| | 02:16 | object, and when I do that, it
looks okay, but it's not the best.
| | 02:21 | So if I come up here to this little
eyeball, and press and hold, you can see sort
| | 02:25 | of the difference between the two.
| | 02:28 | Let's zoom in on some of these little detail
area, so we can see exactly what's happening.
| | 02:31 | So here's before, and here's after.
| | 02:34 | So it's okay, it's not the best.
| | 02:37 | I'm getting some gaps, and things like that;
| | 02:38 | I might want to make some adjustments to this.
| | 02:40 | So what I'm going to do, I'm going to
leave it on the Black and White preset,
| | 02:45 | because this is Black and White artwork.
| | 02:46 | If you are dealing with something that
is not Black and White art, you might try
| | 02:50 | something like grayscale, or even try
one of the other limited color palettes,
| | 02:54 | like maybe three colors,
two colors, etcetera.
| | 02:56 | So in this case I'm going to
stick with Black and White.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to leave my Threshold alone.
| | 03:00 | You can see here pixels darker than the
threshold value are converted to black.
| | 03:04 | Pixels lighter than the threshold
value will then be converted to white.
| | 03:07 | In this case, most of this is just
black or white, so it's not that big a deal.
| | 03:11 | I can leave it somewhat middle of the road.
| | 03:12 | But I am going to adjust the Noise.
| | 03:15 | When I hover over, the Noise slider, it
tells me it reduces the noise by ignoring
| | 03:17 | areas of specified size;
higher value means less noise.
| | 03:21 | So in this case, I'm losing some
detail in some area, so that means I need
| | 03:25 | more noise essentially.
| | 03:26 | So I'm going to back this down to
something like maybe 10, and let's see if we
| | 03:30 | get some of those areas of detail back.
| | 03:33 | When I do that, you're going to see
right here, this little area becomes a
| | 03:35 | little bit more detailed, but I
still have some gaps out there.
| | 03:38 | I'm also getting a little bit of extra
stuff around the outside, and that's okay.
| | 03:42 | I can always clean that up later.
| | 03:44 | And so what I'm going to do now is
just decrease the Noise even further.
| | 03:48 | Let's do something like two pixels.
| | 03:50 | And so once I do that, it's going to re-
render again, and I get some of it back,
| | 03:54 | but again, not all of it.
| | 03:56 | If I click and hold, you can see that I'm
still missing that one little piece right there.
| | 04:00 | Let's take it all the way down to 1;
see if that helps at all.
| | 04:05 | Helps a little bit in the main areas,
but right there, that's one area that I'm
| | 04:09 | probably going to have to fix on my own.
| | 04:11 | And that's okay, because the Image Trace panel
is meant to get you only part of the way there.
| | 04:15 | It is not just a one click fix, as I've
said many times throughout this course.
| | 04:19 | As you can see, there are several areas
here that are going to need some work.
| | 04:23 | There are some areas missing some details,
some areas that have some things that
| | 04:26 | I probably don't want;
| | 04:27 | little extra bits and pieces
everywhere, but that's okay.
| | 04:29 | That's why when we expand
this out and turn it into paths,
| | 04:32 | it will be easy for me to clean those
up, because we have tools built in the
| | 04:37 | Illustrator to help us with that.
| | 04:38 | What I'm more concerned with now is the
overall fidelity of the artwork, and how
| | 04:42 | it looks compared to the original.
| | 04:43 | So, let's give a one more glance
over here. Here's before; after.
| | 04:46 | So, I think that the fit is a little
loose, in this case, so what I'm want to do
[00:04:49:66]
is I want to kind of increase
the path fitting a little bit.
| | 04:51 | So, let's do that; let's take
this up to something like maybe 75.
| | 04:56 | Let's see if that helps us at all.
| | 05:00 | Once it renders out, that's going to
tighten up a little bit; still not as close
| | 05:04 | as I want it to be, though, so I'm going
to push that up to maybe something like
| | 05:08 | 95. Let's see how that goes.
| | 05:09 | There we go, that's a little bit
better, and you can see I actually brought
| | 05:11 | back a little bit more the detail right
there in that space where I was having problems.
| | 05:14 | Now, I can also change the
corner emphasis here.
| | 05:17 | You can see here that a
higher value means more corners;
| | 05:20 | well, I don't necessarily want that.
| | 05:22 | I want that to be sort of middle of the
road, so let's back that down to about
| | 05:26 | 50%, and see how that converts over.
| | 05:28 | Not much of a change there, but I
think some of the corners did sort of
| | 05:31 | sharpen out, some of the other ones
kind of rounded off, that's okay, that's
| | 05:34 | what I was looking for.
| | 05:37 | And so everything here is pretty
much as good as I'm going to get it.
| | 05:40 | I also want to make sure that I have
one more checkbox turned on, and that's
| | 05:42 | right here: Ignore White.
| | 05:45 | When I'm working with black and white
artwork like this, chances are I don't
| | 05:47 | want the white color.
| | 05:49 | I just want the black, because I'm going
to be working with that area as a fill.
| | 05:52 | I don't need the white areas to fill.
| | 05:54 | So let's just Ignore White, and once I do
that it's going to render out one more
| | 06:00 | time. You're going to see it gets a
little bit darker. That's just because it's
| | 06:02 | removing some of those white paths, and
since it was using the Abutting methods,
| | 06:05 | some of those were sort of knocking up
against those blacker areas, and making
| | 06:07 | them a little bit lighter, and so now I
can also choose to do Overlapping paths,
| | 06:11 | but in this case, most of this is just
going to be one single path, so I don't
| | 06:15 | really need to worry about that.
| | 06:18 | And I'm pretty much good to go
in terms of this trace, I think.
| | 06:20 | Let's back up and see here one more time.
| | 06:21 | I'll back up and look at the before, and
again, I'm just clicking and holding this
| | 06:24 | little eyeball, and the after,
and that is pretty close.
| | 06:30 | It's about as close as I'm going
to get with the Image Trace panel.
| | 06:34 | Again, there are some areas that I
would want to clean up inside of this trace;
| | 06:37 | some of these little dots,
and things like that.
| | 06:40 | And that's of no part of the
Image Trace panel;
| | 06:43 | that was actually part of the sketch.
| | 06:45 | These stray pencil marks, or stray pen
marks that people have sometimes when
| | 06:48 | they're sketching, we can easily get
rid of those inside of Illustrator once we
| | 06:50 | convert it over into paths.
| | 06:53 | But the Image Trace panel, like I said,
it's meant to get us most of the way
| | 06:55 | there, and I think right now I'm
probably about 85 to 90% of the way there.
| | 07:00 | I would need to come in and
reconnect some of these paths.
| | 07:02 | I might reshape some of these curve
lines. I would definitely clean up some of
| | 07:06 | the stray areas around here, and I would
also change some of the areas that are a
| | 07:09 | little bit more pointy than
they should be; things like that,
| | 07:11 | just to make it a little
bit pleasing to the eye.
| | 07:13 | I would also fill in some of
the gaps in some of these areas,
| | 07:16 | but overall, I'm pretty
happy with the result here.
| | 07:18 | It didn't take me a whole lot of time
to do it, and because I used the Black and
| | 07:21 | White preset, it was
really fast in the render time.
| | 07:24 | So, the next time you bring in some
piece of line artwork, whether it's a pencil
| | 07:28 | sketch, a pen drawing, a coloring book
page, whatever that might be, try using
| | 07:32 | the Black and White preset first.
| | 07:34 | Get as close as you can with it. If
you're still not making any headway on it,
| | 07:37 | then try some of the other
presets inside of this panel.
| | 07:40 | And once you do that, I think you'll
be really happy with the result, and then
| | 07:45 | get yourself as close as you can.
Understand that you're not going to make it
| | 07:48 | perfect; it's not going to be a one
for one representation of what you saw in
| | 07:51 | the original piece of artwork, but you
can get it pretty darn close with this
| | 07:54 | panel, and then once you're finished
with it, you can expand it out, turn it
| | 07:57 | into paths, and take it to that next
level using the rest of the tools in
| | 08:01 | Illustrator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Expanding your artwork| 00:00 | Once you've gotten your trace to a
state that you're really happy with, and you
| | 00:04 | think there is simply nothing you can do
in the Image Trace panel that will help
| | 00:08 | you any further, it's time to take that
document to the next level, which means
| | 00:11 | converting it from pixels to paths.
| | 00:13 | So, as you can see right now, when I
click on this object, I get the standard
| | 00:17 | bounding box surrounding it.
| | 00:18 | It looks just like it did
whenever I placed it in the Illustrator.
| | 00:21 | There are no editable paths
here for me to click on and change.
| | 00:25 | So, in order to convert this
object into paths, you must perform an
| | 00:27 | operation known as expansion.
| | 00:29 | Basically, when you expand an object,
you are getting rid of any live
| | 00:32 | characteristics that it might have.
| | 00:34 | That includes effects, filters, or
in this case, image trace properties.
| | 00:38 | So, when you expand an object, it's no
longer a tracing object, and thus you can
| | 00:42 | no longer make changes to
the image trace settings.
| | 00:45 | It's because of this that I always
suggest making a copy of the original tracing
| | 00:48 | object, just in case you
need it later on down the road.
| | 00:51 | So, some people would just save out a
duplicate document. I'm not of the mindset
| | 00:55 | that you need more files on your
system. My system is cluttered enough.
| | 00:59 | So, what I like to do is just create
another artboard, and copy this over to
| | 01:02 | another artboard, and then
work on one artboard at a time.
| | 01:05 | So, I'll just go over here to the Artboards
panel, and click on the New Artboard button.
| | 01:09 | That'll give me a new artboard right
over here, and then with this object
| | 01:13 | selected, I'm simply going to copy it,
and then I'll target this artboard by
| | 01:17 | double-clicking on it,
and I'll paste.
| | 01:20 | And once that pastes over, you see the
tracing the object has been duplicated,
| | 01:24 | and then I can just move
back over onto object number 1.
| | 01:27 | And so, on object number 1, what
I'm going to do is expand it out.
| | 01:31 | There are two ways to do this.
| | 01:33 | One is right here in the control
panel, and it's the easiest one.
| | 01:36 | You notice when I hover over the Expand
button that says Convert tracing object
| | 01:40 | into paths, and also I can go up to
the Object menu, and I can choose Expand,
| | 01:43 | but I feel like Expand here in the
control panel is the easiest way to go, so I
| | 01:46 | just use this one, 99% of the time.
| | 01:49 | So once I click on this, watch
how quickly it coverts it over.
| | 01:51 | So now when I click on this one over
here, you can see each one of the individual
| | 01:55 | paths that has been created, but if I
click on the original, you can see that it
| | 01:58 | is still a tracing object,
| | 02:00 | and if I go to the Window menu, and bring
up Image Trace, and I'll move this sort
| | 02:05 | of in the center, so you can see it,
| | 02:07 | when I have this object selected over
here, I still have all of my options
| | 02:11 | available to me to make changes
here in the Image Trace panel,
| | 02:13 | whereas if I move over here, and select this
object, the Image Trace panel is grayed out.
| | 02:17 | It's grayed out because these are paths
now, not pixels, and there's nothing for
| | 02:22 | the Image Trace panel to work on.
| | 02:23 | So if you want to make sure that you
maintain the maximum amount of editability
| | 02:27 | with your original, and also with the
paths over here, my suggestion is to create
| | 02:33 | yourself another artboard, and then keep
a copy of the traced object, and then a
| | 02:37 | copy of the expanded object over here.
| | 02:38 | Now let's focus on the expanded object.
| | 02:40 | I'll close the Image Trace panel, and
I'll just focus on this artboard over here,
| | 02:44 | and I'll zoom in a little bit.
| | 02:46 | So, by default, when you expand an object,
everything is grouped together in one giant group.
| | 02:51 | So if you wanted to get in here, and
start messing with some of the paths, like on
| | 02:55 | her face, for instance, you
cannot just click on those.
| | 02:57 | Even if I click away and try to click
in here on, say, this little path on her
| | 03:02 | nose, it's still going to select everything.
| | 03:03 | So what you have to do is
to enter into isolation mode.
| | 03:06 | So just double-click, and that's going
to allow you to get in there and get
| | 03:10 | control of each one of
these individual paths.
| | 03:12 | And as you can see, everything is
individual. You can select any of the small or
| | 03:15 | large paths to work on, and use any one
of Illustrator's tools, Direct Select, Pen
| | 03:20 | tool, whatever, to help you clean up and
refine this trace as much as possible.
| | 03:24 | But if you make mistake, or you figure
out down the road, man, you know, I really
| | 03:27 | should have used a different palette
for this, or I should've changed the
| | 03:30 | preset before I expanded this thing out,
| | 03:32 | that's okay, because even if you've
saved this, and closed it, and opened it up a
| | 03:36 | week later to make that realization,
you can always go back out, and then move
| | 03:41 | over to that other artboard, and on
that other artboard, you have that Image
| | 03:45 | Trace that you can then make
changes to using the Image Trace panel.
| | 03:48 | So, this is, in essence, a way of doing
some trial and error on one, while keeping
| | 03:52 | a fresh copy of the other, and that
way you can sort of mix and match your
| | 03:56 | workflows, create a sort of a hybrid
image of image trace and live editable paths.
| | 04:00 | It's my preferred way to work, but I
understand that you might be a little
| | 04:03 | different, so take some time, and
explore this process out, see exactly what
| | 04:07 | works for you, and then set
up your workspace accordingly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cleaning up stray pixels| 00:00 | Once you've completed your trace, and
you've expanded it out into paths, it's
| | 00:04 | time to start cleaning up that trace to
get rid of some of the unwanted pixels
| | 00:07 | that might have come in either during
the drawing process itself, during the
| | 00:10 | trace, or during the scan, or wherever
they came in, it's time to get rid of those,
| | 00:14 | and it's really easy to do so.
| | 00:15 | So, all you have to do is select the
object that you have expanded, and then you
| | 00:20 | want to enter into isolation mode, or
simply ungroup the object itself, and once
| | 00:23 | you do that -- let's just double-click
to enter isolation mode for now --
| | 00:26 | you can actually go in and start
targeting areas that you need to get rid of.
| | 00:29 | So, in this case, I'm going to zoom in to
this little area over here on the right
| | 00:34 | hand side, and I'm just going to clean
up this little guy right here, and I just
| | 00:38 | selected it, and pressed Delete.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to go over here, and I'll clean
up some of these as well, and again, we
| | 00:46 | are just selecting these,
and deleting them out.
| | 00:52 | This is going to help the artwork look
a little bit more refined, and also make
| | 00:55 | it look as if it was professionally
done, versus just sort of an image trace
| | 01:00 | version of a hand drawn logo.
| | 01:02 | So, in this case, I'm just going to
keep deleting all these little paths that
| | 01:05 | happen to be around here.
| | 01:06 | If you find some stray ones around
that don't have a fill, you can just get
| | 01:11 | rid of those as well.
| | 01:13 | And then I'm just panning around using
my spacebar temporarily on my keyboard;
| | 01:18 | panning around and getting these things.
| | 01:19 | So, this little guy right here; I can
get rid of that, and I'll also take care
| | 01:25 | of this little guy.
| | 01:26 | And anything that I see that just
doesn't belong -- a lot of this stuff belongs
| | 01:31 | just fine, no big deal, but some of
this stuff is not exactly what I want, and
| | 01:38 | once I figure that out, I'm pretty
much good to go, and I can exit isolation
| | 01:43 | mode here, and I can zoom right back out.
| | 01:47 | And so let's take a look at this here. What
I'm going to do now is just revert the file.
| | 01:52 | First I'm going to select this, and
copy it, Command+C, and then let's take a new
| | 01:59 | document here, and I'll paste it over,
and then let's go File > Revert in the
| | 02:05 | original. There we go. And
let's make sure these are the same.
| | 02:16 | So, let's take a look at this.
You can see all that little stray pixels
| | 02:20 | over here, and here is the
cleaner version over here.
| | 02:24 | So, it looks a little bit more refined,
not as much junk cluttering up the place,
| | 02:28 | but also there are some little areas
around here that I would want to clean up
| | 02:31 | that they are still stray, they are part
of the drawing, necessarily, but I still
| | 02:35 | need to clean them up, but the
unfortunate thing is they're connected to these.
| | 02:39 | And so what I would need to do is
actually remove them, and one of the easiest
| | 02:43 | way to remove those is to
remove unwanted anchor points.
| | 02:46 | And so that's exactly what were going
to be doing in the very next movie, as
| | 02:50 | I'm going to be walking you through how to
remove some of these unwanted anchor points.
| | 02:54 | A couple of different methods can be
used to do this, and one of my favorites is
| | 02:57 | using just the plain old eraser tool to
get rid of them, but in some cases, you
| | 03:00 | need to be a little bit more refined in
your control, and I'll walk you through
| | 03:03 | how to do that in the next movie as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing unwanted anchor points| 00:00 | Once you remove the stray pixels
inside of your artwork that can be removed
| | 00:03 | simply with the point and click method,
it's time to start cleaning up the extra
| | 00:07 | areas around it that might
be connected to other paths.
| | 00:09 | And in this case, what you're going
to want to do is remove what we call
| | 00:12 | unwanted anchor points.
| | 00:13 | It's a pretty easy process, but if
you don't know how to do it, it can be
| | 00:17 | a little confusing,
| | 00:18 | so I'm going to walk you through my
personal workflow for doing that as well.
| | 00:22 | So, the first thing I'm going to do is
zoom in on an area that I think needs some
| | 00:25 | clean up, and this area
down here definitely needs it.
| | 00:27 | And so, in order to do that, what I am
going to start off doing is just removing
| | 00:30 | some unwanted anchor
points with the Pen tool.
| | 00:32 | And so, in order to do that, what I am
going to do is first select an object that
| | 00:36 | I want to make a change to, and then
we'll grab the Pen tool, and what we're going
| | 00:39 | to do is zoom in quite a bit, so
I can see the individual points.
| | 00:42 | And so what I want to do here is just
start coming in here, and I am just going
| | 00:45 | to remove the anchor points.
| | 00:47 | When I hover over them, you'll see a
little minus sign, so you're just
| | 00:49 | hovering over these, and you're just
removing them one at a time, and they should
| | 00:55 | just kind of jump in like that.
| | 00:56 | Now, if you get to a point like this
where you need to continue a curve or
| | 00:59 | something, what you do is just grab your
Direct Selection tool, zoom in a little
| | 01:01 | bit farther and then you can make a
change to how the curve bends with these
| | 01:08 | little direction handles like this.
| | 01:11 | And if you get in here, and you think,
you know what? This little point doesn't
| | 01:14 | need to be there. That's okay; just
come in and remove it, like so, and you can
| | 01:17 | see that it kind of straightens up.
| | 01:20 | So I can come in and move these little
directional handles until I get the curve
| | 01:24 | exactly like I want it, and then any
other points that I think I need to remove,
| | 01:27 | I can just go in with my Pen
tool, and start removing them.
| | 01:32 | So, this is essentially just like the
point and click removal of stray pixels,
| | 01:35 | except this time you are
removing unwanted anchor points.
| | 01:38 | Now, you may also want to move anchor
points around, and that's okay. Just
| | 01:42 | grab your Direct Selection tool right here, and
so let's zoom in right here on this little guy.
| | 01:46 | And so the first thing I want to do is
reshape the direction of this, and then
| | 01:54 | make sure that I am working just on
this point, and then we will just kind of
| | 01:57 | move it out a little bit.
| | 02:00 | Here we go, and we might straighten up
something kind of like that, and then I am
| | 02:04 | going to zoom out to get the full picture, so I
can see exactly what's going on. There we go.
| | 02:10 | I want that to be kind of
smooth going around the edge.
| | 02:13 | And you can spend as much time or
as little time on this as you want.
| | 02:15 | In the end of the day, it's just
whatever looks best to you, but I think I've
| | 02:18 | done a pretty good job of smoothing
this out. If I switch to the regular
| | 02:21 | Selection tool, and then click away,
| | 02:23 | you can see that I've really started to
clean up that edge just from those small
| | 02:26 | little adjustments
that I've made right there.
| | 02:29 | So, let's zoom in here, we'll clean up
a few more, and then we'll move on to
| | 02:31 | another area that might need some help.
| | 02:33 | So, in this case, what I am going to do
is just come in here, and this little guy
| | 02:35 | right here, I can actually just select
it with the Direct Selection tool, and I
| | 02:39 | can probably just delete it, so let's
just go right over that. And actually,
| | 02:43 | let's just grab the regular
selection tool; let's see if I can get it.
| | 02:45 | Nope, it's grouped in there.
