Better tracing options

[Eric_Wieczorek@adobeforums.com]

Hello There from Victoria, B.C. Canada.

We are a small group of teachers that create a 24 page educational bilingual (English and French) newsletter for schools in Canada. We use a combination of Appleworks, Illustrator and InDesign to lay out the unit and to create pdfs to send to the printer (for hardcopy subscribers) and to post the files on line for Internet subscribers.

The primary computer in the office uses OS 9.2.2. It is a G3 Mac blue/white tower and we use Illustrator 8.0.1. There are three other older Imacs hooked up to the network here in the office that the other teachers use to work on the newsletter.

One important feature of the teaching unit is the maps we included to help students better understand the layout of the geographical regions where certain current events occur (ie Iraq). We have a number of high quality vector maps and other types of clip art that are royalty free that we use. However, we occasionally need to create something from scratch (eg. after downloading an image from a web page) and I find that the trace tool does not do a very good job. One example of this is the new Iraqi flag that was just designed last week.

Can someone suggest any other ‘trace’ programs that I can use to create higher quality vector graphics that can then be imported in Illustrator for further touching up?

Thank you in advance for your time.

[Jason_Howard@adobeforums.com]

If you are still on OS 9 then Adobe Streamline may be the way to go. You will find it much better than the auto trace tool that comes with Illustrator. Another option is Silhouette, I belive that they have an OS 9 version. Streamline has historically been the standard for auto-vectorizing raster images, although after having used both I find Silhouette to be superior. However, depending on the quality of the image you are vectorizing you still may not get great results with either program. You may have to learn how to use the pen tool to manually redraw objects...

-Jason

[Eric_Wieczorek@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the info Jason

I have been using the Illustrator trace option and then the pen tool to touch up, but I was just wondering if there was a better way of doing this?

The trace tool is not very accurate and the entire process if VERY time consuming and frustrating.

Thanks for your response. I will check out the software that you suggest.

Eric W.

[Phosphor@adobeforums.com]

The new Iraqi flag is dead-simple, and wouldn't even require the use of the Pen Tool for manually creating paths. Using a simple combination of rectangles, along with ellipses and the Pathfinder functions, it's do-able in about 5 minutes.

[Eric_Wieczorek@adobeforums.com]

Phosphor

I just used the new Iraqi flag as an example - I haven't needed it yet but if we do a map exercise of Iraq in the future (which we probably will) it would be nice to have it.

Eric

[LOR@adobeforums.com]

Eric have a look at this [url]www.silhouetteonline.com[/url] I have had to do some tracing but having moved to X streamline was no longer an option after a bit of research I found this
app, and plugin I seem to remember that they supported older versions of Illustrator

see what you think

[adopey@adobeforums.com]

if you happen to have a copy of Macromedia Flash on your machine this has a pretty good 'trace bitmap' option...

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

As does FreeHand.

[Eric_Wieczorek@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for all the info guys

One final question - is there any real difference between the stand-alone Sillouette and the plug -n version -- or are they identical?

Thanks in advance.

Eric W.