Tweak to get the perfect trace
What makes the Live Trace feature in Adobe® Illustrator® CS2 a joy to use is the ability to make adjustments to the settings while you see the results update on your screen. Aside from the different presets that you can apply, Illustrator CS2 contains a dialog box chock full of settings that you can use to ensure that you get the results you need from the Live Trace feature.
To access these settings, select a Live Trace object and click the Tracing Options dialog button in the Control palette. Alternatively, you can choose Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options. Once the Tracing Options dialog appears on your screen, you’ll notice that it’s split into several different sections (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The Tracing Options dialog offers a smorgasbord of settings to achieve the perfect trace.
First of all, a Preview check box appears on the far right of the dialog, which allows you to see results update as you make changes to the different settings.
Directly underneath the Preview check box is a list of important details about your traced object. The values for the number of paths, anchor points, colors, distinct closed areas, and image resolution update as you make adjustments to the settings in the dialog. Keeping an eye on these values helps you make decisions as you edit your trace settings. At the top of the dialog is a Preset pop-up menu, similar to what you see in the Control palette when a Live Trace object is selected. Stepping through the different presets in the Tracing Options dialog allows you to see the settings for each of the presets.
The rest of the Tracing Options dialog is separated into three sections called Adjustments, Trace Settings, and View. The View section allows you to specify how the traced object appears on your artboard, as discussed in the earlier section, “Exploring the Live Trace Preview Options.”
The following “Modifying the Raster Adjustments” and “Adjusting the Vector Trace Settings” sections will help you clearly understand the two-step process that the Live Trace feature performs when converting raster images into vector form.
About the authors
Mordy Golding has been a production artist for print and the web for many years, and is an Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Print Specialist. At Adobe, he was the product manager for Illustrator 10 and Illustrator CS. A popular presenter at Macworld, Photoshop World and other worldwide events, Mordy is also the author of several books, including SAMS Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite All in One, The Web Designer's Guide to Color, and SAMS Teach Yourself Adobe Illustrator in 24 Hours. In 2003, Mordy was named a Champion of Graphic Design by Graphics IQ. Currently he serves as the founder of DesignResponsibly.com, teaching designers and printers how to successfully adopt today's new technology. Mordy is also the author of the Illustrator CS2 and Flash 8 Integration video training title published by lynda.com.
Excerpted from“Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2” by Mordy Golding © 2006. Used with the permission of Peachpit. To purchase this book, please visit adobepress.com.
