change detailed illustration to vector??

[Lia]

Hi there,

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can change some detailed
ink illustrations to a reasonable vector likeness? I tried
transforming them in freehand, but wound up with something that only
mildly resembled the original art. And instead of black ink on white
paper, it was now all shades of gray...even in places where there were
no ink strokes.

To redraw them would be a painful endeavor.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Lia

[Ewout]

Hi Lia,
Try Potrace (potrace.sf.net) in combination with Delineate
(delineate.sf.net). Very powerful in my opinion! I tried Streamline and
CorelTrace before but this is much better (for b/w at least). Delineate
uses Autotrace aswell (you should be able to guess the url by now),
which is quite good, but needs some work (sharing vector points between
polygons for example)

good luck!
Ewout

p.s. for more answers I think you should check adobeforums.com!!! It
doesn't catch the newsgroup postings!


Lia wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can change some detailed
> ink illustrations to a reasonable vector likeness? I tried
> transforming them in freehand, but wound up with something that only
> mildly resembled the original art. And instead of black ink on white
> paper, it was now all shades of gray...even in places where there were
> no ink strokes.
>
> To redraw them would be a painful endeavor.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>
> Lia