That's okay.
| | 02:49 | Just double-click, and then you can get
in, and you may have to double-click a few
| | 02:52 | times to get in to get the actual
points that you need, but once you get in
| | 02:55 | there, everything should be good, and
then just double-click to get back out.
| | 02:58 | And so what I want to do here is just
grab my Direct Selection tool, select
| | 03:02 | something, and this one might be able to
be fixed just by dragging this point in,
| | 03:08 | something like that.
| | 03:11 | It looks a little bit better.
| | 03:15 | I 'm going to increase the curve right
about there, and also come in here, and grab
| | 03:18 | this anchor point, so I just click
away, and then make sure I click on that, so
| | 03:21 | it's the only thing selected, and then
we just move it a little bit, and then
| | 03:25 | we can just tweak these corner
handles and control handles until they flow
| | 03:28 | exactly like we want them to.
There we go.
| | 03:33 | Now you see I am just kind of cleaning up
that edge; making it a little bit more refined.
| | 03:37 | Same thing over here. I might want to
change this a little bit. In this case,
| | 03:41 | let's just kind of bow this out a
little bit, and maybe do the same over here.
| | 03:46 | I think that little anchor point right
there needs to be removed, so we'll just
| | 03:48 | kind of click, and get rid of that.
| | 03:51 | And you see there, just from that
one little change, see how smooth I
| | 03:54 | made that edge there?
| | 03:57 | Cleaning these things up is really up
to you on how you do it, and how much
| | 04:00 | work you put into it,
| | 04:02 | but at the end of the day, it's just
about zooming in, finding the points that
| | 04:05 | you need to edit, and then
removing them, or changing how they appear.
| | 04:10 | So, in this case here, what I
would do is zoom in right here.
| | 04:13 | This little thing does not need to be
connected to this, so what I am going to do
| | 04:16 | is just zoom in, and move the anchor
points around until I figure out exactly
| | 04:20 | what's going on, and there we go.
| | 04:25 | Once I find the one that I need, I'll
just delete it, and then I can move this
| | 04:30 | one around, like so, and then
kind of reshape it on my own.
| | 04:35 | So again, it's just about reshaping
the artwork at this point. There we go.
| | 04:42 | And actually, this is a separate path
that does not need to be here, so I can get
| | 04:46 | rid of some of these anchor points as
well, and then once I get here, I can then
| | 04:51 | start to -- there we go, now
I've got control of the right one.
| | 04:55 | And so once we get that done, I can
kind of back out, and you can see exactly
| | 04:59 | what I am doing here.
| | 05:00 | I am just basically separating this
little area from the outside, and making it a
| | 05:05 | little bit more refined.
| | 05:07 | So again, this would take some time to
really clean this thing up, and make it as
| | 05:11 | smooth as possible around the edges,
but at the end of the day, it's going to
| | 05:15 | look a whole lot better than
it did when we first started.
| | 05:18 | And if I take this, and let's just
select it all, and copy it. I'll paste it
| | 05:23 | into a new document, and then go back to this
one, and let's revert it back to its original.
| | 05:28 | So, here's what the original artwork
look like, let's zoom in on this area here,
| | 05:35 | and then let's go back over
here, let's zoom back out.
| | 05:39 | Got away from me there;
clicked in the wrong spot.
| | 05:42 | Let's go back over here,
and let's zoom in right here.
| | 05:47 | And so here is the after result, and
here is the before. Zoom in a little bit
| | 05:52 | more, so we can see exactly
what we are talking about.
| | 05:55 | So there is the before,
and there is the after.
| | 05:57 | So, you can see here, I've cleaned
up this little bit here. I've sort of
| | 06:01 | refined these areas all through here,
and then of course, I removed this little
| | 06:05 | piece right there, so if I look back, see
how much smoother it is around the edge here?
| | 06:09 | There is separation right here, this is
more smooth here, so very nicely done,
| | 06:13 | and that's just in a few quick and easy
steps. That's nothing that I've spent a
| | 06:17 | whole lot of time on.
| | 06:19 | But if I was doing this for real, I
would actually come in, and spend the time,
| | 06:23 | refine this a little bit, make sure the
curves all match with each other, make
| | 06:26 | sure the width of the lines
match, all that good stuff.
| | 06:29 | And it might take a long time, but at
the end of the day, it's going to be
| | 06:33 | well worth it, because your artwork
is going to look super awesome when
| | 06:35 | you're finished.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Re-Creating Artwork with ShapesCreating with shapes| 00:00 | Up until now, we've spent most of this course
exploring the Image Trace feature of Adobe
| | 00:04 | Illustrator, but in some cases, the
Image Trace feature is simply not the best
| | 00:09 | option for recreating some sort
of artwork in Illustrator itself.
| | 00:13 | So, what do we do when Image Trace is
not the best way to go, and how do we
| | 00:18 | realize that Image Trace
is not the best way to go?
| | 00:21 | Well, we have to sort of change our
methodology when it comes to creating
| | 00:25 | artwork, and one of my favorite ways to
create artwork is to simply use shapes.
| | 00:29 | I know that seems like a primitive
way of going about it, but in many cases,
| | 00:32 | shapes are the best way
to recreate art work.
| | 00:35 | For instance, when you look at this
piece of artwork that I'm looking at right
| | 00:38 | here, the predominant shape
in this is what? A circle.
| | 00:42 | We have three circles here, three
circles here, the O is a circle, the E could
| | 00:47 | easily be a circle, the C
could easily be a circle.
| | 00:49 | What's the other
predominant shape that we have here?
| | 00:52 | A rectangle. We have a rectangle in the
K, rectangle in the I, in the N, a few
| | 00:56 | curves, but that's okay, and so we can
theoretically recreate this entire logo
| | 01:02 | right here simply by using shapes.
| | 01:05 | What you have to do is train your eye
to see the shapes that are inside of
| | 01:09 | artwork that you
bring into Illustrator.
| | 01:10 | For instance, let's take a look over
here, and I'll bring up my Artboards panel,
| | 01:14 | and jump over to Artboard number 2.
| | 01:16 | In Artboard number 2, I am
still seeing much of the same thing.
| | 01:20 | I still have circles, and
I still have rectangles.
| | 01:22 | For instance, the E, nothing but
rectangles; the C, that could be a circle; the
| | 01:27 | O, definitely a circle.
| | 01:29 | What about this crazy stuff
happening over here on the left?
| | 01:32 | Well, that could be circles as well,
| | 01:34 | because we have an awesome tool called
the Shape Builder, which I am going to
| | 01:38 | walk you through how to use in this
chapter, and that will allow you to actually
| | 01:42 | create something very similar to
this, if not exactly like this.
| | 01:45 | All you have to do is set up a series
of circles in such a way, and then simply
| | 01:50 | remove the parts you don't need to
leave these little slivers after the fact.
| | 01:53 | So, when I look at art that I bring
into Illustrator, I don't necessarily just
| | 01:57 | think automatically, oh man, I've got
to trace this using Image Trace, and then
| | 02:01 | it's going to take forever to clean
this thing up, and all that stuff. I don't.
| | 02:05 | I look at it as, okay, what can I create
using the most efficient tools possible?
| | 02:09 | How can I do this in such a way that
I can get in and out of this piece of
| | 02:14 | artwork as fast as I can? Because I
don't want to spend hours and hours cleaning
| | 02:17 | up paths, and removing anchor points,
and dragging around control handles.
| | 02:21 | I want to just be able to throw
something together that represents exactly what
| | 02:25 | I am looking at here
without too much of a fuss.
| | 02:27 | That way I can get it back to the
client, or back to my boss, or whoever it is I
| | 02:32 | am designing this for, and they can see
A, that I am efficient, and B, that I
| | 02:37 | know what I am doing, and so if I
can do that using this basic tools, like
| | 02:41 | rectangles, and circles, why not?
| | 02:42 | That seems like the best
way to go about it to me.
| | 02:45 | Let's take a look at Artboard number 3.
| | 02:47 | When I look at this, there are some
things that I might have a little bit of
| | 02:51 | trouble with. The text, for instance; it
just fades out in this area here, and it
| | 02:55 | looks like it's got a mixture of like
sans serif and serif type, and so I might
| | 03:00 | actually have to try to match those fonts.
| | 03:02 | And that's okay, I can try to match
those fonts later on, but check out the main
| | 03:06 | part of the logo. It's two rectangles
that have been skewed over to the right.
| | 03:09 | That's pretty simple.
| | 03:10 | I don't have to spend time with the Pen
tool, clicking, and dragging, and clicking,
| | 03:14 | and clicking. I don't have to do that.
| | 03:16 | I can simply grab the Rectangle tool,
draw two rectangles, skew them over, and
| | 03:20 | then size them accordingly.
| | 03:21 | That's all I have to do,
it's no big deal to do that.
| | 03:24 | And so once you change your mindset
or your methodology when it comes to
| | 03:28 | creating artwork in Illustrator, I
think you are really going to start to see
| | 03:32 | these things differently.
| | 03:33 | I don't see that I need to
trace these using Image Trace.
| | 03:36 | I see rectangles, and circles, and I see
the fact that I can combine rectangles
| | 03:40 | and circles in different ways to
recreate this artwork in a very efficient way
| | 03:44 | that's going to get it off my desk, and
into my clients' hands a lot faster, which
| | 03:48 | means hopefully I am going to get
paid a little bit faster as well.
| | 03:52 | So, when you open up artwork inside of
Illustrator, try to take inventory of
| | 03:56 | everything you see. Don't just open it up,
you know, don't take a JPEG that your client
| | 03:59 | sends you, and say, oh man, I have got
to trace this thing; it's going to take
| | 04:05 | hours. Don't do that. Spend some time
looking at it, and seeing, okay, what is it
| | 04:10 | that I can recreate inside of this using
the most basic tools that I learned how
| | 04:15 | to use however long ago when you first
started learning Illustrator, and once
| | 04:18 | you do that, and apply that to your
workflow, you are going to be so glad you did
| | 04:23 | because using shapes to recreate complex
things in Illustrator is a whole lot of
| | 04:27 | fun, and it's really easy once
you understand how to do it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Pathfinder panel| 00:00 | One of the easiest ways to create
complex shapes inside of Illustrator is to use
| | 00:04 | something called the Pathfinder panel,
and this is something that's been around
| | 00:07 | in Illustrator for a long, long time,
but not very many people know exactly what
| | 00:11 | all of the buttons inside of it mean,
and when you hover them, it really doesn't
| | 00:14 | give you a great
description of what they do either.
| | 00:17 | So, in order to open up this panel,
just go up to the Window menu, and choose
| | 00:21 | Pathfinder, and that'll open that up, and
inside of the Pathfinder window, you're
| | 00:24 | going to notice that you have
several different modes to choose from.
| | 00:27 | At the top are the Shape Modes, and on the
bottom are what we call the Pathfinders.
| | 00:31 | So, at the top, we have things like
Unite, Minus Front, Intersect, and Exclude,
| | 00:35 | and on the bottom, we have Divide, Trim,
Merge, Crop, Outline, and Minus Back.
| | 00:41 | Now let's take a look at
how some of these work.
| | 00:44 | First thing you want to make sure you
do is select both of the items that I
| | 00:47 | have on the Artboard right now, and then let's
just click on this first button right here: Unite.
| | 00:50 | When I click Unite, you'll notice
that both of the shapes unite into one
| | 00:53 | single shape, and they also unite in terms of
appearance. As far as this goes, it will be red.
| | 00:58 | Why?
| | 01:00 | Because the topmost object is what
it uses as a basis for the appearance.
| | 01:04 | So if the topmost object is red, the
entire shape now becomes red. If it was
| | 01:08 | green, it would become green, and so forth.
| | 01:10 | Let's Undo that, and let's
take a look at the second one.
| | 01:13 | The second one is Minus Front, and so
basically what this means is that the
| | 01:17 | topmost object is used as
almost like a cookie-cutter effect.
| | 01:19 | So in this case, it's going to be
like I took this star and just punched it
| | 01:24 | right through the circle.
So let's click that.
| | 01:26 | There you go. I'll Undo, and
let's move on to the next one: Intersect.
| | 01:29 | Intersect basically removes everything
that does not overlap with something else,
| | 01:34 | and it combines that into a single shape.
| | 01:36 | So if I click on this, everything that
wasn't overlapping something else, like
| | 01:40 | that, remains intact.
| | 01:43 | Let's Undo that, and let's do Exclude.
| | 01:46 | Exclude is basically the
opposite of Intersect.
| | 01:48 | Instead of getting rid of everything
that doesn't overlap, it gets rid of
| | 01:51 | everything that does.
| | 01:52 | This resulting shape will become a
compound path, looking something like that.
| | 01:56 | Alright, let's go ahead and Undo that,
Command+Z or Ctrl+Z, and let's take a
| | 02:00 | look at the Pathfinder
operations down below.
| | 02:03 | In the Pathfinders, we have the
options of Divide, Trim, Merge, Crop,
| | 02:07 | Outline, and Minus Back.
| | 02:09 | Divide is probably the most often used,
and it cuts the artwork into separate
| | 02:13 | pieces wherever the shapes
overlap one another.
| | 02:16 | Color attributes of the original
shape are not changed at all, and after
| | 02:20 | dividing, you can use the Direct
Selection tool, or Group Selection tool to move
| | 02:23 | the resulting pieces around independently.
| | 02:25 | You can also ungroup the shapes, and
move them with the Selection tool.
| | 02:28 | So, let's take a look at what this means.
| | 02:29 | I'll hit Divide, you're not going to see
anything happen right off the bat, but
| | 02:33 | if I grab my Direct Selection tool,
and then click away, watch what I can do
| | 02:37 | here; I can come out and
move individual pieces around.
| | 02:43 | So, it basically just divided
everything up into pieces.
| | 02:48 | Hit Command+Z or Ctrl+Z until I get it back
to normal. Let's check out the other ones.
| | 02:52 | The second option is something called
Trim, and Trim is basically going to
| | 02:56 | remove the parts of the object
that are overlapping or hidden.
| | 02:58 | If the objects are stroked,
Trim removes the strokes.
| | 03:01 | It does not merge the objects
with the same color attribute.
| | 03:04 | So, if I do this, you are going to see
here that it basically just locks them
| | 03:11 | together. It will not merge them, though,
because they don't have the same color attributes.
| | 03:17 | So, I'll step back, Command+Z or Ctrl+Z.
Now let's take a look at Merge.
| | 03:22 | Depending on the shapes you start with,
you might think that Merge does exactly
| | 03:25 | what Trim does, but Merge
actually has one exception to it.
| | 03:28 | It does merge overlapping objects
filled with the same color, regardless of
| | 03:31 | the stacking order.
| | 03:32 | So, in this case, I'm going to click
Merge, and there you see it just merges
| | 03:37 | it into one single shape. You can then change
the color, just like so. And I'll step back.
| | 03:41 | The next one is going to be Crop.
| | 03:43 | Basically this uses the topmost
object to crop away everything else.
| | 03:46 | So, if I were to press Crop right now,
it basically removes everything but
| | 03:50 | the topmost object.
| | 03:53 | Outline is a little bit different,
because on the surface, it appears like it
| | 03:56 | doesn't really do anything.
| | 03:57 | When I click on it, notice it just
looks like it puts into Outline mode, but in
| | 04:01 | actuality, what it has done is the same
thing as what has Divide has done, except
| | 04:05 | now it turns it into line
segments with no fill and no stroke.
| | 04:08 | So, in this case, I can just come in
here with the Direct Selection tool, and I
| | 04:13 | can move these individual line
segments around, just like so. Pretty neat.
| | 04:19 | The final Pathfinder operation is
something called Minus Back, and basically
| | 04:22 | Minus Back does the exact
opposite of Minus Front, or subtract.
| | 04:26 | Anything overlapping and in back of the
foremost object will go away, just like that.
| | 04:31 | If I Undo that, everything comes back.
| | 04:33 | So, exactly how do we use the
Pathfinder in a real-world situation?
| | 04:37 | I am going to open up a file; here's my
shapes.ai file. Let's navigate over here to
| | 04:46 | this little logo on Artboard 2.
| | 04:48 | Now, I am not going to worry about
getting this precise, but I just want to show
| | 04:52 | you an example here.
| | 04:53 | Let's say I want to recreate some of these
little crescent shapes that we're doing here.
| | 04:57 | Just come over here and grab a Circle,
draw one out, and then we will draw out
| | 05:01 | another circle; something kind of like
this, and I am just going to mimic the
| | 05:07 | overall look of this one. There
we go. Something kind of like that.
| | 05:11 | Now, I'll select both of these
objects and come over to the Pathfinder.
| | 05:16 | In th,e Pathfinder, I could use Minus
Front and I create my own little crescent
| | 05:21 | shape, just like so.
| | 05:23 | So, you can see just how quick and easy
you could use the Pathfinder to create
| | 05:27 | some complex looking shapes
without really having to try that hard.
| | 05:29 | All I did was draw two circles, and
then press a button, and I created this
| | 05:33 | little crescent shape.
| | 05:34 | I didn't have to draw it with the Pen
tool, I didn't have to be precise about
| | 05:38 | it; I just did it.
Not too bad.
| | 05:40 | So as you start to see and look at
these things differently, and realize where
| | 05:44 | you can start creating things based on
shapes, open up the Pathfinder panel, and
| | 05:46 | see if it can help you get to where you
need to go. If nothing else, it's going
| | 05:50 | to be a great place to get you started.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the Shape Builder tool| 00:00 | In addition to the Pathfinder, you
also have access to a tool called the Shape
| | 00:04 | Builder tool inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:05 | This is perhaps the easiest way to
create complex shapes without having to worry
| | 00:09 | about any types of settings whatsoever.
| | 00:11 | It's just kind of a point and
click method for creating shapes.
| | 00:13 | Let me show you exactly what I mean.
| | 00:15 | Let's say, for instance, that I was
trying to recreate some of these shapes here
| | 00:19 | in the text, like for
instance the C and O over here.
| | 00:22 | What I am going to do is just
start with a circle; a basic circle.
| | 00:24 | So let's zoom in, on the O,
and grab a circle.
| | 00:28 | And when I come over here, I am just
going to set it up somewhere along this
| | 00:32 | line here, and I'll just drag it out
until it meets, like so; pretty simple.
| | 00:36 | Now, I am going to fill this with, none,
make sure I just have a stroke, and
| | 00:41 | then I'll copy this, Command+C or Ctrl+C,
and then paste it directly in front,
| | 00:45 | Command+F or Ctrl+F, and then I'll just
take this and shrink it down until it
| | 00:49 | meets the inner circle, like that,
and then I can nudge it into place.
| | 00:54 | So, there is the O for that text.
| | 00:55 | Now, I am going to select the both of these,
and let's say that I wanted these to be black.
| | 01:00 | Well, I'll just switch to fill and
stroke color, like so, and once I do that,
| | 01:04 | you see it looks like this, but I need
a hole in the middle; after all, it's an O.
| | 01:07 | So, I'll press Shift+M on the keyboard,
or simply go over here and find the
| | 01:11 | Shape Builder tool, which looks like this,
and when I do that, you'll notice as I
| | 01:16 | move over these, I get this
little grid action happening.
| | 01:18 | If I click and drag across two items, like so,
that combines them into one single shape.
| | 01:24 | Watch when I release the mouse,
these turn into one single circle.
| | 01:27 | Now, it's not exactly what I want, so
let's Command+Z or Ctrl+Z that, and bring
| | 01:32 | those back to two separate shapes.
| | 01:34 | If I come to the middle shape, and I
press the Option or Alt key, and then click
| | 01:38 | with my mouse, it removes it.
| | 01:40 | I didn't have to know what kind of
Pathfinder operation to perform, or anything
| | 01:43 | else; all I did was hold down a key,
and click with my mouse. Pretty simple.
| | 01:47 | Now, let's take this one step further,
and just move it over, and line it up
| | 01:53 | with the letter C. Now I can see exactly
where these little lines are for the C, right?
| | 01:59 | Okay.
| | 01:59 | So, let's take this for a second,
I'll copy it, and I'll just paste one in
| | 02:03 | front, Command+F or Ctrl+F, and we'll
nudge it back over the O. That way I have
| | 02:08 | a copy over there, okay?
| | 02:11 | Now I'll grab my Line tool, and make
sure that I am working with a black
| | 02:15 | stroke, and I'll just draw lines right where I
see the lines on the C, just like that, okay?
| | 02:23 | Now we'll take this, select all those
shapes, and I'll grab my Shape Builder tool
| | 02:28 | again. See how I can see each individual
piece of these as I mouse over. If I
| | 02:34 | come here, Option or Alt+Click,
I remove those.
| | 02:38 | Now I can come in and get rid of those
line segments that I drew, and there is
| | 02:43 | my C. If I select both of these, and
move them up, it's as if I had traced both
| | 02:48 | of those without really
having to do anything.
| | 02:50 | Now let's move over
to the next artboard;
| | 02:54 | Artboard 2. I'll just double-click on
that. Same thing holds true for the C and
| | 02:58 | the O. I'm not going to
walk you through that again,
| | 03:01 | but let's assume that I wanted
to recreate some shapes like this.
| | 03:04 | Well, that's pretty easy as well.
| | 03:05 | I'll just come over here, and I'll draw
out a circle, and I'll match that circle
| | 03:09 | as closely as I can
with that underlying shape.
| | 03:11 | Now, I am going to switch this from the
fill to the stroke; that way I can still
| | 03:16 | see what's going on, and then I'll
draw out another circle, and I'll kind of
| | 03:20 | position that inside here, and I am
just holding down the Spacebar key to do
| | 03:24 | this, and once I get it positioned like
I want it, I'll go like that, then I'll
| | 03:31 | select both of those objects,
and I'll fill them with black.
| | 03:35 | Now I'll take my Shape Builder tool, and
I'll just remove the parts I don't need.
| | 03:40 | Option or Alt, and click.
| | 03:43 | And now we'll move this over, so you
can see it. There is the crescent shape,
| | 03:48 | just like that, and I can do that
for each one of these, and instantly
| | 03:51 | recreate that logo.
| | 03:52 | The same holds true if you
want to combine shapes together.
| | 03:54 | Let's say, for instance, that I wanted
to draw this E, and maybe I don't want
| | 03:58 | to spend time drawing it with the Pen tool.
