patseguin Global Moderator Posted June 3, 2015 Global Moderator Share Posted June 3, 2015 A customer sent me a PDF of this and I need to make it into vector artwork for screen printing. Usually I just draw everything in Illustrator CC but this would be pretty time consuming. Anyone have any advice on how to quickly make good vector artwork art from this? I tried cleaning it up in Photoshop to try auto trace in Illustrator but that doesn't work very well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penia Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 Try the demo version of Vector Magic far, far better than Adobe auto trace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patseguin Global Moderator Posted June 3, 2015 Author Global Moderator Share Posted June 3, 2015 Try the demo version of Vector Magic far, far better than Adobe auto trace. Thanks. Trying it now. Not working too well though. Seems like most of the time there is no substitute for drawing I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penia Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 You're right, there isn't. Had a quick go here but didn't do too well either, just too much noise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dotdot Posted June 3, 2015 Share Posted June 3, 2015 That`s do-able with Illustrator. Might take an hour or 2 but, very, very, do-able. I dont trust these "create vector" style apps. Mainly as they tend to not work very well or create odd unwanted shapes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patseguin Global Moderator Posted June 4, 2015 Author Global Moderator Share Posted June 4, 2015 I'm finding the pen tool in Illustrator to be quite tedious for this design. I am constantly drawing tangents and then having to go back and adjust them. Is there a better way, maybe pencil? I remember an old version of Illustrator I used years back had a drawing tool that would snap to the edges of shapes in raster artwork templates. It was extremely useful and made freehand drawing pretty much the best way for me. It seems like they for some reason eliminated that. Is there anything like it any more? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Someone already suggested this, did you try it? http://vectormagic.com/home Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shiranui Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 Inkscape Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dotdot Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 I'm finding the pen tool in Illustrator to be quite tedious for this design. I am constantly drawing tangents and then having to go back and adjust them. Is there a better way, maybe pencil? I remember an old version of Illustrator I used years back had a drawing tool that would snap to the edges of shapes in raster artwork templates. It was extremely useful and made freehand drawing pretty much the best way for me. It seems like they for some reason eliminated that. Is there anything like it any more? Try creating a line then if you end up at a funny angle for next section. Click off the line and select something else. Then re-select the pen and the line and continue on. Might need a little adjustment. But should eliminate odd curves as you draw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShawnDude Posted June 4, 2015 Share Posted June 4, 2015 As already mentioned, use Inkscape (it's free). Copy the image into Inkscape. Select Path...Trace Bitmap... Try different options to get different results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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