need help with illustrator

[Warren Beard]

Hi Adele

Practice, practice, practice 😉

Live trace can work well sometimes but not always, sometimes you have to redraw the image completely using shapes and the pen tool. It is quiet an art at times.

There are services that do it for you at a reasonable fee to get you over any hard images required urgently, I’ve never used them but have heard good things.

I think the link is on the home page called Vectorwise.

good luck and keep practicing

cheers

Warren

[John Childs]

Hi Adele.

Convert the image to a tiff, then try LiveTrace on it.

LiveTrace, like any vectorising software, is more of an art than a science but keep trying, with different settings, until you get something acceptable.

You may not be able to get it good enough but, even if not, as Warren intimates, the practice will stand you in good stead for the future.

[Adele Brennan]

Hi

I saved as tiff and managed live trace but now when i try to import to my cutting software nothing happens!! it wont import.

I must be saving it in wrong format or something?!?

Any ideas where im going wrong?

[John Childs]

Adele,

Have you expanded the trace?

Select everything and then expand, which is found in the Object drop down menu. Well, it is on a Mac anyway.

Then just save into whatever format your cutting software requires.

[Adele Brennan]

Have expanded the trace and saved as eps as that’s what cutting software usually recognises. Tried to import and nothing happening!

Will try and persevere as I need to know how to do this.

Thanks

[James Martin]

My version on illustrator doesnt have live trace.

I use photoshop magic wand then convert to paths then export paths to illustrator then open with illustrator.

Longway but it does work for alot of stuff.