Maybe I am just not very skilled with the Pen tool.
| | 04:03 | So, let's zoom in on the E, and take a
look at exactly what the E actually is.
| | 04:06 | It's a series of
rectangles, okay; simple enough.
| | 04:10 | We'll draw on a rectangle here, we'll
draw on another rectangle here, and we'll
| | 04:14 | draw on a smaller rectangle here for
the middle, and one more rectangle here.
| | 04:19 | Something like that.
| | 04:21 | Now, I'll select all of these shapes,
grab my Shape Builder tool, and this time
| | 04:27 | I am just going to start dragging
across, combine those, combine those, the
| | 04:34 | bottom, and the middle.
| | 04:35 | And now I'll switch to my
Selection too, and move it up.
| | 04:39 | Zoom out a little bit, and I'll just
move it over; there's my E. See how easy it
| | 04:46 | is to create this just with
basic shapes? It's pretty awesome.
| | 04:49 | So, one more time. Let's see;
| | 04:51 | let's see if I can
recreate this K, shall we?
| | 04:53 | Let's go here, and we'll zoom in, so I
can see the K. The K is going to be a
| | 04:59 | little bit more tricky, but I can do it.
| | 05:01 | So, let's go here, draw out
a rectangle, just like so.
| | 05:06 | Now, for these, what I am going to have
to do is I am going to have to draw out
| | 05:11 | a rectangle, and then rotate it to
match; something kind of like this.
| | 05:21 | Once I get it lined up, I can adjust
the width of it, adjust the length, so that
| | 05:26 | it goes back in where it needs to
go, and adjust it just like that.
| | 05:30 | I want it to be longer than it needs
to be both ways, so it overlaps properly.
| | 05:34 | Now, I'll take this first rectangle I
drew, Command+C or Ctrl+C, and I'll just
| | 05:38 | paste it, and I am going to
rotate that a little bit as well,
| | 05:42 | and we are just trying to match up the
leg of the K there, and then we'll just
| | 05:49 | shrink it back until it meets right there.
| | 05:52 | And so now what I am going to do is I am
going to use the lines that are already
| | 05:57 | in the drawing to help me out.
| | 05:59 | So, I am going to take this, line it
up with the bottom, you see the Smart
| | 06:03 | Guide helps me there, and I'll make
sure I am using a black stroke instead of
| | 06:07 | a black fill with this. Line it up,
draw a line, boom; right here, draw a
| | 06:11 | line, just like that. Alright?
| | 06:14 | Now, take my Selection tool, select
all of them, grab my Shape Builder tool,
| | 06:19 | Shift+M, and watch this.
| | 06:21 | Now I'll go here, Option or Alt, that
removes that, Option or Alt removes that,
| | 06:27 | and now I'll hold down the Shift key;
no Option or Alt key this time, drag
| | 06:31 | across these, combine them
together, just like that,
| | 06:37 | and then we'll move it up, so you
can kind of see what I did there.
| | 06:42 | Let's move it up into its own little window.
There we go. Switch it over, and there's my K.
| | 06:49 | So in just a few short and easy steps, I
recreated the K and E inside there. You
| | 06:53 | already saw me do the C and the O,
so you can see just how easy it is to
| | 06:58 | recreate shapes
using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 07:00 | It's very quick, it's very easy, and as
long as you know the operations of using
| | 07:04 | the Option key, or just using the
regular old Shift key, you can create some
| | 07:07 | really amazing things.
| | 07:08 | So, take some time, practice with
the Shape Builder tool, and see what you
| | 07:11 | can come up with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Re-creating basic structures| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basic operations
of the Shape Builder tool, it's time
| | 00:03 | to put that into play, and use it to
recreate the shape that I'm looking at here.
| | 00:08 | Now, I could spend time using the Image
Trace feature to do this, and I could also
| | 00:11 | do it with a Pen tool pretty easily,
but the Shape Builder tool is probably a
| | 00:15 | great way to go as well. I'm going
to show you how to do that right now.
| | 00:18 | So, I'm going to start off here
just by drawing some basic rectangles.
| | 00:21 | So, I'm going to grab the Rectangle
tool, and I'm going to do this using a
| | 00:24 | different color than any of the
colors represented, so I can easily see it.
| | 00:27 | So I'm going to choose
something like a red color.
| | 00:30 | Let's zoom in on this a little bit,
so I can see exactly what I'm doing.
| | 00:34 | And if you want to, you can actually
bring up your rulers, and draw out some
| | 00:37 | guides. That way you know
everything is precise when you're doing this.
| | 00:41 | So we'll do something like that and
then I'm just going to put out a guide
| | 00:44 | everywhere that I need a new rectangle
to start; something like that, and I'll
| | 00:51 | also put one right there.
There we go. Okay.
| | 00:54 | Now, I'm going to come right here to
this intersection, and I'm just going to
| | 00:57 | draw out a rectangle.
| | 00:58 | Once I'm happy with the size, I'll let
go, and then all I'm going to do now is
| | 01:03 | switch to the Selection tool, and I'll
just move this over, holding down the
| | 01:07 | Option or Alt key, and
that's going to duplicate it.
| | 01:10 | So again, just hold on the Option or Alt
key then click and drag across, and then
| | 01:15 | just snap it into the guide. Once
you see that little indicator pop up
| | 01:19 | indicating you right there, just drop
it in, and there we go, and we'll just snap
| | 01:23 | it right like that.
There we go. Okay.
| | 01:25 | So, I've got all those done.
| | 01:27 | Now I'm going to draw out a smaller
rectangle for the door. There we go. I might
| | 01:34 | nudge that over a little, and then
we'll draw out the big rectangle.
| | 01:37 | This rectangle is going to be a little
bit longer than it should be, and I'll
| | 01:41 | show you exactly why I'm
doing that a little bit later on.
| | 01:44 | All right. So, we've got
all those pieces in play.
| | 01:47 | Now I'm going to draw the big
background for that, and for that
| | 01:50 | I'm going to switch to a darker red color.
| | 01:52 | So, I'm just going to click away
from all these, so I don't have anything
| | 01:56 | selected, switch back to the Rectangle
tool, and then start right up here, draw
| | 02:00 | out my large rectangle, and then we're going to
make that a darker red; that way we can see it.
| | 02:07 | Switch to my Selection tool, and then
what I'm going to do is hold down the
| | 02:11 | Command key on the Mac, the Control Key
on the PC, and press the left bracket key
| | 02:15 | until all of my shapes come back in;
that way I can see all of them.
| | 02:19 | And so once I have that, I know now
that I've got that basic structure in place,
| | 02:23 | and I can start working on the top.
| | 02:25 | So, the top is actually pretty easy as well.
| | 02:28 | Watch this; I'll just come out here,
and I'm only going to draw one of these.
| | 02:32 | That way I can easily
recreate it with the other two.
| | 02:34 | So I'll come out here, and I'll just
draw a square; something kind of like that.
| | 02:39 | And then what I'm going to do here is
I'm going to temporarily give this no fill,
| | 02:44 | and no stroke. Then I'm going to copy it,
Command+C or Ctrl+C, and then paste it
| | 02:49 | in front, Command+F or Ctrl+F. Then
I'll grab my Selection tool, hold down the
| | 02:55 | Option key on Mac, the Alt key on PC,
and drag inward until it meets right here,
| | 02:59 | and then I'll just drag
it down a little bit, okay?
| | 03:02 | And now I'll give this a darker red
color. I'll give the one behind it the
| | 03:07 | lighter red color that I was working
with before; that way you can see the
| | 03:11 | structure as I'm creating it. Then
finally what we're going to do is we're
| | 03:15 | going to grab the Polygon tool, and I'm
going to start drawing out. If you have a
| | 03:19 | polygon that looks something like this,
just as you're drawing it like this, tap
| | 03:23 | the down arrow key until
it turns into a triangle.
| | 03:26 | And then, once you have it as a triangle,
if you want to hold down the Shift key,
| | 03:30 | and then release your mouse, and then
release the Shift key, and then we'll just drag
| | 03:34 | this out a little bit.
| | 03:35 | And so what I'm going to do now is zoom
in quite a bit, so I can see all of this,
| | 03:41 | and then I'm just going to drag out the
sides until they meet, drag out the side
| | 03:46 | until it meets right there, and then
I'll drag this up or down, depending on how
| | 03:50 | close I think I am. There we go,
right about there; that should be okay.
| | 03:54 | All right, now, if you want to, you
can extend this a little bit, so that's
| | 03:58 | easier to use the Shape
Builder tool on it, okay?
| | 04:01 | Now I'm going to back out, and
it's time to create this little shape.
| | 04:06 | So, what I'm going to do is click here,
hold down Shift, click there, and click
| | 04:10 | all three shapes, so the back rectangle,
the front rectangle, and the triangle.
| | 04:14 | Then let's switch over to the Shape
Builder, and I'm just going to hold on the
| | 04:17 | Option key on Mac, Alt key on PC,
click here, click there, and then hold down
| | 04:21 | the Shift key, let go of the Option or
Alt key, and drag across these, and they
| | 04:27 | turn into one shape, just like that.
| | 04:30 | Now, if you have some overhang, like I
did over here, that's okay; undo that
| | 04:34 | last operation, and then zoom in, and then
you can use the Shape Builder tool to
| | 04:42 | get rid of that edge over
there if you need to.
| | 04:45 | Now, in my case, it's not overlapping
enough, so I need to come up a little bit,
| | 04:50 | zoom in, and I actually need to grab my
Selection tool, and adjust this a little
| | 04:56 | bit to create a little bit of separation.
| | 05:00 | And so, now that I did that, I can
select all of this, and zoom back in; Shift
| | 05:09 | and letter M, gets you your Shape
Builder Tool. Now I can remove that edge,
| | 05:14 | remove that little piece, and then hold down
the Shift key across all these, and there we go.
| | 05:20 | Now I'll just take this, Copy it,
Paste it in front, and move it over, and when
| | 05:26 | it lines up, there we go, and I could
also just hold on the Option or Alt key,
| | 05:30 | duplicate it, drag it over, like so,
and then reposition it until it gets into
| | 05:34 | the place. There we go.
| | 05:35 | And now let's take this final thing
here; let's draw a big rectangle in the
| | 05:38 | back, and you can hold on your spacebar
to position it while you're drawing it.
| | 05:44 | There we go, and then we'll adjust the
height just a little bit; that should be okay.
| | 05:51 | Now, how do we get it to slant inward?
That's actually pretty easy. Just grab
| | 05:55 | the Direct Selection tool,
select this anchor point here,
[00:05:58:00]
and tap your arrow key until it meets.
Tap your arrow key until it meets
| | 05:59 | once you select it, and that just moves
it on in, just like so. There we go.
| | 06:10 | All right, now we've got the basic
structure all in place, except for the bottom.
| | 06:14 | One last little rectangle down
here at the bottom; there we go.
| | 06:18 | All right, so now it's all in place.
| | 06:20 | Now it's time to make our
Shape Builder tool work for us.
| | 06:23 | So, let's take this guy up here at
the top; we'll move that back in the
| | 06:27 | stacking order a little bit. Let's
change the color, and all you're going to do
| | 06:31 | is change the color of this, and then
press Command key on Mac, Control key on PC,
| | 06:35 | and then the left bracket key on your
keyboard until you see all of your little
| | 06:39 | windows pop back up.
| | 06:40 | Now, you just select all of this
information, grab your Shape Builder tool,
| | 06:43 | Shift+M on the keyboard, and go through
here, Option or Alt click the windows,
| | 06:53 | just like so, and then at the very end,
you can change it all to black. Zoom out
| | 07:02 | a little bit, and I'll move it over, and there you
have a vector representation of the house icon.
| | 07:12 | Actually, let's create a new artboard.
We'll just move it over on the other
| | 07:15 | artboard; that way you can
see it completely. There we go.
| | 07:18 | View > Guides, and Clear Guides.
| | 07:23 | So there it is before, and there it is after.
We recreated that using nothing but shapes,
| | 07:28 | so no fancy Pen tool manipulation, or
anything like that. Just a bunch of basic
| | 07:32 | shapes thrown together
using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 07:34 | So, I hope now you understand just how
easy it is to recreate what might be
| | 07:38 | considered a complex shape using
just basic shapes, and then meshing them
| | 07:41 | together using Shape Builder.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating complex shapes| 00:00 | One of the greatest things about using
the Shape Builder tool is the fact that
| | 00:04 | you can create really complex shapes in
a very quick and efficient manner, and
| | 00:07 | you don't really have to know how
to do anything all that technical.
| | 00:10 | Like, for instance, let's say that
somebody sent me this piece of artwork here;
| | 00:14 | it's just a standard, low resolution
JPEG file, and when I look at it, it looks
| | 00:18 | like it's got a whole lot of pieces
going on in here, but if you really dissect
| | 00:22 | it, and look at it, you can actually
tell exactly how you can make this using
| | 00:26 | nothing but regular shapes.
| | 00:27 | And you are probably looking at me and
thinking, wait a minute, no way; this is
| | 00:31 | something that I would need to use the
pen tool for, or I would need to try to
| | 00:35 | image trace this or something.
| | 00:36 | I mean, there is just too
much going on here.
| | 00:37 | I mean, we've got different colored leaves,
we've got this inner piece, we've got
| | 00:40 | the circle; all that stuff, and sure we
could recreate the middle with a circle,
| | 00:43 | but the rest of it,
not so much, right?
| | 00:46 | Well actually, it's really easy to
create a shape just like this using nothing
| | 00:52 | but the Shape Builder tool,
so let's take a look at that.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to create a brand new artboard
right next to this, so we can work side
| | 01:00 | by side, and you can see
as I go what I'm doing.
| | 01:02 | So, I'm going to leave this over here.
Actually, I'm going to move it a little
| | 01:04 | bit further to the right hand side,
so that we can see it as I'm working,
| | 01:07 | and I'm going to start off with
just a circle, just like that.
| | 01:10 | Doesn't matter what color the circle
is, or anything like that; just draw
| | 01:12 | yourself out a circle. And then what
we are going to do is we are going to
| | 01:16 | duplicate that circle, and I'll do
that just by grabbing the Selection tool,
| | 01:20 | holding down the Option or Alt
key and dragging straight down.
| | 01:24 | And once that meets the
intersection point, I'll let go.
| | 01:30 | Okay, then I'll select the both of these
circles, and I'm going to duplicate them.
| | 01:34 | So, I'm going to Command+C or Ctrl+C,
Command+F or Ctrl+F to paste them in
| | 01:38 | front, and then all I'm going to do is come
to the corner, and rotate them around, like so.
| | 01:43 | If you want to do that little snap
rotation like I did right there, just hold
| | 01:47 | down the Shift key while you're doing it.
| | 01:49 | And so now I've got four shapes. When I
select those four shapes, look in the middle;
| | 01:53 | see the little leaves?
Pretty cool, huh?
| | 01:55 | Now let's switch to the Shape Builder
tool; that's right, Shift+M, and I'll just
| | 01:59 | come through, and remove
everything but the leaves.
| | 02:05 | Now we'll take this, and we'll duplicate
this; Command+C or Ctrl+C, Command+F or
| | 02:10 | Ctrl+F, and then all I'm going to do is rotate
it one time, just like so. Looking familiar?
| | 02:16 | Now all I'm going to do here is take
this top most object, and change the color,
| | 02:22 | and then I'll change a Blend Mode, so
let's go into the Transparency panel,
| | 02:28 | change the Blend Mode from Normal to
something like Multiply, and there we go.
| | 02:34 | So, essentially the same type of pattern
that I've got right there. I may want
| | 02:37 | to change the colors
around, and if I do, that's okay.
| | 02:41 | You can change the colors around to
match the other colors that are there; no
| | 02:44 | big deal, but all in all, it's essentially
the same image that I've got going on over here.
| | 02:49 | And you just take a circle under the
middle, and draw it out, and then make it yellow.
| | 02:56 | And that's essentially all there is to
that, and I can increase the size of this,
| | 03:00 | so you can see it a little
bit better, and there we go.
| | 03:04 | Same basic pattern, the colors are a
little bit different, but that's easily
| | 03:08 | changed. All you have to do is change
the color that you are working with to
| | 03:12 | make it look a little
bit more like the original.
| | 03:14 | And there you go. So, all I started with
were circles. I didn't have to recreate
| | 03:19 | this using the Pen tool, didn't
have to image trace, didn't have to do
| | 03:23 | anything else; all I had to do was
draw out some basic circles, and then point
| | 03:27 | and click my way around.
| | 03:28 | So, as you start to work with complex
objects, like the ones you see here, take
| | 03:32 | some time to analyze it, and think to
yourself, how could I best re-create this
| | 03:36 | in the quickest
and most efficient way possible.
| | 03:39 | Chances are the answer is going to be
as easy as drawing out a simple circle.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Re-Creating Artwork with the Pen ToolCreating with the Pen tool| 00:00 | There are times when the Image Trace
feature can and will do wonders for you in
| | 00:04 | the Illustrator, and there are also
times when using shapes can easily help you
| | 00:07 | re-create the artwork
you're trying to trace,
| | 00:09 | nut no tool is quite as versatile as
the Pen tool when it comes to recreating
| | 00:13 | or tracing artwork, period.
| | 00:14 | The Pen tool has been around since
the beginning of Illustrator, really,
| | 00:17 | and it remains one of the most powerful,
and yet one of the most feared tools
| | 00:21 | in the Tools panel.
| | 00:22 | The reasoning for this is simple;
| | 00:23 | the Pen tool is often advertised by
many as a pro tool that simply isn't
| | 00:27 | accessible to most beginners, and quite
frankly, I disagree with that premise.
| | 00:31 | In this chapter, I'll be exploring
the Pen tool, and how you can use it to
| | 00:34 | recreate artwork fairly easily.
| | 00:36 | But first I want to focus on why you
would want to use the Pen tool at all; what
| | 00:41 | does it do? How does it work? And what
kind of mindset do we need to have in
| | 00:45 | order to start using it?
| | 00:47 | Well, the first thing I do
whenever I open up a piece of artwork in
| | 00:50 | Illustrator, whether it's something
that's been sent to me from a client, or
| | 00:54 | something that I've sketched
myself, is I start to analyze it to see
| | 00:57 | exactly what it's made of. So, in
this case, let's look at the artwork I
| | 01:01 | have onscreen right now.
| | 01:03 | Not a lot of the items in this
piece can be recreated using shapes.
| | 01:06 | Sure, there's an oval for the head,
and the ears, and things like that, but a
| | 01:10 | majority of it is not going to be
easily recreated by using shapes.
| | 01:13 | It's also got some little, minute
details in it that I really want to keep;
| | 01:17 | oftentimes that is lost
in the image trace process.
| | 01:19 | It's also got some pretty precise
curves, and things like that; some straight
| | 01:24 | lines that it's combined with to create
this really nifty little sketch, and so
| | 01:28 | I need to make sure that the fidelity
of my design is intact once I'm finish
| | 01:32 | recreating it in vector form.
| | 01:34 | Again, oftentimes that's something
that's lost to the Image Trace panel.
