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Tracing the Trace Graphic

January 4, 2008 Leave a Comment Written by Cari Jansen

Digitip 064 – Adobe Illustrator CS3

This tip is Part 2 of a three-part tip. Part 1 describes how the Photoshop artwork that is placed into the Illustrator file was created and Part 3 will create the Text Effect that will give our finished result.

063_finished.png

We’re ready to place the previously created Photoshop graphic in Illustrator now. But let’s create a New Illustrator document first that has the same width and height as the Photoshop file.

064_01.png

File > Place. Enable the Link option in the Place dialog. This will allow further editing of the Photoshop file at a later stage.

064_02.png

Tracing the Graphic

From the Live Trace menu in the Control panel select Tracing Options…

064_03.png

What I’d like to do is generate two colour swatches that I can easily edit, whilst retaining Live Trace ability. To generate these swatches on the fly as part of the Live Trace functionality, change the following Adjustments settings:

Set Mode to Colour, Set Max Colours to 2 and Enable Output to Swatches. With the Preview box ticked you’ll be able to see the Live Trace result. Feel free to make additional adjustments.

064_04.png

Click Trace to apply the settings and generate the swatches.

064_05.png

To make it a bit easier to identify the two swatches that are generated, shift-click the swatches in the Swatches panel, then select Create Colour Group from the Swatches panel menu. Name the Colour Group and select Create From: Selected Swatches.

Click OK.

Amending the colours

Editing the colours of the Colour Group is as easy as double clicking the colour and amending the settings.

064_06.png

We’re now ready to get the text part of this three-part tip happening, let’s continue at Part 3.

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
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