Using Image Trace

Using Image Trace

Images Trace is a powerful tool for quickly tracing photos and illustrations and converting them into fully editable vectors.

When to use

Image Trace works best when used to create vectors from detailed photos.

Instructions

Testing The Waters

• Open the plant photo from the Lesson Files folder.
• Scale each of the photos down by about 50%. The easiest way to do this is to press 'S' on the keyboard to grab the Scale Tool, double-click on the artboard, and reduce the size to 50%.
• Once you've scaled down the photo, go to the Object Menu and choose Artboards > Fit to Artwork Bounds. This will fit your artboard to the exact size of the photo.
• Go to the Window Menu and choose 'Image Trace' to open the Image Trace Panel.
• Click on the small gray arrow next to the word 'Advanced' to reveal more options in the Image Trace Panel.
• Next, select your photo with the Selection Tool (V) and then check off the 'Preview' box in the lower left of the Image Trace Panel.
• If you receive a warning that says 'Tracing may proceed slowly...' click 'OK' to proceed.
• Once the preview updates, your default setting will produce a black-and-white result.
• Move the 'Threshold' slider to the left to add more detail to the black and white auto trace result.
• Click on the 'Preset' dropdown and choose '6 Colors' to see how a 6-color auto trace looks.
• Instead of a threshold slider, you will now see a slider that allows you to change the result to something with more or fewer colors.
• When you are happy with the results, go to the Object Menu and choose 'Expand' and make sure to leave 'Fill' and 'Stroke' both checked off.
• Once you've expanded the results, you will now have editable vector shapes.
• Repeat this process with some of the other photos from the Lesson Files.

Hints & tips

• Auto Trace works best when you have a photo with high contrast.
• Experiment with the settings and sliders to get different results.
• Try out the different auto-trace presets to see which one(s) you like most.