| | 01:38 | So, the Pen tool is my best option
for recreating something like this, in my
| | 01:42 | opinion, because it gives me the most flexibility
to create both straight and curved lines.
| | 01:48 | Let's take a look at the second artboard;
| | 01:49 | I'll just double click on Artboard number 2.
| | 01:51 | Again, this is something that could be
recreated using the Image Trace panel.
| | 01:54 | As a matter of fact,
| | 01:54 | I'll go ahead and run the
Image Trace on it right now.
| | 01:57 | When I select it, and run Image Trace, it's
going to do it's best to make a tracing of it.
| | 02:02 | When I do that, it gives me a fairly
decent representation, but if I zoom in,
| | 02:06 | you're going to see that I lose of the
straight lines, some of these curves kind
| | 02:10 | of get wonky, and I could spend a lot
of time in here simply cleaning up what
| | 02:14 | image trace did, wherein, if I were to
recreate this with the Pen tool, I could
| | 02:19 | actually get in here and get it precise
the first time, without having to worry
| | 02:22 | about tweaking something after the fact.
| | 02:24 | So, instead of going into Image Trace,
getting the settings as close as I can,
| | 02:28 | and getting 75% of the way there, and
then expand in the artwork, and then fixing
| | 02:33 | it using Direct Select, then Add Anchor
Point, Delete Anchor Point, and all that
| | 02:36 | stuff, I could just simply trace this
one time with the Pen tool, and call it a day.
| | 02:41 | That seems like a lot better option to
me, so let's Undo that, and let's move on
| | 02:46 | to Artboard number 3.
| | 02:47 | This piece right here is a great
example of why the Pen tool would be a great
| | 02:52 | tool to use for tracing artwork.
| | 02:53 | Notice that this shape is the same
on one side as it is on the other.
| | 02:57 | Therefore, I could use the Pen tool to
recreate just half of this, which will
| | 03:01 | be fairly easy to do; it's just a curve
around here, all the way back around, and
| | 03:05 | down, and then this little pattern
around the outside will be fairly easy as
| | 03:08 | well, and then all I would have to do
is duplicate that, and reflect it over, and
| | 03:13 | then use the method of combining those
shapes to turn it back into one single drawing.
| | 03:17 | And so that's a lot easier than
trying to do something like image trace, for
| | 03:21 | instance, which would have a lot of
trouble with these small details, and it's
| | 03:24 | also better than the Shape Builder tool,
because of the fact that there's so much
| | 03:28 | going on here, it would be really
difficult to recreate it with shapes.
| | 03:31 | So, re-creating this with the Pen tool
ensures both precision, and accuracy, and
| | 03:35 | it also is the easiest and quickest way,
because I just have to draw half the shape.
| | 03:39 | I don't have to worry about the fidelity
of the other side at all, because as
| | 03:43 | long as I get the first side
completed, this one is ready to go.
| | 03:47 | The last one is another great example.
| | 03:49 | This drawing right here is nothing more
than a silhouette of a person, and while
| | 03:53 | the Image Trace feature would be
probably okay for this, it's probably not going
| | 03:56 | to get as precise as I want it, no
matter how much I tweak it, and especially
| | 04:00 | once I get up here in the hair.
| | 04:02 | Let's zoom in here, and take a look at
all the small little curves, and things
| | 04:06 | like that. If I want these things to
be precise with nice crisp edges, I want
| | 04:10 | this to be a really nice silhouette
that's maybe going on a business card, or
| | 04:14 | maybe even as big as a billboard,
with Illustrator, you never know, because
| | 04:17 | artwork can be scaled infinitely.
| | 04:19 | So, I need to make sure this
is in a best shape possible.
| | 04:22 | The Pen tool is one of the best tools
for that, because all I have to is just
| | 04:26 | trace around this thing, which takes
me literally minutes once I know how to
| | 04:30 | work the Pen tool, and I can create a
very precise, very nice representation of
| | 04:34 | this artwork, without having to worry
about whether or not there's a preset
| | 04:37 | involved, or whether or not I need to
add an anchor point, or delete an anchor
| | 04:41 | point, because I'm in full
control as I continue to go.
| | 04:44 | That being said, once you have
determined exactly what the best method for
| | 04:47 | recreating a piece of artwork is,
the setup is pretty much the same.
| | 04:50 | I've said this over and over again, and I'll
continue to say it through out the course:
| | 04:54 | aach and every time I start to trace, I
lock the original layer first, and add a
| | 04:58 | new layer on top of it.
| | 05:00 | The same holds true for my Pen tool
workflow. I always lock the base layer, I
| | 05:03 | call it Original, and then I create a
new layer on top, and call it Trace.
| | 05:07 | That makes it easy for me to differentiate
between the two. I can also turn the
| | 05:10 | bottom layer on and off anytime
I want, so I can see my progress.
| | 05:14 | And then I can also, at the every end,
take the second layer, move it over a
| | 05:17 | little bit,
and then compare them side by side.
| | 05:20 | It's very quick and very easy, and
I think it's a great way to work.
| | 05:23 | So, at the end of the day, it's always
up to you how you recreate artwork, and
| | 05:27 | you have to understand that your mindset,
or your methodology has to be a little
| | 05:29 | bit different when you're analyzing
artwork, especially if you're going to be
| | 05:32 | using the Pen Tool.
| | 05:34 | But in any case, it's totally up to you,
but at the end of the day, if you take
| | 05:37 | the time to put in the practice, I think
you'll be really happy that you decided
| | 05:41 | to use the Pen tool for some of the
things that you were previously using image
| | 05:44 | trace and shape builder for.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Basic Pen tool operations| 00:00 | Just in case you're not familiar with
how the Pen tool works, in this movie,
| | 00:03 | I'm going to walk you through some of
the basic operations of the Pen tool,
| | 00:06 | just to get you familiar with it, so
that as we continue to work with it
| | 00:10 | throughout this chapter, you're not as intimidated
as some people might be when they first see it.
| | 00:13 | I think the reason the Pen tool is so
feared in the graphic design world is
| | 00:17 | because of the fact that, you know, nobody
really does a down to earth way of explaining it.
| | 00:20 | And so what I'm going to do is just
give you a down to earth, layman's term
| | 00:24 | understanding of how this tool works.
| | 00:27 | So, I'm going to the File menu, and
create a New document; it does not matter
| | 00:30 | how big or how small.
| | 00:32 | And then we're going to go over and
grab the Pen tool, but we're also going to
| | 00:34 | just take this, and drag it out.
| | 00:36 | And what we're going to do is grab this
little piece right here; see this little
| | 00:38 | arrow? And when I release my mouse
on that, it's going to drag that out.
| | 00:41 | Now, if you didn't get that, let's
go back and try it one more time.
| | 00:44 | Just click and hold, go over here, and
then release your mouse on that arrow, and
| | 00:48 | it brings out the Pen tool.
| | 00:50 | Okay, the Pen tool is actually
four different tools built into one.
| | 00:53 | So, it's the actual pen that allows
you to plot points, and then it's an Add
| | 00:56 | Anchor Point tool, a Delete Anchor Point
tool, and a Convert Anchor Point tool, okay?
| | 01:00 | So, the Pen tool, at its
heart, does two basic things:
| | 01:03 | it does straight lines,
and it does curved lines.
| | 01:06 | And so, when you want to draw a straight
line, it's actually really easy to do.
| | 01:09 | All you have to do is point
your mouse somewhere, and click.
| | 01:12 | Once you click, that creates
something called an anchor point.
| | 01:15 | When you go and click somewhere else,
it creates another anchor point, and the
| | 01:18 | two anchor points are joined by
a path that goes in between them.
| | 01:22 | So, every time you hear me say anchor
point, I'm referring to little dots, which
| | 01:25 | are the areas where I click.
| | 01:28 | Every time you here me say path, that's
the in between item right there, okay?
| | 01:31 | Now, if you want to draw completely
straight lines, all you have to do is
| | 01:34 | hold down the Shift key, and then
click, and it draws completely straight
| | 01:37 | lines each and every time.
| | 01:39 | And you'll notice these little guides
popping up on my screen; those are smart guides,
| | 01:42 | so if you have one of the latest
versions of Illustrator, this is a great way to
| | 01:44 | ensure that you are drawing completely
straight, and matching up to all of the
| | 01:47 | different lines that are onscreen,
so you can draw perfect squares, or
| | 01:50 | rectangles, or whatever you want to draw.
| | 01:52 | So in this case drawing
straight line objects; very, very easy.
| | 01:55 | Drawing curved objects is actually
easier than most people think it is.
| | 02:00 | So, let's come over here; I'll actually
grab my Selection tool for a second here,
| | 02:02 | and let's just nudge -- oops;
had a point selected there.
| | 02:05 | Let's grab my Selection tool, and select the
object, and then let's nudge this guy over.
| | 02:10 | And then we're going to grab
the Pen tool, and come over here.
| | 02:13 | And so curved segments are a little bit
different, but not really. All you have
| | 02:17 | to do this time, instead of just clicking
once, I want you to click and hold down
| | 02:21 | your mouse button; do not
release your mouse button yet,
| | 02:24 | and then if you want the curve
segment to go up, drag your curve up.
| | 02:28 | If you want it to go down,
you would drag this point down.
| | 02:32 | If you want the curve to go to the
left, you would drag it to the left.
| | 02:34 | When you first start a curved segment,
you want to drag that handle in the same
| | 02:37 | direction that you want your curve to go.
| | 02:40 | Now, if you want this to be completely
straight, just hold down the Shift key, and
| | 02:43 | it will draw straight, just like this.
| | 02:45 | Then when you're done, release your
mouse, and then release the Shift key.
| | 02:49 | Then I'm going to come over here, and I'm
going to draw out a second part of this.
| | 02:52 | This time, since I want the arc to go
up like this, I'm going to drag down, so
| | 02:58 | the second point, you drag in the opposite
direction that you want the curve to go.
| | 03:04 | So, in this case, I'm just going to hold
down my Shift key, click, and drag out.
| | 03:09 | And once I get that to the point that I
want it to be -- I'm going to try to even
| | 03:12 | that up as much as I can -- I'll
release my mouse, and release the Shift key.
| | 03:17 | Let's come back over
here, and complete the curve.
| | 03:20 | Every time you come back to the original
anchor point that you created, you'll
| | 03:23 | see a little circle pop up next to the
Pen tool; that indicates that you are
| | 03:25 | about to close that point.
| | 03:28 | So, in this case, I'm just going to
hold down the Shift key, click, and then
| | 03:31 | remember, I'm going to drag up to make
the curve go in the opposite direction
| | 03:35 | that I want it to go.
| | 03:36 | So, I want that curve to go down, so I
drag up, like so, and I'm able to draw a
| | 03:40 | nice little oval shape, just like so.
| | 03:43 | So, you can imagine if you were
using this to trace, like, an eye, or trace
| | 03:46 | someone's face, or something like
that, it's pretty easy to draw these
| | 03:51 | little basic shapes.
| | 03:51 | Now, once you have your shapes drawn,
it's up to the rest of these tools here to
| | 03:57 | help you edit those individual shapes.
| | 03:59 | So, in this case, the Add Anchor Point
tool; that allows you to come out here, and
| | 04:02 | add control points to this.
| | 04:04 | So, I can actually come here, and I can add an
anchor point here, and add an anchor point here.
| | 04:09 | That just gives me another level of
control over those points on this path.
| | 04:14 | The same holds true for the Delete
Anchor Point tool; it actually takes
| | 04:18 | control points away.
| | 04:19 | So, on this shape, for instance, if I
remove this shape right here, it goes from
| | 04:22 | being a rectangle to a triangle.
Pretty simple.
| | 04:26 | The Convert Anchor Point
tool is a little bit different.
| | 04:28 | The Convert Anchor Point tool allows you to
take a corner point, and convert it into a curve.
| | 04:32 | So, in this case, I will just click, and start
to drag out, and it turns into a curved segment.
| | 04:39 | If I were to come over here, and do
that to my circle, I could actually get
| | 04:44 | rid of each one of these curve segments, just
like so, and it becomes sort of a rhombus shape.
| | 04:51 | Let's undo that, and notice when I get
to something like this, it almost looks
| | 04:55 | like a leaf. So,
let's undo that completely.
| | 04:57 | Now, if you want to move points
around that you've drawn with the Pen tool,
| | 05:02 | you're going to use something called the
Direct Selection tool. You can get that
| | 05:05 | by hitting letter A on your keyboard.
| | 05:07 | And so once you do that, you can actually
just click and drag around a point, and
| | 05:11 | once you have that point, you can
move it around. I'm just holding down the
| | 05:14 | Shift key right now, and
nudging it with my arrow keys.
| | 05:18 | So, let's say I was trying to draw a
leaf, okay? Just moving that out, holding
| | 05:22 | down the Shift key, and then the last
thing I'm going to do is use this guy; the
| | 05:26 | Convert Anchor Point tool, to
snap this from a curve to a corner.
| | 05:29 | Then we'll take this, and check this out;
we'll just rotate this around, like so.
| | 05:33 | There is the beginning of my leaf.
| | 05:35 | Let's get rid of this guy over here,
and now I can just rotate this thing
| | 05:39 | around, but I'm going to
use an effect to do that.
| | 05:43 | So, let's go to the Effect menu,
let's go up to Distort & Transform, let's
| | 05:46 | choose Transform, and then inside of this,
I'm going to turn preview on. I'm going
| | 05:52 | to set the anchor point down at the
bottom right there; make sure that
| | 05:56 | little white square is highlighted on
the bottom row, and then we'll change the
| | 06:00 | angle of this to something like 35
degrees, and then we'll just create copies all
| | 06:11 | the way around, like that.
| | 06:12 | Now, I would have to change the degree in
order to make all of these fit properly,
| | 06:17 | but once I get it, like that, hit OK
and I have a nice little flower shape.
| | 06:23 | Pretty quick, and pretty easy, right?
| | 06:24 | Just drawing a circle, and then converting
an anchor point, and moving it around,
| | 06:27 | I instantly created this flower shape
without having to do a whole lot of work,
| | 06:31 | and it looks like it's
really professionally done.
| | 06:33 | Then you just take a circle, draw
that out, and then position that somewhere
| | 06:39 | close to the middle, and there you go; a
complete flower in just a few short and easy steps.
| | 06:46 | So, at the end of the day, the Pen tool is not
as intimidating as people make it out to be.
| | 06:51 | Let's delete all of these.
| | 06:52 | All you have to do is just understand
the basic operations of it, and then as you
| | 06:56 | start to trace artwork, remember those
fundamentals, and it should be pretty easy
| | 06:59 | to trace almost anything that
comes your way. So let's review.
| | 07:03 | To create a straight line path, you
just click, click, click, and click, just
| | 07:09 | like that; creates straight lines.
| | 07:12 | If you want to draw curves, you click,
drag in the same direction you want the
| | 07:16 | curve to go, then on your second point,
click and drag in the opposite direction
| | 07:21 | you want the curve to go.
| | 07:23 | If you want to draw an S curve, then
click and drag in the same direction you
| | 07:27 | dragged before, that creates an S shape.
| | 07:30 | Then continue your path, just like this.
| | 07:33 | If you run into something like this,
where it does this little whiplash thing on
| | 07:37 | you, that's okay; Command+Z or Ctrl+Z
and this time, come back to your original
| | 07:41 | point, hold down the
Option or Alt key, and click.
| | 07:44 | That's going to eliminate that one
handle, and allow you to reset the Pen tool,
| | 07:48 | and then allow you to click and drag
in the opposite direction without that
| | 07:51 | whiplash thing happening to
you every time, just like that.
| | 07:57 | So, as you can see, you can create some
really dynamic artwork with the Pen tool
| | 08:00 | as long as you understand the basic
operations, and take your time with it.
| | 08:04 | It's not something you're going to be
able to master overnight, and that's okay.
| | 08:07 | It's taken me years to get proficient
with the Pen tool, and that's totally fine.
| | 08:11 | But just know that once you get the
basics nailed down, it's all a matter of
| | 08:15 | just putting it into play, and
practice, practice, practice.
| | 08:17 | So, the next time you have something to
trace, just break out the Pen tool, and
| | 08:20 | see what you can come up with.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing basic lines and shapes| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basic
operations of the Pen tool, it's time to put
| | 00:04 | that into practice with
this little exercise here.
| | 00:06 | So, what we're going to do is just
trace some basic lines and shapes using the
| | 00:10 | Pen tool here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:11 | And so I've got this document open here,
and what I'm going to do -- and this is my
| | 00:16 | workflow for any time I'm tracing
something with the Pen tool -- I'm going to
| | 00:19 | first come over to the Layers panel,
and lock the layer that I have right here,
| | 00:23 | and I'm going to create
a layer on top of it.
| | 00:26 | Now, the original layer, I'm going to
rename that Original, and Layer 2, I'm going
| | 00:30 | to rename that Trace.
| | 00:31 | Now, to rename these, we're just double-clicking,
entering in a name, and hitting Enter.
| | 00:34 | And once I have that done, what we're
going to do is grab the Pen tool, and then
| | 00:39 | the first thing I do when I grab the Pen
tool is I set my fill and stroke colors.
| | 00:42 | In this case, I do not want it
to have a fill color right now;
| | 00:46 | I do want it to have a stroke, though.
| | 00:48 | Since this is a black object that
I'm tracing, I want there to be a
| | 00:52 | difference between the two.
| | 00:53 | So, what I'm going to do is trace with a
red stroke for the time being. I want to
| | 00:58 | be able to see this as I draw it.
| | 01:00 | And so, with that said, I am now going to come
out here, and start plotting out some points.
| | 01:05 | The first thing I always do before I
start plotting out points, though, is I set
| | 01:09 | some reference areas.
| | 01:10 | So, I'm going to bring up the rulers
with Command+R or Ctrl+R, and then I'm just
| | 01:14 | going to drag out some points, like this.
| | 01:16 | There we go; drag out a start point
right there, drag out this to meet the
| | 01:22 | edge, just like so, where I think the
corner needs to be. Again, where I think
| | 01:30 | the corner needs to be, drag out to meet
the edge here, drag out to meet the edge here,
| | 01:38 | and basically what I'm doing is giving
myself points; intersecting points that I
| | 01:43 | click on with my mouse. It makes it
easier for me to draw these shapes.
| | 01:47 | So, I'll start over here, and when I start, I'm
just going to go to each one of these points.
| | 01:51 | But you may find that you accidentally
click on one of these lines and move them,
| | 01:56 | so the best thing to do is go to View >
Guides, and make sure Lock Guides is turned on.
| | 02:01 | Once you have that, you're ready to go.
| | 02:04 | So, now zoom in a little bit, and I'm
going to come right over here, and I'm just
| | 02:10 | going to click to set a point.
| | 02:12 | Then I'll go up to this next
point; click to set a point.
| | 02:15 | Now you can see the red outline around
the outside, and go up here where it meets
| | 02:19 | the guide, and then I want to make
sure it's in the center, so click, sets
| | 02:23 | a point, and click, sets a point, and you
can see here, because I've done these
| | 02:27 | guides, the way I've done them, it's very,
very easy to trace around this object.
| | 02:30 | There we go. Not going to
worry about the flowers right now.
| | 02:33 | I'm just going to go draw my lines.
| | 02:38 | When I get back around to the original,
I can see that that's going to be a
| | 02:41 | completed path; that's fine.
There we go.
| | 02:43 | And now if I want to check my work,
what I do is this; I just flip flop the
| | 02:48 | fill and the stroke,
| | 02:49 | and that way I can kind of see what's going on.
Looks like I did pretty good job on the house.
| | 02:52 | Might be a couple of areas I
need to work on right there.
| | 02:57 | It's not exactly a straight line;
that's okay. That's easily fixed, so let's
| | 03:00 | zoom in, and show you how to fix that.
| | 03:03 | Come right here, grab my Direct Selection
tool, click away, then grab this, and
| | 03:06 | then just drag it up
until it snaps into place.
| | 03:09 | Once it does, looks good;
switch back to the regular selection,
| | 03:12 | then zoom back out.
| | 03:14 | So, I always do what I consider to be
the background element first for whatever
| | 03:17 | it is I'm tracing, okay?
| | 03:19 | And so once I do that, I am then going to
toggle open the Trace layer. Once I have
| | 03:24 | the Trace layer open, I'm going to lock
the path that I just created, so that I
| | 03:28 | can't mess with it anymore, and I'm
also going to turn off the Visibility,
| | 03:32 | because now everything that I build on
top of it is going to go on top, and I
| | 03:35 | want to be able to see that.
| | 03:37 | So, what I'm going to do now is make
sure I am still working on the Trace layer,
| | 03:41 | grab the Pen tool, and start drawing
the rest of these shapes, so here we go.
| | 03:45 | I'm going to start over here; I'm just
going to draw the basic shapes, and if
| | 03:49 | you want to draw guidelines for these,
that's fine, but these are just basic rectangles.
| | 03:53 | You can see here I kind of broke my own
rule; I used a fill instead of a stroke,
| | 03:58 | so let's flip flop those, and I'm
using the smart guides here, because it's
| | 04:01 | making that a lot easier for me to
get everything lined up. There we go.
| | 04:07 | And I'm just going to trace all the
way around all of these different shapes.
| | 04:10 | Remember to use your smart guides, so
that you know that everything is lining up
| | 04:18 | properly, and then as you continue to go,
it makes it a lot easier. There we go.
| | 04:25 | We'll just complete these.
| | 04:27 | Now, you could draw these with shape
tools, and that would be just as easy, but
| | 04:31 | right now we're practicing the Pen
tool, so it's just easier for me to show
| | 04:35 | you by doing these.
| | 04:36 | You notice the smart guides are
really helping me out here; helping me keep
| | 04:40 | everything aligned, and drawing straight
lines, and everything like that. I am
| | 04:43 | holding down the Shift key as I do this,
and you can see it's pretty easy just to
| | 04:49 | recreate these basic shapes;
no big deal. There we go. Okay.
| | 04:56 | And I messed up right there;
that's okay. You can undo that.
| | 05:01 | Then, if undo doesn't work, you can
just zoom in, and you can take the Direct
| | 05:07 | Selection tool, and just move these
objects around until they get right where
| | 05:11 | they need to go, just like that.
| | 05:14 | As the beauty of the Pen tool;
everything you create with Pen tool is
| | 05:17 | completely flexible.
| | 05:18 | Now, I've drawn the basic shapes that
I need here, and that's cool, but what
| | 05:22 | about -- oh forgot the door;
| | 05:24 | let's do the door really quick.
| | 05:26 | Zoom in here, and draw the
door shape; there we go. Alright.
| | 05:33 | So, the door shape is there, and then we
can kind of nudge that into place, and make
| | 05:38 | sure I have that selected, and
move that over. There we go; perfect!
| | 05:42 | Now, what about these shapes here?
| | 05:44 | Well, that's going to be a little more
complex, but that's okay; we can handle that.
| | 05:48 | So what I'm going to do first is
come up here to the top, and let's start
| | 05:52 | with the circle, okay?
| | 05:53 | Remember, I'm going to start right up
here at the top, and remember, you drag in
| | 05:57 | the same direction you want the curve
to go, so in this case, I'm going to click
| | 06:00 | and drag to the right, because
I want it to go to the right.
| | 06:02 | I am just going to come here, click and
drag until that meets right there; that's good.
| | 06:08 | Come right here, click and drag out
until it meets, and then click and drag up
| | 06:15 | until that meets, just like that, and
then we'll complete the curve, something
| | 06:22 | kind of like that; there we go.
| | 06:24 | So, there is my circle. Pretty good, if
you ask me. Then let's go down here, and
| | 06:28 | let's worry about the shrubs.
| | 06:29 | Now, I'm only going to draw one shrub;
that way I can have two on each side
| | 06:33 | that match each other.
| | 06:34 | So, just grab the Pen tool, and I'll
start at the bottom. It does not really
| | 06:37 | matter which way you start, but I'm
just going to start right here at the
| | 06:41 | bottom, and I'm going to drag to the right a
little bit, come up here, drag up; there we go.
| | 06:49 | And notice when I come here, it
does this little funky thing on me;
| | 06:52 | zoom in so you can see that.
| | 06:54 | See how it does this little funky curve?
| | 06:56 | That's okay; watch this. Just undo, and
then from here, Option+Click or Alt+Click,
| | 07:02 | and come up here, and you can adjust
the curve accordingly, just like so.
| | 07:08 | And here, just kind of do like that,
here, like so, and I'm just dragging the
| | 07:19 | handles to match the contour
of these shapes. There we go.
| | 07:25 | There we go, all the way around.
| | 07:34 | I'm trying to hit the middle of these
arches to make it a little bit easier.
| | 07:41 | Hitting the middle of the arch makes
it easier do both sides, so there is one
| | 07:44 | side, and then down like that. See how it
just kind of flows together, and makes it a
| | 07:48 | little bit easier, as long
as you hit the middle?
| | 07:51 | So there we go something like that,
and whips it right around, like that, and
| | 07:58 | whips it right around.
| | 08:01 | And I'm almost done here,
so it's looking pretty good.
| | 08:07 | So, I have that little last piece done.
Come back down here to close it and just
,
| | 08:12 | drag sort of in the opposite
direction I want it to go, and there we go.
| | 08:20 | There is my shrub shape;
pretty simple.
| | 08:21 | Alright, so now it's time to
put everything back and play here,
| | 08:24 | so what I'm going to do is select all
of these objects, and I'm just holding
| | 08:28 | down Shift, and grabbing them all as I go,
and I'll duplicate the tree in just a minute.
| | 08:33 | Ready? Now, I'm going to make sure the
stoke color is set to none, and the fill
| | 08:38 | color is set to white; there we go.
| | 08:40 | Now I'm going to go back down and find
that sublayer that I locked, and turn
| | 08:45 | the visibility back on. There we go.
Let's zoom out a little bit. There, now,
| | 08:54 | let's take this guy right here; we'll
turn that guy to black fill, turn the
| | 09:00 | house to a black fill, take the shrub
over here copy, Command+C, or Ctrl+C on
| | 09:07 | the PC, Command+F or Ctrl+F to paste
it in front, and then I'll just move it
| | 09:12 | over with my arrow keys, holding down
the Shift key, until it gets just on the
| | 09:16 | other side of that, like so.
| | 09:21 | And then finally, the last thing we
need to do is draw the bottom piece here.
| | 09:24 | That's really easy to do. Just click,
click, click, click, and one more click,
| | 09:33 | there we go, and turn
that black. So, there we go.
| | 09:37 | Now I'll collapse up the layer. There is
the Trace layer, and the Original layer,
| | 09:42 | so here is the before, after.
| | 09:45 | So, you see it's pretty good, the trace
that I've done there with the Pen tool in
| | 09:48 | just a few quick and easy steps.
| | 09:49 | Let's turn off the Original now.
| | 09:51 | So now I have all of these shapes out
here, and I can use those in any way I
| | 09:56 | want. It's now vector art.
| | 09:57 | Let's go up to the View menu, and let's clear
the guides; don't really need those anymore.
| | 10:01 | I can select all of this
information, and watch this;
| | 10:04 | it can be scaled up or down as much as
I want it to be, and it's now a vector
| | 10:09 | version of that original piece of artwork,
and we did that all with the Pen tool
| | 10:13 | in just a couple of minutes.
| | 10:14 | So, as you can see, drawing basic
shapes and lines with the Pen tool is pretty
| | 10:18 | easy, and you can recreate some
relatively complex artwork with nothing more than
| | 10:22 | a few simple clicks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracing curves and complex areas| 00:00 | In addition to just using the point
and click method for creating shapes
| | 00:03 | using the Pen tool, you also need to be very
skilled at creating curved segments as well.
| | 00:08 | In this movie, I'm going to be
exploring how to create these complex curve
| | 00:11 | shapes using the Pen tool, and we're
going to be working with this piece of
| | 00:15 | artwork that I have here.
| | 00:17 | This is something that I run into all
the time, you know, people have something
| | 00:20 | that they were sent to them as a low
resolution JPEG or GIF file, and they're expected
| | 00:24 | to turn that into a useable piece of
artwork for a logo, or a business card, or
| | 00:29 | what have you, and it's just not feasible.
| | 00:31 | And so, if you select this, and you
happen to run Image Trace on it, like if I
| | 00:35 | go to Window > Image Trace, you're going to see
that it doesn't do all that great of a result.
| | 00:40 | If I do something like, let's pick a
Preset of like three colors, and when I zoom
| | 00:44 | in on that, you're going to see that it
does a decent job, but it's nowhere near
| | 00:48 | what the original looked like.
| | 00:50 | If I switch from Tracing Result to Source
Image, you can see that it's just not as precise.
| | 00:54 | And I could spend time cleaning up
this trace, but at the end of the day, I'm
| | 00:58 | going to wind up using most of the
tools I'd be using any way if I'd drawn it
| | 01:03 | with the Pen tool, so why don't
I just draw it with the Pen tool?
| | 01:07 | So that's what I'm going to do.
| | 01:08 | Let's just go ahead and undo that, and
let's close the Image Trace panel, and I'm
| | 01:12 | just going to undo back until I
get it back to its original state.
| | 01:16 | You'll know that it's back to its
original state, because the Image Trace
| | 01:19 | feature button will be highlighted once
again, and you won't see any Image Trace
| | 01:23 | options up here at the top.
| | 01:24 | So, you just want it to be in its
original, pixilated state, and we're going to
| | 01:28 | zoom in a little bit, and I'm going
to take this one shape at a time.
| | 01:32 | So, I'm going to zoom in first on this
leaf over here on the right hand side.
| | 01:36 | So, we'll start off with this, and
I'm going to do exactly like I did for
| | 01:41 | the basic shapes; I'm going lock
this original layer, I'm going to
| | 01:44 | double-click, and rename it Original,
then I'm going to create a new layer on
| | 01:47 | top, and call this layer Trace.
| | 01:49 | That's what I do every time, just so
I can differentiate between the two.
| | 01:50 | Now I'm going to grab my Pen tool, I'm going
to make sure that the fill color is set to None.
| | 01:55 | I want the stroke color to be black;
it's easiest to see, and then I'm just
| | 01:59 | going to start drawing.
| | 02:00 | So here, this is a
straight edge line right here,
| | 02:04 | so I'm just going to
click, and click, just like so.
| | 02:07 | Now, this way, I'm going to go about
midway down, and so this time, since it's the
| | 02:10 | second point, I want to drag in the
opposite direction I want the curve to go,
| | 02:13 | so I'm going to drag slightly to
the left, kind of down into the left;
| | 02:19 | something kind of like that.
| | 02:21 | And then I'm going to come here, and
we'll just drag this down, something kind of
| | 02:26 | like that; there we go.
| | 02:28 | And then what I'm going to do here,
because if I try to do another point here
| | 02:32 | this time, watch what happens; it
creates that weird little whiplash.
| | 02:35 | I'm going to come right here, and I'm going to
reset this, so that it becomes a corner point.
| | 02:39 | Then I'm just going to come up here; I'm
going to try to do one big curve right here.
| | 02:44 | It may or may not work, and it
doesn't look it's going to work,
| | 02:48 | so that's okay. Just undo that, and
then come about midway down, set your curve,
| | 02:52 | and then complete the curve, after the fact.
There we go, something kind of like that.
| | 02:58 | Then I'm going to reset that point to
make it a corner point again, and this
| | 03:02 | kind of S curves right here, so in
this case, what I'm going to do is just
| | 03:06 | kind of click here, curve it down,
then click here, and curve it up; something
| | 03:11 | kind of like that. Reset that to be a
corner point, and again this one kind
| | 03:16 | of S curves as well, so we'll just kind
of curve that up, and then to finish it
| | 03:21 | off, curve that down, just like so.
| | 03:24 | So there we go;
there is the first piece of it.
| | 03:26 | And again, I'm sort of
flying through this.
| | 03:28 | If you were taking your time, you
can make sure this is a little bit more
| | 03:32 | precise, but you sort of get the
idea of just how easy it can be just by
| | 03:35 | watching me do this.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to come right here and start
on the next shape, and so I'll just start
| | 03:42 | right here at the bottom, and we'll go
about midway up, create the curve, there
| | 03:46 | we go, and come about right here.
| | 03:49 | That actually follows the contour
pretty nicely, and I'm going to zoom out a
| | 03:53 | little bit, because I think I can get
away with most of this curve right here,
| | 03:57 | just by doing this right there.
There we go; it lines up pretty well.
| | 04:01 | And then I'll zoom back in, and notice
there it did the weird whiplash thing, so
| | 04:08 | I'll just Option+Click or Alt+Click to
reset it, come back down, and we'll kind
| | 04:12 | of give that sort of a S curve right
there; not very much, just a little bit.
| | 04:17 | And this just takes practice. There
is no magic happening here, it's just
| | 04:21 | practice; that's all it is.
| | 04:23 | And so just kind of bow that out, again,
just dragging in the opposite direction
| | 04:27 | you want the curve to go, and in this
case, we're just going to follow the edge,
| | 04:31 | reset, because this is a straight
edge line right there; there we go.
| | 04:36 | And then I'm going to come about
midway down on this curve, release, and then
| | 04:42 | that one actually followed
really nicely right there.
| | 04:45 | So there we go. I've got two pieces of
this done, and so I'm just going to do the
| | 04:50 | last piece. I saved the
most difficult for last.
| | 04:53 | So, I'm going to come right here, and
we'll start off this curve right there;
| | 04:56 | zoom out a little bit.
| | 04:58 | So, I think I can get most of this curve
in with just one click, and I'm zooming
| | 05:04 | out to avoid that little move that it
just pulled on me there. There we go.
| | 05:09 | And then I'm going to reset this, this
corner point right here, and then we'll
| | 05:13 | just go up to the top of this and pull
down and there you see that little thing
| | 05:17 | where it jumps; that's okay. Just kind
of regain your composure. That's what
| | 05:20 | freaks people out about the Pen tool
is that little jump right there.
| | 05:23 | Just regain your composure, don't let
go of your mouse when that happens; just
| | 05:27 | refocus yourself, and take a breath, and
then once you get it lined up again,
| | 05:31 | then you can release your mouse.
| | 05:32 | I'll come here, and notice it did
the whiplash thing on me again.
| | 05:35 | Every time you need to start in a
new direction, you need to reset it.
| | 05:38 | I'll just pull that down, like so,
there we go, and this is going to
| | 05:43 | be a straight edge here, so right
across, and then go right here, pull down, and
| | 05:50 | remember, reset to go straight, and then
here, pull away, opposite direction you
| | 05:57 | want the curve to go; reset, straight
line, come back around here, and we'll pull
| | 06:05 | out until that matches
the contour of the shape.
| | 06:10 | And one more time to change directions,
reset, come back down here, and I'm just
| | 06:14 | going to pull out this way until
it matches, like so. There we go.
| | 06:20 | Now, I would also draw the
inner piece of this as well.
| | 06:23 | That way I can turn this into the same
shape with the Shape Builder tool, so
| | 06:26 | let's grab the Pen tool one more time,
and we'll do the interior shape now.
[00:06:329.80]
So, we'll start off about right here, and
I'll go about midway over, do that, and
| | 06:38 | then click to draw the
second piece, there we go.
| | 06:42 | Remember, reset, if you're changing
directions, pull down, that's good; reset
| | 06:49 | to change, pull down to line it up,
reset, and the final one, pull down, like
| | 06:56 | so. There we go.
| | 06:59 | So now I'm going to zoom out, and
remember my little trick here; I always turn
| | 07:04 | off the Original layer
to look at what I've done.
| | 07:07 | Select this, let's get rid of the
stroke color, and let's put on sort of a soft
| | 07:13 | color on this. Let's just pick kind of
a soft purple, and that's okay that that
| | 07:17 | middle part is there, because watch this;
I can just grab it, press Shift+M on
| | 07:21 | the keyboard to grab my Shape Builder,
and then quickly Option+Click or Alt+Click
| | 07:25 | right there in the center
turns that into that right there.
| | 07:28 | Now, I would have to do a little bit of
refinement right here on this edge; it
| | 07:32 | doesn't look quite right, but the rest
of it looks pretty good, and if I take
| | 07:36 | this, and move it over to the right, and
then turn the Original back on, you
| | 07:41 | can kind of see the result.
| | 07:42 | So, there is the before; small,
pixelated, not really reusable.
| | 07:46 | This one over here, completely vector,
I can change the color anytime I want, I
| | 07:50 | can resize it, use it in logos,
business cards, or what have you.
| | 07:54 | And so just by learning the basics of
the Pen tool, and creating these complex
| | 07:58 | curve paths, and learning how to do that,
it's really been beneficial to me, and I
| | 08:01 | think if you just sit down, practice a
couple of times on some exercises like
| | 08:05 | this, you'll get even better at it each
and every time you do it, and you'll be
| | 08:08 | really glad you did, because then
you can easily re-create curved, complex
| | 08:12 | artwork with very little effort.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining paths into shapes| 00:00 | Up until now, we've been drawing entire
shapes inside of Illustrator using the
| | 00:03 | Pen tool, and one of things that I wanted
to just sort of hammer home is how easy
| | 00:08 | it is to do that, but the fact of the
matter is, you don't have to work that hard
| | 00:13 | all of the time to do this either.
| | 00:15 | There's actually ways that you can
create one path, and then combine it with
| | 00:18 | another path to create shapes, as
opposed to just drawing the while thing.
| | 00:21 | So, in this movie, I'm going
to show you how to do that.
| | 00:24 | So, for instance, when you have shapes
like this that are identical on both side,
| | 00:28 | there's no sense in taking the time to
draw both sides if you don't have to.
| | 00:32 | As a matter of fact, if it's a really
complex shape that's half and half the
| | 00:36 | same, then it really make sense to only
draw a half of it, and then replicate it,
| | 00:40 | and then combine those two shapes together.
| | 00:42 | And so what we're going to do here is
we're going to take this object that I
| | 00:45 | have, and what we're going to do first
is just lock the layer that it's on; that
| | 00:47 | way, I don't have to
worry about messing with it.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to create a
new layer on top of that.
| | 00:51 | I'll double-click the first layer, and
I'm just going to call this Original, and
| | 00:55 | the second layer, of course, I'm going to
call it Trace, as you've seen me do many
| | 00:58 | times. And so what we're going to do
here is grab the Pen Tool and with the Pen
| | 01:03 | Tool selected, I'm going to
make sure that there's no Fill.
| | 01:06 | For the Stroke, I'm going to make sure
I'm using a color that's going to work
| | 01:09 | well against the edges of this, and so
I think a nice red color will work for
| | 01:12 | this, and I'll zoom in.
| | 01:14 | So, what I'm going to do is start right
up here, and if you want to draw out some
| | 01:17 | guides to make it easier for you, you
can, so just Command+R or Ctrl+R to draw
| | 01:20 | out guides, and then drag those out;
something kind of like this, and like this;
| | 01:30 | that way you got it, alright?
| | 01:32 | Now, I'm going to start here, and that's
going to be right in the center, just
| | 01:36 | about, and I'll click, then come over
here to this guide, click and drag over to
| | 01:41 | the left a little bit. There we go.
| | 01:44 | Now, I'm going to change directions
here, so I need to reset that, Option+click
| | 01:47 | or Alt+click, come back down, and come
down here to the bottom, but I'm going
| | 01:50 | to zoom out, so I can see it all the
way, and then this time, I'm just going to
| | 01:56 | drag a little bit until that matches up with
that side of the shield, just like so.
| | 02:01 | Alright; now, I'm done!
| | 02:03 | I've actually created this shape;
| | 02:04 | it doesn't even look like
I have done anything yet.
| | 02:07 | So, what I'm going to do is switch to
the Selection tool. That's going to select
| | 02:10 | that path for me; the
path that I just drew, okay?
| | 02:13 | So, I just want to make sure I have that path
selected; no anchor points, or anything else.
| | 02:18 | Then I'm going to copy that path,
Command+C or Ctrl+C, and then we will do
| | 02:22 | Command+F or Ctrl+F to paste it in front.
| | 02:25 | Then I'm going to go and right click on
that object, choose Transform, and Reflect.
| | 02:30 | You have to make sure you right
click right on the path, though, and when I
| | 02:34 | reflect it over, I'll hit Preview, that
way you can see, I am just reflecting it
| | 02:39 | over. Hit OK, and we're just going to
nudge it over until it lines up with the
| | 02:45 | other side, like so.
| | 02:47 | Now, let's zoom in, and so to create
this shape, let's turn off the Original,
| | 02:53 | first of all, and take a
look at what we've done.
| | 02:57 | We've effectively created that, but
it's still two separate things, right?
| | 03:00 | If I click here, that's a shape, or a
path, and if I click here, that's a path.
| | 03:04 | I want them to be one big thing,
| | 03:06 | so how do I do that?
| | 03:07 | I'm going to take the Direct Selection
tool, click and drag a selection around
| | 03:11 | those two anchor points at the top, and
then just use Command+J or Ctrl+J on the
| | 03:16 | keyboard to join those together. Same
thing for the bottom; select these two,
| | 03:20 | Command+J or Ctrl+J to join those together.
| | 03:23 | This is now one shape.
| | 03:25 | When I flip the fill and stroke, you
can see it turns into one shape. I can now
| | 03:29 | move it around. It is just one single
shield shape that I'm able to us,e and I
| | 03:35 | did that just by drawing half of it.
| | 03:36 | Now, this is a fairly simple shape, but
you can imagine a complex shape that was
| | 03:41 | the same on both sides.
| | 03:42 | If you just draw it once, you just
reflect it over, and then join the two, or
| | 03:46 | however many anchor points there are
in the middle, join those together to
| | 03:50 | form one single shape.
| | 03:51 | So, the Join Command is actually
one of the best things, I think, that's
| | 03:54 | available in Illustrator.
| | 03:56 | Now, if you're not real keen on using
keyboard shortcuts, that's okay; you don't
| | 04:00 | have to do that. You can go up to the
Object menu, and inside if the Object menu,
| | 04:04 | there are ways to do that.
| | 04:06 | So, you can go back to Path, and
select Join right there, and that will join
| | 04:10 | those two paths together.
| | 04:11 | Now, they do have to be right on top
of eachother; they have to be an
| | 04:15 | open-ended path. You cannot have the two
paths joined with something else; they have
| | 04:19 | to be open-ended paths.
| | 04:20 | Now, you can also do
something called Average.
| | 04:23 | An Average is a little bit
like Join, but not quite.
| | 04:26 | So, Average basically takes two points
that are kind of in the same ballpark with
| | 04:30 | eachother, they are not really right
on top of eachother like those were, and
| | 04:34 | it just sort of averages, guesses how
close they need to be, and where they need
| | 04:38 | to go together, and it puts
them together in such a way.
| | 04:41 | Now, you may have to do a little bit of
cleanup if you do the Average command,
| | 04:46 | but the Join command, as long as you're
drawing this as precise as you are with
| | 04:50 | the Pen tool, you should have
no problem getting that to work.
| | 04:52 | So again, the next time you have to
draw some big complex shape that happens to
| | 04:55 | be the same on both sides, just draw
half of it, and then join it together to
| | 04:59 | create one big awesome shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Working with TextTracing text by hand| 00:00 | When it comes to tracing text, you have two
basic options here inside of Adobe Illustrator,
| | 00:05 | the first of which is to try
and trace the text by hand,
| | 00:07 | because chances are, when you're using
the Image Trace feature, you're not going
| | 00:10 | to get a decent result
on the text itself.
| | 00:13 | So, tracing text by hand is probably
one of the best ways to recreate text,
| | 00:17 | especially text that has been
custom built, like the text you see here.
| | 00:21 | You can also choose to identify the
font that is being used in the artwork that
| | 00:25 | you're tracing,
and then reset the text yourself.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to cover that in a separate
movie. For this movie, I'm only going to
| | 00:32 | be focusing on tracing text by hand.
| | 00:33 | So, let's zoom in on this text here,
and let's take a look at exactly what
| | 00:37 | we're working with.
| | 00:38 | Now, lucky for me, this sketch is
actually really well done to the point where I
| | 00:42 | can actually see guidelines and things
like that that I can set up in order to
| | 00:46 | make it easier for me to trace the text.
| | 00:47 | So, the first thing I do is I turn on
my rulers with Command+R or Ctrl+R, and
| | 00:51 | then I just start to drag out guides
that match the top and sides of the
| | 00:54 | text areas, so wherever the text
starts and wherever it stops, just like
| | 00:59 | this. And then you can drag out
individual guides for each character if you
| | 01:04 | want to as well, and that's going to
help you along the way. There we go.
| | 01:08 | Just drag that out; helps me with my
spacing, helps me with my alignment, and
| | 01:12 | all that good stuff.
| | 01:13 | So let's drag another one right here;
something kind of like that. Alright.
| | 01:17 | So, now that I've got that all set up,
I'm ready to start tracing my first
| | 01:20 | character. So, in order to do
that, I'm going to grab my Pen tool.
| | 01:23 | I'm going to make sure that my fill
color is set to none, I'm going to make sure
| | 01:27 | that my stroke color is set to black, and
then I'm going to give it a one point
| | 01:31 | stroke, and then I'm going to zoom
in, and once I zoom in, I'm just going to
| | 01:34 | start somewhere right here, at the intersect
point, most likely, and another thing
| | 01:38 | that would be good is if you
locked your guides right now.
| | 01:41 | So, just go to View, go down to Guides,
choose Lock Guides; that way those are
| | 01:45 | not in any way in your way. So, here we go;
we're going to go right here, and just
| | 01:49 | click, hold down the Shift key to draw
straight lines, and then I'm just going to
| | 01:53 | click, and go around here.
| | 01:59 | And as I'm going around, I'm just making
sure that I'm holding down my Shift key,
| | 02:05 | and I'm just careful to go all the
way around the shape. There we go.
| | 02:11 | Now, when I'm doing the diagonal pieces,
like this area here, and this area here,
| | 02:15 | I am not holding down the Shift key. I
will go across, and once I get back up to
| | 02:25 | the top, I'll just hold down the Shift
key to go back up, and then over, and once
| | 02:29 | I see that little circle, that means I'm
about to close the path, and so there we go.
| | 02:34 | Now, what I'm going to do is temporarily
turn off the Text layer underneath, and
| | 02:38 | I can take a look at the
character that I just drew.
| | 02:41 | So, it looks okay. It doesn't look as
good as the font could, or should, and in
| | 02:44 | most cases, what I'll need to do is make
some refinements to this, because after
| | 02:47 | all, this is kind of snapping to the
pixel grid, and some things are misaligned,
| | 02:50 | so I might actually have to turn the
snapping off, and rearrange it a little bit,
| | 02:55 | but all in all, not too bad, and if
you're not real concerned with what the text
| | 02:59 | looks like, then it's not that big of a
deal, but if you're recreating a logo, or
| | 03:02 | something like that, then you would
need to spend an ample of time on this.
| | 03:06 | Now, for other pieces of text, like for
instance, over here, let's say we've got
| | 03:11 | the O, we can just use shapes for this.
| | 03:13 | So, I can drag out something that comes
out to right here, and then we've already
| | 03:18 | got our baseline there, so I'll just
grab my Ellipse tool, and I'll just drag out
| | 03:23 | a Circle; something kind
of like this. There we go.
| | 03:27 | And then I'm just going to Command+C or
Ctrl+C that, and then Command+F or Ctrl+F
| | 03:32 | to paste it in front, and then I'll just
shrink it down until it fits, just like so.
| | 03:39 | So, there's the O, so I can recreate
that with just regular shapes, and then I
| | 03:42 | could turn that into an O by
actually using the Shape Builder tool.
| | 03:46 | Now, if you just got something that
has no diagonals, like this E right here,
| | 03:50 | that's easily recreated with nothing
but rectangles, so we can just come right
| | 03:54 | here, and create a big rectangle, just
like that. Come here, create another
| | 03:58 | rectangle that goes out like that,
and then I can just copy this rectangle,
| | 04:02 | Command+C or Ctrl+C, Command+F or Ctrl+F
to paste it in front, and then we'll
| | 04:07 | just send it down until it meets the
bottom, like that. And then we can do
| | 04:11 | another one, Command+C or Ctrl+C,
Command+F or Ctrl+F, and we'll move it back up
| | 04:15 | to the middle, because that should be the same
height, but then we just shrink it back, like so.
| | 04:20 | So there's my E, and so you can go
through, and you can do this over and over
| | 04:24 | again. The same thing for the O right
here. Watch this; the O, I'll take this O,
| | 04:28 | Command+C or Ctrl+C, Command+F or Ctrl+F,
and let's move it over. See how it
| | 04:33 | lines up really nice with that? And now
watch this; all I have to do here is take
| | 04:38 | the Eraser tool, and just follow those
guidelines to turn it into a C, so pretty
| | 04:43 | easy to do that, right?
| | 04:45 | All in all, it's not that difficult to
trace text by hand. There are areas that might
| | 04:49 | give you some trouble, like the curved
areas around the end, and maybe the E, and
| | 04:53 | things like that, but otherwise, it's
not that difficult to re-create this, and if
| | 04:56 | you don't know the font, and you can't
figure out the font, this is a great way
| | 05:00 | to sort of get around that, and still
create a live vector object that loosk
| | 05:04 | really nice and clean.
| | 05:06 | So, the next time you have a project
that you bring in that you actually have to
| | 05:10 | have the text, but you just can't figure
it out, or the font doesn't match, or
| | 05:14 | whatever, try tracing the font
yourself, and see what you can come up with.
| | 05:18 | If you take your time, you should be
able to get pretty darn close, and it's a
| | 05:21 | whole lot better than just letting the
Image Trace feature take over, because
| | 05:24 | that creates a big old mess.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding fonts on the web| 00:00 | There's no question that it's a lot
easier to just simply reset the type in some
| | 00:05 | sort of artwork that you're tracing in
Illustrator versus trying to trace it by
| | 00:08 | hand, or tracing it using
the Image Trace feature.
| | 00:11 | And so, what we need to be able to do
is identify the fonts that people send
| | 00:15 | us, so that we can then reset the type once
we find that font, and install it on our system.
| | 00:20 | So, in order to find fonts, my suggestion
is to use these nice Web services that
| | 00:25 | are available today in order to do that,
and there's a couple that I use a lot,
| | 00:28 | and I'm going to show
you those in this movie.
| | 00:30 | First of all, though, let's take a look at
something that, let's say, a client sent me.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to go to File > New, here
inside of Illustrator, and the Size really
| | 00:37 | doesn't matter right now,
so just hit OK.
| | 00:39 | And so I'm just going to go up to the
File menu, choose Place, and we're going to
| | 00:41 | place in something called find_font.gif.
| | 00:44 | And when I do that, you're going to see
it's a pretty low-res, small GIF image,
| | 00:47 | and you've probably seen this before; a
client sends you some low-res JPEG image,
| | 00:50 | and they're like, well, I
need this turned into a logo.
| | 00:52 | Well, great; thanks.
| | 00:55 | So, you get this thing and you try to
image trace it, and when you image trace
| | 00:57 | it, it looks something like this,
and while the J can then probably be
| | 01:00 | salvaged, the rest of it looks
completely awful. So, you could spend time
| | 01:03 | trying to refine all of this, but at the end
of the day, it's really just not worth your time.
| | 01:09 | So, let's undo that, and let's take
a look at this in another program.
| | 01:12 | Let's look at it in Photoshop, and see
exactly what we can do with that here.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to go over
into Photoshop, and open it up.
| | 01:19 | The first thing we want to make sure
we do inside of Photoshop is we want to
| | 01:20 | make sure that the background is white, and
the foreground, the font itself, is black.
| | 01:27 | That makes it a lot easier to
identify either that, or make the background
| | 01:31 | black and the text white.
| | 01:34 | You want that to be very clear, what
the text is, and what the background is.
| | 01:38 | You do not want to have something
that's, like, dark gray on light gray, or
| | 01:40 | anything like that, because the font
services that recognize these things will
| | 01:44 | not be able to read it.
| | 01:45 | Now, I'm going to leave this open
inside of Photoshop for a minute, and let's
| | 01:48 | go over to the Web.
| | 01:50 | And there are two services
that I like to use; one is called
| | 01:52 | WhatFontIs.com, and the other
one is called WhatTheFont, which is now
| | 01:54 | part of myfonts.com.
| | 01:56 | If you go to www.myfonts.com/whatthefont,
you will be able to get to this Web site.
| | 02:00 | And so, what you do here is you
upload a file, and it basically analyzes the
| | 02:06 | image, and looks for bits of text
that it recognizes, and then based on the
| | 02:08 | results, it allows you to type in, okay,
this is a J, this is an A, this is a T,
| | 02:13 | whatever it might be.
| | 02:14 | And then based on your submissions, it
tries to find fonts that correspond to that.
| | 02:17 | There are some image submission tips
here, and I'll open that up in a new tab
| | 02:21 | so we can see that.
| | 02:23 | You need to make sure that the text
is horizontal, the text should be about
| | 02:26 | 100 pixels tall or taller. You need
to make sure that your letters aren't
| | 02:30 | touching each other.
| | 02:32 | Now, that's going to be a little bit
difficult for the font that I'm working
| | 02:34 | with, because it is a script font,
and they all sort of run together,
| | 02:36 | so we'll see how well it
handles that in just a moment.
| | 02:40 | The maximum numbers of characters
is set to 50, so don't go over 50.
| | 02:42 | Give it a nice range, so that it can recognize
different letters, but don't go over 50, okay?
| | 02:47 | And I would say the same
holds true for WhatFontIs as well.
| | 02:50 | So, let's go back over to WhatTheFont.
| | 02:53 | Let's choose the file, Find Font,
open it up, and click Continue.
| | 03:00 | When I do this, you're going to notice
that it's going to upload it, and then
| | 03:03 | it's going to come to a screen where it
shows me the different characters that it finds.
| | 03:06 | Now, in this case, it does recognize
the J. But check this out; because all
| | 03:09 | these run together, they're not
considered to be separate items, and the dot over
| | 03:12 | the I still not separate either.
| | 03:16 | So, let's just go and hit
Continue, and see what happens.
| | 03:18 | As you can see, the
results are not all that great.
| | 03:22 | So, how do we then identify this?
| | 03:24 | Well, it's a little bit easier if you take
the time to edit this, first and foremost.
| | 03:29 | So, let's close WhatTheFont for a
minute, and let's go over into Photoshop.
| | 03:32 | And so, what I'm going do here is
basically remove all the elements in the
| | 03:36 | middle, and I'm just going to stick with
the J and the N. That's going to give it
| | 03:38 | two characters to use, and I can easily
cut off everything from the N. So, I'm
| | 03:44 | going to grab my Polygonal Lasso tool,
and I'm just going to go right here, and
| | 03:50 | click to make selections around this,
and come right here next to the N, and then
| | 03:53 | just go right up to side of the N; make
sure you hug that edge, and then just go
| | 03:58 | all the way around this.
Complete that selection.
| | 04:02 | Then you want to make sure your
Foreground Color here is set to White, and then
| | 04:06 | use Option+Delete or Alt+Backspace on your
keyboard to fill in that information, okay?
| | 04:10 | Now, I'm going to hit the letter X on my
keyboard, and what that's going to do is
| | 04:14 | flip flop my colors, making white my
background color. I'm doing that for one
| | 04:17 | reason, and one reason only;
| | 04:19 | because now I'm going to switch to my
Marquee tool, make a selection around
| | 04:22 | the N, then switch to my Move tool, and
move it over. And the reason I changed
| | 04:26 | the background color was so that I can
move that over, and it still had white
| | 04:29 | over here on the right.
| | 04:31 | Now, if you want to, you can leave it
just like this, and upload it as is, or you
| | 04:34 | can switch to the Crop tool, and just
simply crop it out, like so. There we go.
| | 04:41 | So, I've got a J, and an N, and now I'm
going to save this, and let's go back over
| | 04:46 | to the Internet, in my browser here,
and send an image file, okay. Let's browse
| | 04:51 | that, find the font, J and
N, looks good; open it up.
| | 04:56 | There's a couple of different options
here, so if you want it to only display
| | 04:59 | free fonts, you can do that. Display
only commercial fonts; that means fonts you
| | 05:03 | have to pay for. If you want to make
it display all fonts, you can do that.
| | 05:07 | You have to tell it, is the background
white, or is it black; your choice.
| | 05:11 | You can activate this checkbox for
images with more components per letter, text
| | 05:14 | is only on one line, image is complex,
please redirect me to an image editor;
| | 05:18 | you know, there are all kinds of
options here, but I'm just going to stick with
| | 05:22 | the defaults, and hit Continue.
| | 05:23 | Then we're going to go over to the next
page. It's going to give me the same stuff.
| | 05:28 | So, this is a capital J, then I'll press
the Tab key, and this is a lowercase n,
| | 05:32 | just like this, and then we'll hit Continue.
| | 05:34 | Once that gets to the next page,
you're going to see that it starts to find
| | 05:38 | different fonts in the list.
| | 05:40 | And as I get down, to results 12
through 15, you notice this looks exactly like
| | 05:47 | what I'm looking for.
| | 05:49 | So, this is a font called Lobster, and
if I were to click on that, it's actually
| | 05:53 | going to take me to a page that shows me,
oh, okay, that's it, and it's a free
| | 05:57 | font, and it's going to give me
the option to download this font.
| | 06:01 | You can see all the different characters
here; there's the S, and the T, so
| | 06:05 | everything looks pretty good.
| | 06:07 | And so I could download it
from this site if I wanted to.
| | 06:10 | And if I choose this, it's going to
take me to a site where it allows me to
| | 06:14 | download it. I download that to my hard
drive right there, and once I have that
| | 06:20 | downloaded, I can then load it up, and I can
use that to reset my type inside of Illustrator.
| | 06:25 | So, let's close up these, and
let's jump back over into Photoshop.
| | 06:30 | And so, now that I know what these are,
I can actually get rid of this. I don't
| | 06:34 | need it anymore, so I'll just close
that up, and jump back over into Illustrator,
| | 06:39 | and it tells me that the fonts are
missing or modified; that's okay. If you want
| | 06:42 | to update them, just hit Yes, and it
updates to the latest version of that file.
| | 06:46 | And then now what you are able to do
is delete this, install that font, and
| | 06:51 | reset the text, just as if you
had had that font all along.
| | 06:55 | So, the next time you run into an
issue where you're having a problem
| | 06:58 | identifying a font, take some time to
optimize the image, and then use one of
| | 07:03 | those services, either
www.whatfontis.com, or
| | 07:05 | www.myfonts.com/whatthefont,
and see what you can come up with, because
| | 07:10 | they're going to give you a great list.
If nothing else, you'll get something
| | 07:13 | close. Then you can reset it at least
for an example to show your client. Who
| | 07:17 | knows; they might even like the
replacement better than the original.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting type yourself| 00:00 | workflow.
| | 00:00 | Once you've identified a font that you
need to reset, it's time to actually put
| | 00:03 | that into play, and use it
here inside of Illustrator.
| | 00:06 | So, the first thing you will need to do
is actually download and install the font
| | 00:10 | that you've identified.
| | 00:11 | So, I'm going to navigate over here to
the Web, and if you go to dafont.com,
| | 00:15 | you can actually find the font
that we're going to be using for this
| | 00:19 | exercise. You can go to dafont.com/
lobster.font, and you'll be able to
| | 00:22 | download this to your hard drive.
| | 00:23 | And so basically what you need to do is
just click Download button. That's going
| | 00:27 | to download it for you, and then on the
Mac, you can just right-click, and show in
| | 00:32 | Finder, or wherever your Download
folder happens to be, just navigate to
| | 00:35 | wherever this downloads to your computer,
and then find the lobster.zip file,
| | 00:38 | then you're just going to double-click
to open that up. And so what you're
| | 00:42 | looking for here is the file
labeled .otf; it is a font file.
| | 00:46 | Now, if you're on a Mac, it's really easy
to install this. You just double-click
| | 00:50 | it, and it's going to launch something
called the Font Book, and once it launches
| | 00:53 | the Font Book, you just click Install Font.
| | 00:55 | If you're on a PC, or a Windows machine,
what you're going to do is you're going
| | 01:00 | to take this file, and you're going to
move it into a directory for fonts. It's
| | 01:04 | usually under your C: Drive > Windows,
and then something called Fonts, so
| | 01:07 | C: > Windows > Fonts, and then you just
drop that in, and it should install.
| | 01:10 | What you'll need to do, though, is restart
Illustrator in order for this change to
| | 01:14 | take place, so that's what
I'm going to do right now.
| | 01:17 | I'm just going to quit Illustrator,
and if it gives you the Clear Clipboard
| | 01:20 | message, just hit Clear Clipboard,
and then close it up, and then I'll
| | 01:23 | relaunch Illustrator.
| | 01:24 | Once Illustrator has relaunched, I am
then going to go up here to the File menu,
| | 01:28 | open Recent, and open up the same
exercise file I was working on before, and I'll
| | 01:32 | press Command+0 or Ctrl+0, so you could
see what it looks like, and so now what I
| | 01:37 | want to do is I want to reset this type.
| | 01:39 | The first thing I do when I'm
resetting the type is I come over to the Layers
| | 01:44 | panel, and I lock the Original layer. Then
I create a new layer on top of it, and I
| | 01:48 | just rename that second layer New Text.
| | 01:50 | Then I'm going to zoom in,
something like that.
| | 01:52 | Then I'm going to grab my Text tool, and
I'm just going to type out the same word
| | 01:58 | that I'm working with here,
so in this case, it's my name.
| | 02:01 | Then I'm going to take this, and I'm
going to move it somewhere where I can
| | 02:05 | still see the original, but
still have a good eye on that.
| | 02:08 | Open up my Character panel here in the
control panel, and let's look for that
| | 02:12 | font; should be called Lobster.
| | 02:13 | So, I'll find that, there's Lobster 1.4;
there we go, and then what I'm going to
| | 02:20 | do now is increase the size until it
matches, something kind of like that, and
| | 02:28 | then another thing that I like to do
is change the color of the font, and I
| | 02:33 | accidentally changed the stroke
there, so let's change the fill color to
| | 02:37 | something light if it's black. If
it's a white font that I'm trying to
| | 02:41 | replace, I use black as the color, or
a dark color, and then I'll change the
| | 02:45 | Opacity to something like 60%.
| | 02:49 | In that way, I can really get in here,
and nudge it around, and get it lined up
| | 02:54 | just right. There we go. And I'm not
getting the full extension on the end, and
| | 03:00 | that's okay; it could just be a different
variation of font. No big deal. You
| | 03:02 | could always edit that to make the
change, and you can also come in here and
| | 03:05 | you can make changes with some type shortcuts
to really make this stuff line up properly.
| | 03:10 | So, for instance, the T is a little
bit off right here, so I can just kind of
| | 03:13 | nudge that around; I'm holding down
the Option key on the Mac, the Alt Key on
| | 03:16 | the PC, while I'm in between the S and
the T, and then I'm tapping on the left
| | 03:21 | and right arrow key.
| | 03:23 | So, if I want to nudge that to the left
or to the right, see how it just kind of
| | 03:26 | moves it around and when I get it in
place, there we go, something kind of like
| | 03:30 | that, so I'm just kind of nudging
these into place, there we go, and once
| | 03:35 | everything lines up pretty good, I'll
change the Opacity back to a 100%, change
| | 03:39 | the color back to black and then turn of the
original layer, and there's my newly set type.
| | 03:44 | Now, in some cases, you may want to
adjust the kerning in between characters
| | 03:48 | to make them sort of flow together a
little bit better; for instance, the I and
| | 03:49 | the T. Clean that up.
| | 03:51 | Again, it's just Option or Alt, and
then the left or right arrow keys to do
| | 03:56 | that, so that kind of flows together a
little better. It looks a little bit more clean.
| | 04:01 | So, that's basically all
there is to resetting type.
| | 04:03 | You have to know the font, first of
all, and then just resize the font to the
| | 04:07 | exact size of the original artwork, and
then just spend time kerning and moving
| | 04:12 | characters around until they match up.
| | 04:14 | So, I recommend creating a different
layer, changing the color of that layer,
| | 04:17 | changing the opacity of it as well, and
that way you have sort of a ghost image
| | 04:22 | on top of the original that you can
nudge around and play with until you get it
| | 04:26 | just right, and once you get it just
right, then you can get rid of the original
| | 04:29 | layer and you have this new vector
piece of text that you can resize, and do
| | 04:34 | anything you want with here
inside of Illustrator. All right!
| | 04:37 | So, hopefully now you have a better
understanding of what it's like to set
| | 04:41 | type on top of an original piece of
artwork, and why you would want to do so,
| | 04:45 | and hopefully this gives you a better
idea of how to implement that into your
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Adjusting the Tracing ColorsCreating a color palette| 00:00 | Once you've got a trace completed
inside of Illustrator, that's probably not
| | 00:03 | the last step that you're going to do.
After all, your client doesn't want just
| | 00:07 | a black and white representation of a logo,
or whatever it is that you've been recreating.
| | 00:11 | So, you're going to need to know
how to develop a color palette.
| | 00:14 | Now, if your client gives you a colo,r
or gives you a set of colors, like on some
| | 00:19 | colored cards, or just gives you a
sheet of paper, where they've actually just
| | 00:22 | like scribbled on it with a crayon --
that's happened to me before -- using a tool
| | 00:26 | like Adobe Kuler is really, really handy
for that. And so what Adobe Kuler is --
| | 00:30 | you can get this, by the way, by going
to kuler.adobe.com, and signing in using
| | 00:34 | you're free Adobe I.D.
| | 00:35 | What this is is a
community based around color.
| | 00:37 | And so basically, when you log in,
you're brought to this screen, and it shows
| | 00:41 | you the most popular colors that are
going on here, and this is actually a great
| | 00:45 | place to start, because these are some
really good color palettes right here.
| | 00:48 | So, if you don't have any idea of what
it is that you're looking for, this is a
| | 00:53 | great place to start
right here on the Homepage.
| | 00:55 | But if you wanted to do a search for
something, let's say the client had some
| | 00:59 | sort of keyword that they gave you, so
they wanted their Web site to look like
| | 01:03 | ice cream, or they want it to look like
cotton candy, or something like that, you
| | 01:07 | can just come in and you can type in
ice cream, or cotton candy, and if anybody
| | 01:11 | has created a color palette that
they've called, or tagged with ice cream, or
| | 01:14 | cotton candy, you will see it pop
up, and you will be able to use that.
| | 01:18 | When you find a color palette you like,
and you click on it, like for instance,
| | 01:20 | this Dream color palette right here,
when I click on that, I can see it across
| | 01:24 | the top really big; gives
me a good idea of what it is.
| | 01:27 | I could also take a screenshot of this
really quickly, and send that to my client.
| | 01:30 | Say, hey, do you like these colors?
| | 01:31 | Do you like this color palette?
| | 01:33 | Do you like these complementary colors?
| | 01:35 | Do you like any of this?
| | 01:36 | You can send them more than one,
of course, and let them choose.
| | 01:38 | Then you have the ability to
add colors to your favorites.
| | 01:40 | So, you can favorite colors like this.
You can also download the colors as an ASE
| | 01:44 | file, which will then save it to your
hard drive, and then you can load that up
| | 01:49 | into a program like Illustrator, and
I'll show you how to do that in the future
| | 01:52 | movie, and you can also make
changes to this theme as well.
| | 01:55 | If you choose to make changes to it,
what it's going to do is take you into
| | 01:58 | an editor where you will be able to actually
mix and match the colors around a little bit.
| | 02:01 | And once I have a color that I like,
and I actually do like these right here,
| | 02:05 | I'll just click on the Download button
when I find one that I like, and I'll just
| | 02:09 | Save it out to my Desktop as Dream.ase,
and then once I'm ready to apply that
| | 02:15 | into Illustrator, what I'll do is I'll
just jump over in Illustrator, load it up,
| | 02:20 | and then start mixing and matching colors.
| | 02:22 | And so, in the next movie, I'm going to
show you how to load up a .ase file that
| | 02:26 | you've created from Adobe Kuler, and I
recommend that you explore as much as you
| | 02:30 | can of this Web site to
take a full advantage of it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying colors to your artwork| 00:00 | Once you've got your color palette
all worked out, and you've also got your
| | 00:03 | artwork all traced up, like I do here, it's
time to start applying some color to this.
| | 00:08 | After all, when we deliver this to a
client, we're probably not going to be
| | 00:11 | delivering just a black and white
outline like what you're seeing here.
| | 00:14 | And so what we have to do is find a
way to get the colors that we need into
| | 00:19 | Adobe Illustrator, and then start applying
them to the artwork that we're working with.
| | 00:23 | And so what I'm going to do is open up
a color library that I downloaded from
| | 00:27 | the Adobe Kuler Web site, and I'm going to
do that by coming over here to the Color
| | 00:31 | Window, and tapping on this small
little book icon, going down to Other Library,
| | 00:34 | and then in my Exercise Files, I've
actually got the Dream.ase file, and I'm going
| | 00:40 | to open that up, and there you have the Dream
color palette from the Adobe Kuler Web site.
| | 00:44 | And so what I'm going to do now is
just start applying this to different
| | 00:47 | areas of my design.
| | 00:48 | So, the first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to determine the background
| | 00:52 | color, and so I'm going to go over my
Layers panel here, and inside the Layers
| | 00:56 | panel, it should look something like
this, I'm going to open up the Background
| | 00:59 | layer, and make sure that I'm working on
that, and target, there should be a shape
| | 01:03 | in the background layer that's filled
with white; I'm going to select that, and
| | 01:07 | fill it with this orange color. Something
like that; automatically it makes it
| | 01:10 | look a little bit better.
| | 01:11 | And then, with the text here in the
middle, what I am going to do is give it
| | 01:16 | sort of this look here, and I may switch
this to white after the fact; we'll see
| | 01:21 | how it looks here in just a moment.
And then over here, for the lady, we are
| | 01:26 | going to give her that sort of off
white color for that, and then I'll click on
| | 01:32 | her dress, and give her maybe
the dark green color for that.
| | 01:37 | And so I may actually take the text, and
give it the green as well, and then just
| | 01:43 | to give it a little offset here, watch
this; we'll just do Command+C or Ctrl+C
| | 01:48 | with the text selected, Command+B or
Ctrl+B to put it behind, nudge it over, and
| | 01:52 | nudge it down twice, and
then change that to white.
| | 01:56 | I may actually tighten that up just
a tad; something kind of like that.
| | 02:01 | And so there we have it. Pretty quick
and pretty easy to apply the colors to
| | 02:05 | your artwork once you have completed
your tracing, and also once you have gotten
| | 02:10 | the proper color palette involved.
| | 02:12 | Now, in some cases, as you may want to
experiment with this a little bit more,
| | 02:16 | change it up a bit, maybe change the
text there, maybe I would add a little
| | 02:20 | bit more of the colors that I needed
to have in there; something kind of like
| | 02:24 | that. That kind of makes it look a
little bit more in tune with what we're
| | 02:28 | doing there, and then you can add as
many things as you want after you've got it
| | 02:32 | done as you want to,
| | 02:34 | but in this case, I think it looks
pretty good. The only thing that I might
| | 02:38 | change would be maybe the color on the
lady over here; maybe switching here to
| | 02:41 | that yellow color as well. That way
everything sort of flows together.
| | 02:44 | But it looks really good. I did it
all from that one single color palette,
| | 02:47 | and also just by tracing that lady
using the Image Trace feature here inside
| | 02:50 | of Adobe Illustrator.
| | 02:51 | So as you can see, you can tie it
together pretty quickly once you have all
| | 02:54 | the pieces in place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating color groups from your tracing| 00:00 | When Adobe first debuted the Image Trace
feature in Illustrator CS6, I was pretty
| | 00:04 | excited about it, but I noticed they
removed one of my favorite options from the
| | 00:09 | panel itself, and that was something
called output to swatches, where it allowed
| | 00:13 | me to actually take the swatches that
were generated from my trace, and export
| | 00:16 | them out into the Swatches panel over
here. And so I struggled for awhile on how
| | 00:22 | to actually get around that, and so
there were some workarounds online, people
| | 00:25 | were talking about converting this over
to a live color group, or a live paint
| | 00:29 | object, or something like that; it
just didn't make any sense to me.
| | 00:32 | And then finally I got some news from
Adobe, where I actually asked some people
| | 00:36 | on the product team,
exactly how do you do it?
| | 00:38 | And they gave me a very,
very quick and easy solution,
| | 00:41 | so I'm going to walk you
through how to do that in this movie.
| | 00:44 | And so right here, we have a piece
of artwork, and I'm going to trace it.
| | 00:48 | So, I'm going to go up to the Window
menu, and I'm going to choose Image Trace.
| | 00:52 | And so the first thing I'm going to
do is I'm going to make sure Preview is
| | 00:56 | turned off, and I'm going to do that
because I'm going to set some settings up in
| | 01:00 | here. Now, I've already gone through
with the settings, so I know what they are,
| | 01:02 | but just follow along with me, so
you can see exactly what's going on.
| | 01:05 | And so, in this case, what I want to do
first is I want to change the Mode from
| | 01:07 | Black and White to Color, and then what
we're going to do is we're going to limit
| | 01:10 | the color palette, so it automatically
switches to Limited for the color Palette,
| | 01:13 | and I'm going to shrink this down to
about 5 colors; something like that.
| | 01:18 | Now, I want this to adhere to
the overall fidelity pretty good,
| | 01:22 | so I want to increase the path fitting.
| | 01:25 | So, something like 90% should be okay, and
then we'll reduce the Noise to about 15
| | 01:30 | pixels, and I'm also going to make sure
that we Ignore White, and I'm going to
| | 01:36 | make sure that Snap
Curves To Lines is turned off.
| | 01:39 | And so once I do that, I'm going to
hit Preview. It might take a little while
| | 01:43 | to render but it should be pretty
quick because the fact that it's not that
| | 01:47 | much going on in this artwork here, so let's
just wait for it to render, and see how it looks.
| | 01:52 | And so once that finishes rendering,
you can see here that a pretty nice job
| | 01:54 | with the trace. Couple of areas I'd
want to clean up, but for now, let's just
| | 01:58 | worry about actually how do we get
these colors into our color panel over here
| | 02:03 | on the right-hand side.
| | 02:05 | So, what I'm going to do now is I'm
going to actually just close the Image Trace
| | 02:09 | panel; it's exactly like I want it to be,
so I'm going to close this up, and then
| | 02:14 | what I'm going to do is I'm
going to expand this artwork.
| | 02:17 | And once I expand the artwork, I'm then
going to double-click to enter isolation
| | 02:20 | mode, and I'll select the invisible
frame around the artwork, like so, and press
| | 02:23 | the Delete key to remove it.
| | 02:24 | Now I'll double-click to exit the
isolation mode, so that I've just got this
| | 02:26 | little cartoon like that right there.
| | 02:29 | So, what I'm going to do now is I'm
going to get the swatches from this over
| | 02:34 | into my Color panel, and I'm going to do that by
going over here, and creating a new color group.
| | 02:38 | When I create a new color group, I'm
just going to call this Cartoon Colors, and
| | 02:43 | I'm going to make sure that it's set to
Selected Artwork. I'm going to Convert
| | 02:47 | Process to Global, and I'm going to
uncheck Include Swatches for Tints.
| | 02:50 | So, I just want, if it's a solid color, I
just want it over there; I don't want to
| | 02:55 | create a new swatch if it's
just a tint of a certain color.
| | 02:58 | So, I want to convert these processed
colors to global, because I want to be able
| | 03:02 | to change these anytime I want.
| | 03:04 | So let's go ahead and hit OK, and that
creates a new color group over there, with
| | 03:08 | the colors that I need. And so let's say,
for instance, that I wanted to change
| | 03:12 | the red in her shirt. No big deal.
| | 03:14 | I'll click away, come over here to the
global red, and in the Swatch Options here,
| | 03:19 | I can just rearrange this;
| | 03:20 | let's say that I want it to be a
little bit more green, and take that down,
| | 03:24 | something like that, and maybe
introduce a little bit of blue.
| | 03:27 | Now I'll preview this, and check that
out; I've recolored her shirt. I can hit
| | 03:32 | OK. And let's say that I wanted to
change the flower color, as well as the colors
| | 03:36 | in her bows. I'll just double-click
right there, and let's say that we want to make
| | 03:42 | this sort of an orange color. We'll just
mix this until we get orange, so in this
| | 03:49 | case, it's about 255 red, maybe
120 yellow, and then 0 blue. I'll
| | 03:59 | hit Preview, there you see we just
changed that little color there, and hit OK.
| | 04:06 | And then the last part of this, if I
wanted to change her skin tone, I could
| | 04:09 | certainly do that as well. I'll just go
over right here, double-click, and let's
| | 04:13 | warm this skin tone up just a little bit.
Remove some of the yellow, let's add a
| | 04:17 | little bit more in, here we
go; something kind of like that.
| | 04:24 | So, for this one, I'm going to go 250
for red, 205 for green, and let's say 192
| | 04:31 | for the blue, and let's preview that. So,
you just see it just kind of warms it
| | 04:36 | up just a little bit; something kind of
like that, and then we hit OK, and there we go.
| | 04:41 | So, I brought in this piece of artwork,
I traced it, and then I used the color
| | 04:45 | group over here in the Swatches panel
in order to create global colors that
| | 04:50 | correspond to the colors in the
artwork, and then I'm instantly able to change
| | 04:54 | those colors any time I want
just by editing these colors here.
| | 04:57 | So remember, you always want to create
a new color group, make sure it's based
| | 05:00 | on the artwork that you have
selected, then you want to make sure that you
| | 05:03 | convert the process colors into global
colors, and that way, when it creates a
| | 05:07 | new group, you can come over, and you
can make changes to that, and it will
| | 05:11 | correspond over into your
artwork as soon as you make the change.
| | 05:14 | So, I hope this clarifies a little bit
on how you get the swatches from a traced
| | 05:18 | object into the Swatches panel, since
Adobe removed that Export to Swatches
| | 05:21 | control that you used to have, and I
also hope that this gives you a better idea
| | 05:25 | of how to get a little bit more creative
with your tracings as well now that you
| | 05:29 | know how to fully customize each
individual color that you might have.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Quick Tracing ProjectsTurning a photo into a logo component| 00:00 | Throughout this course, we've been
working on various ways to refine and enhance
| | 00:04 | tracings that you do inside of Illustrator,
| | 00:06 | but we haven't really put that
into a real world scenario yet,
| | 00:09 | so I developed a couple of little
exercises here, where we're going to actually
| | 00:12 | walk through some things that I would
encounter in a real world experience, and
| | 00:16 | see exactly how we can deal with it.
| | 00:18 | So, let's assume that we're working
on a logo for a new reality TV show.
| | 00:21 | It's called The League, and it's going
to be a reality TV show about basketball.
| | 00:25 | And so what we have been told is, that
we need a logo for this TV show and they
| | 00:30 | want to incorporate this shield
right here, but they also want to add some
| | 00:33 | basketball component to it.
| | 00:34 | And somebody comes to me, and
they're like, okay, we need a picture, or a
| | 00:38 | representation of a basketball
player inside of this shield.
| | 00:40 | Now, I could spend a couple of hours
drawing this myself, or I could simply go out
| | 00:44 | and find a basketball player
to stick in there,
| | 00:47 | but chances are
they don't want a photograph.
| | 00:49 | They want some sort of
stylistic representation.
| | 00:50 | After all, this is sort of a
vector kind of a flat looking artwork.
| | 00:54 | It's not photorealistic, so they're
going to want something that's inside of
| | 00:57 | here that almost probably looks
like it's embossed into the shield.
| | 01:00 | And that's okay;
that's easy enough to do.
| | 01:02 | What I'm going to do is create a new file.
| | 01:04 | Size is really irrelevant at this point;
1024 by 768 is what I'm going to go with.
| | 01:08 | And so what we want to do is find a
picture of a basketball player, because a
| | 01:12 | lot of people ask me, you know, why would I
ever want to trace a photo in Adobe Illustrator?
| | 01:17 | And that's a very good question, because
on the surface, it looks as if you know
| | 01:21 | it's not really that big of a deal
that you're able to turn a photo into a
| | 01:25 | piece of vector art.
| | 01:26 | But if you wanted to just take the
overall shape of something in the photo, and
| | 01:30 | covert it into a vector piece of art,
like a basketball player, for instance.
| | 01:34 | That's what we're going for here.
| | 01:35 | So, if I go up to the File menu, and
choose Place. I have a JPEG file called
| | 01:40 | basketman, and I'm going to place that
in, and once I get that in, I'm going to
| | 01:44 | bring up the Image Trace panel.
| | 01:46 | Go to the Window menu,
and choose Image Trace.
| | 01:48 | And so, when I start off making a logo
component out of a photo, the first thing
| | 01:52 | I always do is tryout the
Black and White Logo Preset.
| | 01:56 | So, I'm just going to try
Black and White Logo.
| | 01:58 | It's going to go through to be a pretty
quick conversion, unlike some of the other ones.
| | 02:02 | And so once that renders out, I'm
going to see exactly what type of result it
| | 02:06 | gives me, and it's not too bad.
Not bad at all.
| | 02:09 | I'm going to go ahead and go
down here and click on Ignore White.
| | 02:13 | What that's going to do is just exclude
white from the colors, and you'll notice
| | 02:16 | when it does that the top here becomes
transparent, showing me all of that,
| | 02:20 | which is good. Okay.
| | 02:21 | And so now what I want to do is
make some adjustments to this;
| | 02:24 | so I think the Paths here, I'm going
to take that up somewhere around 65%.
| | 02:28 | I want it to be kind of a tight
fit, and so I'm also going to take the
| | 02:33 | corners down a little bit.
| | 02:34 | I want it to be stylized quite a
bit, so about 25% on the corners.
| | 02:38 | And then the last thing we're going to
do is we're going to go down and adjust
| | 02:42 | the Noise value, and remember, when
you're dealing with noise, the higher the
| | 02:45 | value the less noise there is;
| | 02:47 | the lower the value,
the more noise there is.
| | 02:49 | And so I'm going to drag this down to
something like 2 pixels, and I'm doing that
| | 02:53 | because I want some of the finer
details to come back in around this image.
| | 02:57 | And so once that happens,
| | 02:58 | I'll be ready to go, and so I get some
of the details back around the face, and
| | 03:02 | some areas around the highlight
of his arm, and things like that.
| | 03:05 | And so now I've gotten pretty much as
far as I'm going to go with this, because
| | 03:10 | there's really not much else that
I can control inside of this panel.
| | 03:13 | So what I'm going to do is expand this
out, and then I'm going to start working
| | 03:17 | on it outside of the Image Trace panel.
| | 03:19 | So, we can go and close this up, I'm
going to expand it out using the control
| | 03:23 | panel, and that turns it into a live path,
and then once I have that done, I'm now
| | 03:28 | going to double-click on it to enter
isolation mode, so I can work within it.
| | 03:32 | Because when you expand artwork
inside of Illustrator, it's automatically
| | 03:34 | grouped together all of it.
| | 03:35 | And so what I want to do is first
remove -- there should be an invisible frame
| | 03:39 | around this thing, so I'm just going to
click and drag a selection like this, and
| | 03:43 | there you see the frame is selected.
| | 03:45 | I'll just delete that, and then what
I'm going to do is come up here, and let's
| | 03:49 | work on the ball first.
| | 03:51 | So, the ball is actually
nothing more than a circle, right?
| | 03:53 | So, what I'm going to do
here is just draw out a circle.
| | 03:57 | So I'm going to go right here to the
intersection point, and draw out a circle;
| | 04:01 | something kind of like this.
| | 04:02 | And if you need to move this around
while you're drawing it, or if you want to
| | 04:06 | just draw a perfect circle, hold down
Shift, and then if you want to move it,
| | 04:10 | temporarily hold down the Spacebar,
and then move it into place, like so.
| | 04:13 | So I'm going to get that
about the size of the ball,
| | 04:16 | let it go, and let's make
that black. There we go.
| | 04:20 | Now, I might even fill in this
little area with the hand right here, and
| | 04:24 | that's easy enough to do.
| | 04:25 | Just grab the Blob brush, and I'll
increase the size of the brush with my right
| | 04:29 | bracket key on my keyboard, and just brush
that in. It adds a little bit there. There we go.
| | 04:34 | Now I come down here with my
Blob brush, and I'm just going to start
| | 04:40 | filling in some of these
highlight areas, because I don't need them.
| | 04:43 | I want a little bit of
definition in here, but not much.
| | 04:46 | I'm just going to draw right around here.
| | 04:48 | I'm going to follow the contour
of his shoulder as best as I can.
| | 04:52 | Remember, I can always clean
that up later; no big deal.
| | 04:54 | I'm just going to fill in,
being very careful.
| | 04:59 | This is a lot easier to do if you
have a Wacom tablet, or drawing tablet.
| | 05:03 | But from there not too hard;
there we go.
| | 05:06 | Fill these in. There we go.
| | 05:11 | Now, I'm not too concerned about anything
down at the bottom. I don't really have
| | 05:15 | to be, because I'm not going to use the
rest of that, and I'm going to get rid of
| | 05:20 | these little highlights here; there we go.
| | 05:22 | And I'm also going to paint out his ear.
| | 05:24 | I don't need the ear at all.
There you go.
| | 05:28 | So, there we go, and I'll zoom out a
little bit, so you can see exactly what I've
| | 05:34 | got there, and then, I'm just going to
double-click anywhere outside of here, and
| | 05:38 | there's my guy, just like so.
| | 05:41 | So, now what I'm going to do is I'm
going to take this, and I'm going to move
| | 05:45 | it over into the other document.
| | 05:46 | So, I'm just going to copy it, and go over
here, and we're going to paste it in, and
| | 05:51 | then I'll zoom back out a little bit,
and I'm going to resize it, and move him in,
| | 05:57 | something kind of like this, and
we'll zoom in, see how it's looking.
| | 06:03 | So, now you see kind of
what I'm going for here?
| | 06:05 | Maybe rotate it a little bit, and just
kind of nudge it into place. Once I get it
| | 06:12 | exactly where I want it to go, I'm
pretty much done, except for one last thing.
| | 06:16 | I'm going to select -- and I'll zoom in, so
you can see exactly what I'm doing here --
| | 06:21 | I'm going to select the outer portion
of the shield, I'm going to hold down the
| | 06:25 | Shift key, and click on
the basketball player.
| | 06:27 | Then what we're going to do is grab the
Shape Builder tool, and we're just going to
| | 06:31 | press Shift+M on our keyboard to do
that, and then I'm going to hold down the
| | 06:35 | Option key on Mac, the Alt key on PC, and just
start clicking on things I want to get rid of.
| | 06:41 | If you want to drag a selection, hold
on the Shift key while you're doing that.
| | 06:45 | So again, I'm just holding on the Shift
key, holding down the Option or Alt key,
| | 06:49 | and it's removing elements
that I don't need.
| | 06:51 | There we go. For the last part here,
I'll zoom in as close as I can to see
| | 06:56 | this, and this time I'm not going to
use the Shift key, just the Option or Alt
| | 06:59 | key, click and drag across, and it removes
that element for me as well. There we go.
| | 07:06 | And so now, when I zoom out, there is my
league logo, with the stylized guy right
| | 07:13 | there in the middle.
| | 07:14 | I could select this now, and I can group
that together, Command+G or Ctrl+G, so
| | 07:18 | now that's one solid object, which
can be scaled up or down together.
| | 07:22 | If the client comes back, and says, you
know, I need to look at a little bit more
| | 07:24 | of the ball, that's okay.
| | 07:26 | Remember, the underlying image is
still there, so I could go in, and I could
| | 07:29 | remove that circle I drew.
| | 07:30 | If they say, they need more
definition in the shoulder,
| | 07:33 | I've just covered those up with
the blob brush, so no big deal there.
| | 07:36 | I can go in and redo any
of that any time I want.
| | 07:39 | Now, as far as this image is concerned,
I'm pretty much done with this, but this
| | 07:43 | is a great starter point for another
type of image if I ever have to use this
| | 07:47 | image for anything else,
| | 07:48 | so I might save this out as a
template file that I can use over and over
| | 07:53 | again in different materials for this
particular company, or TV show, or whatever
| | 07:56 | it is that I'm might be working for.
| | 07:58 | So again, tracing photos does have a
place in the world of Adobe Illustrator, and
| | 08:02 | I think this really illustrates that
point, and hopefully it gives you a better
| | 08:05 | understanding of why you would want to
do it, and how to do it, and hopefully you'll
| | 08:08 | put this to use in one of
your future projects as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Vectorizing a technical drawing| 00:00 | In our second little real world project,
we're going to be tackling something
| | 00:03 | that people do all the time inside of
Illustrator, and that is converting a
| | 00:07 | technical drawing into vector artwork.
| | 00:10 | Now, this could be something that you
scan in, something that somebody sends you,
| | 00:13 | it could be anything from a blueprint,
to a floor plan, to some sort of schematic,
| | 00:17 | or anything like that, and you know,
people have to deal with these things all the
| | 00:20 | time, and they don't necessarily
always get them in a useable format.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to start of inside of Adobe
Photoshop, first of all, and open up a file,
| | 00:29 | and it's called blueprint.psd, and once I
get this thing open, you're going to see
| | 00:33 | kind of what were dealing with here;
| | 00:35 | it's just a blueprint of a small house.
| | 00:37 | And what we're going to do is we're
going to take this and make it useable
| | 00:40 | vector art, and I'm going to do
that by placing it into Illustrator.
| | 00:43 | Now, when I first go over in the Illustrator
I'm going to create a new file, and
| | 00:48 | the size right off the bat doesn't
necessarily matter. I just want to make sure
| | 00:51 | that it's using the right Color Mode;
in this case, I want it to be running RGB.
| | 00:56 | Let's go ahead and choose something like Web,
and 1280 by 800, something like that; hit OK.
| | 01:02 | Alright. Now, I'm going to place the
file in here, File > Place, blueprint.psd, and
| | 01:08 | then what I am going to do is zoom
out, and you can see it's significantly
| | 01:12 | bigger than the artboard,
| | 01:13 | so what I'm going to do is grab the
Artboard tool, you can do that by heading
| | 01:17 | Shift and the letter O on your keyboard,
and then we're just going to expand this
| | 01:21 | out until it meets all the corners.
That way it's not distracting at all.
| | 01:27 | And so once I get that done,
we are all pretty much set.
| | 01:31 | So, what I want to do now is I
want to try to trace this thing.
| | 01:34 | Now, I could go in here and spend time
drawing shapes, drawing lines, and things
| | 01:38 | like that, and I could recreate this
pretty quickly, but let's see how well
| | 01:41 | Illustrator can actually handle it first.
| | 01:43 | I am going to go up to the control
panel, and I'm just going to go down to the
| | 01:48 | little Preset dropdown, and let's try
something like Technical Drawing, and this
| | 01:51 | is going to read this, and see
what it comes up with; not very good.
| | 01:56 | So, let's undo that, and let's try
something else. Let's try Sketched Art.
| | 02:03 | Not bad, but we've got that big you
know black background to deal with, and it's
| | 02:07 | not exactly what I want.
| | 02:08 | So, I'm just going to undo that for now,
and let's go back over into Photoshop.
| | 02:12 | If you remember, I always talked about,
earlier, about cleaning up raster artwork.
| | 02:16 | Well, in this case, this raster artwork
needs to be modified quite a bit before it
| | 02:20 | gets exactly where we need it to go.
| | 02:22 | Now, first of all,
it looks a little crooked.
| | 02:24 | So, let's go ahead and correct that if
we can, and so what we're going to do is
| | 02:28 | click and hold here on the Eyedropper
tool, and we're going to grab the ruler, and
| | 02:32 | then what I'm going to do is zoom in
until I see this part right here, and I'm
| | 02:37 | just going to come up to the corner,
and I'm going to click and hold, and then
| | 02:41 | we're going to go all the way across,
and once we get over here, I am just going
| | 02:46 | to take it all the way until it meets
right there on that edge. Let it go, and
| | 02:50 | then we're going to say Straighten
Layer right up here in the Options bar, and
| | 02:54 | that's going to straight it up for me.
| | 02:56 | Whether or not it was crooked,
that should be fixed now.
| | 03:00 | And so once I have that done, I'll
switch over to my Move tool, and first thing
| | 03:05 | I'm going to do is duplicate this
background layer, Command+J or Ctrl+J on the
| | 03:09 | keyboard, and then directly underneath
that what I'm going to do is I am going to
| | 03:13 | make this layer be black.
| | 03:16 | So, I'm going to set my foreground color
to black. You can do that by hitting the
| | 03:20 | letter D on your keyboard, make sure
that's black, and then fill it with black
| | 03:24 | using Option+Delete or Alt+Backspace
on your keyboard.
| | 03:26 | And then with this, what I'm going to
do now is I'm going to cycle through the
| | 03:31 | blend modes with this.
| | 03:32 | So select the top layer, make sure you
have your Move tool selected, and then
| | 03:35 | just hold down the Shift key, and press
the plus key on your keyboard, and
| | 03:39 | that's going to cycle
through some of the blend modes.
| | 03:42 | And what we're hoping to get here is
something representative of just the
| | 03:48 | white on the black.
| | 03:49 | Chances are, you'll at least hit on one
of these blend modes that does that, but
| | 03:54 | if it doesn't happen, like this is not
happening for me, that's okay. I just
| | 03:57 | wanted to make you aware that you can
do that, and a lot of times you'll just
| | 04:00 | get white on black, sometimes,
depending on the color of the background that
| | 04:02 | you're working with.
| | 04:04 | In this case, it's not working, so I am
changing it back to Normal, and so what
| | 04:07 | I'll do is just zap the color out of
it, Shift+Command+U on the keyboard, or
| | 04:10 | Shift+Ctrl+U if you're on a PC.
| | 04:12 | And so once I do that, I'm now ready
to run a Levels adjustment on this.
| | 04:16 | So, Command+L or Ctrl+L, and with that
I'm going to select the black eyedropper
| | 04:20 | here, and I'm going to click somewhere in
this gray area, and as you can see, that
| | 04:25 | swaps it over to be black and white.
Hit OK, and then from here, all I have to do
| | 04:30 | is Command+I or Ctrl+I to invert it;
I'll merge it down with Command+E or
| | 04:34 | Ctrl+E, and so now I've got just a
black and white drawing of this. Should be a
| | 04:40 | lot easier to deal with
inside of Illustrator.
| | 04:42 | So I'm going to save this, Command+S or
Ctrl+S; jump back over into Illustrator.
| | 04:46 | I should get a message saying that this
file has been modified. I'll hit Yes to
| | 04:50 | update it. It updates, and now
let's zoom in here a little bit.
| | 04:55 | I want you to go ahead
and ignore the text;
| | 04:58 | we're not worried about the text.
| | 04:59 | Only thing we're worried about is the
fidelity of the drawing. We can always
| | 05:01 | add in the text later.
| | 05:04 | So, I'm going to go up to the Window menu,
choose Image Trace, and let's try one
| | 05:08 | of these presets again.
| | 05:09 | This time let's go up to Preset, and
let's choose Line Art again. Watch the
| | 05:13 | difference between this, and
what it looked like before.
| | 05:15 | See how much better that is? Picks up
a lot of the detail. It's still not as good,
| | 05:19 | but you'll notice here that
it's set to Strokes, right?
| | 05:22 | I need this to be set to Fills and
Strokes, and I just don't think that this
| | 05:26 | result is going to give it to me.
| | 05:28 | So, what I'm going to do is change this.
Let's try something like Sketched Art;
| | 05:32 | see how good this does.
| | 05:34 | Little bit thicker, not quite as
precise as I would want it to be; just doesn't
| | 05:39 | look all that great.
| | 05:40 | So one more time, let's change this
from Sketched Art, let's change that to
| | 05:43 | Black and White Logo.
| | 05:44 | It looks a little bit better. I'm going
to make sure the Path Fitting is turned up;
| | 05:50 | there we go.
| | 05:53 | I want the Corners to be up, and it kind
of snaps everything into place, and the
| | 05:59 | Noise, we're going to take
that down to 1; there we go.
| | 06:03 | So, everything looks pretty much as good
as it can get. Remember, we're ignoring
| | 06:06 | the text completely;
| | 06:07 | no need to do that.
| | 06:08 | And we can also turn on
the Strokes if we want to.
| | 06:13 | And you notice when we do that, it
automatically bolds up the lines a little bit,
| | 06:17 | and we can also adjust the
Weight of the strokes as well.
| | 06:20 | And so each time I do that, it's going
to increase the weight. Let's bump these
| | 06:24 | up quite a bit. Let's do something
like 20 pixels, and hit Enter or Return, and
| | 06:28 | once I do that, you should see a little
bit more of the bold come into play, just
| | 06:33 | a little bit; not much.
| | 06:34 | And then I'm also going to
check Ignore White; there we go.
| | 06:39 | And once I Ignore White, they are going
to be even thicker around the edges, so I
| | 06:42 | can actually back those down; let's
back that down to something like 10.
| | 06:49 | And I might even go lower than that.
Let's change that back to something
| | 06:52 | like maybe 5; hit Enter.
| | 06:54 | Again, a lot of this is just trial and
error; finding what works, and what doesn't.
| | 06:57 | And so once you get it pretty much
like you want, if you want to toggle
| | 07:01 | Fills and Strokes on and off just to
see the difference between the two; so
| | 07:05 | here is Strokes off, and here is
Strokes back on. Strokes on kind of thickens
| | 07:09 | it up a little bit.
| | 07:10 | So, totally up to you which one you use.
In this case, I think leaving the Strokes
| | 07:14 | on is a good way to go.
| | 07:16 | And so once I'm finished with that, all
I'm going to do is close the Image Trace
| | 07:19 | panel, and I'm going to hit Expand.
| | 07:21 | And so now what I would do is I would
actually go in, I would double-click on
| | 07:26 | the edge somewhere to get in here, and
then remove that invisible frame; remember
| | 07:30 | we have that when we use
the Black and White Logo.
| | 07:33 | Then what I would do is just come in here,
and I would start removing the text areas.
| | 07:37 | And I'm just going through selecting
the text areas, and removing those, because
| | 07:42 | they can't be read anyway.
| | 07:45 | So, once we have those removed, we can
than start adding in our own text on our own.
| | 07:50 | And you could come in and refine any
of these that you wanted; there we go.
| | 07:59 | So now, one more little section
that I missed right there, grab that, and
| | 08:05 | back out; there we go.
| | 08:07 | So, now what I would do is
start adding my text back in,
| | 08:10 | and so I'll go over into Photoshop, and
let's just see what one of these says.
| | 08:14 | So, Living Room
14'10" by 14'4".
| | 08:20 | So, we'll grab our Type tool, and somewhere
right in the middle here, just type out
| | 08:26 | Living Room, and let's zoom in, so
you can actually see what I'm writing.
| | 08:32 | And that's going to be 14'10"
by 14'4". There we go, and I
| | 08:41 | will align this to the center using
my Paragraph options, and then grab my
| | 08:49 | Selection tool; I'm just going to pan
over, so I can see this a little bit.
| | 08:54 | Then, if you want to increase the
size of text, here is a little keyboard
| | 08:58 | shortcut for you: Shift+Option+Command
on the Mac, Shift+Alt+Ctrl on the PC, and
| | 09:02 | then tap the greater than sign (>) on
your keyboard, there you go, and so I'll
| | 09:05 | zoom back out a little bit,
so you can see that.
| | 09:08 | And so there is my Living
Room text, very easily read.
| | 09:11 | I'll copy that, and paste it, and then I
can just start moving this into different
| | 09:15 | areas of the drawing.
| | 09:17 | And so, in this case, GARAGE 21'6" by 21'0",
so we'll just change that. Garage 21,
| | 09:31 | and then this one is
going to be 21'0. There we go.
| | 09:36 | Now, I'm not going to bore you by
making you watch me do each and every one of
| | 09:41 | these rooms, but you get the idea here.
| | 09:43 | So, I've effectively turned a raster
based image into a vector illustration,
| | 09:46 | which I can now exit isolation mode by
double-clicking out here, and now this is
| | 09:49 | able to be resized any way I want,
without losing quality. As you can see, I can
| | 09:54 | take that up or down, as big or as small
as I want it, and it maintains that nice
| | 09:59 | crisp appearance. The lines
look really good; nice and thick.
| | 10:03 | I've added in my own text for more
readability, and I can add as much to this as
| | 10:07 | I want, refine the shapes as much as I
want, but in reality, I've actually saved
| | 10:11 | myself a ton of time by not drawing
out all of these lines all by myself. I
| | 10:15 | just did a little bit of refinement in
Photoshop, traced it in Illustrator,
| | 10:19 | and converted what was a static raster
object into a now dynamic vector based
| | 10:23 | object.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, that about wraps it up for this
course on Tracing Artwork with Illustrator.
| | 00:04 | I hope that you enjoyed the course as
much as I did, and I hope you learned a
| | 00:08 | little bit along the way as well.
| | 00:10 | Before you go, I'd like to show you
some other great courses that we have on
| | 00:14 | Adobe Illustrator here in Lynda.com.
| | 00:15 | If you're looking to get the most out
of Illustrator's drawing capabilities
| | 00:18 | without having to use the Pen tool, you
might want to check out Mordy Golding's
| | 00:22 | Illustrator Insider Course on
Drawing without the Pen Tool.
| | 00:24 | If you're looking to take your Illustrator
typography skills to the next level,
| | 00:28 | then I highly suggest Mordy's course on
Illustrator Insider Training: Type and Text.
| | 00:31 | If you'd like more information about
the basics of Illustrator, you might want
| | 00:34 | to check out my course on Illustrator
Essential Training, which provides you a
| | 00:37 | soup to nuts breakdown of
this powerful vector editing app.
| | 00:41 | If you're a Web designer, or even
aspiring to be one, you might want to watch my
| | 00:45 | Illustrator for Web Design course;
| | 00:46 | this is where I teach you how to use
Illustrator as a Web mockup tool, and show
| | 00:51 | off my full Web design work flow.
| | 00:53 | Finally, if you're looking to stay on
top of all the new features Adobe is
| | 00:56 | releasing with its new Creative Cloud
platform when it comes to Illustrator, you
| | 00:59 | should check out my Illustrator New
Features course, which is always up to date
| | 01:02 | with the latest Creative Cloud features.
| | 01:04 | Again, I'd like to thank you for joining
me for this course. My name is Justin
| | 01:08 | Seeley, and I hope to see you again real soon.
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