Tracing a Photo

[Erin S.]

I've been trying to figure out this effect for quite a while:

[url]http://www.freestylermx.net/tutorials/navelements/index.htm[/url]
(halfway down page, blue outlined figure under "Example 2")

The effect is an outline of a figure or object that looks like a drawing with
no fills. This tutorial (at the above link) says, "these figures are really
just traced photos." The thing is, I've tried every possible setting on the
Freehand Trace Utility and I can't get it to look like that. The closest I come
is a rectangle outlining the photo itself, or maybe tracing a color 100px or so
inside on a few areas.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[darrel]

> Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Don't use Freehand. Freehand's trace tool has never really been that great.

Either find an old copy of Adobe Streamline (the best option, IMHO) or use
the trace feature in Flash.

Or trace it by hand.

-Darrel

[Judy Arndt]

The tutorial doesn't say 'auto-traced'. If they were working with actual
photos taken at a martial arts events, then I'm guessing the figures have
been manually traced, using pen tool.

FreeHand's autotrace gives good results on high resolution, high-contrast
images. If each of the images of the figures were a high contrast, sharp
grayscale TIFF of minimum of about 1000 pixels high, then you could expect
good FH auto-trace results for the kind of line art that the tutorial shows.

Often a major photo cleanup job in Photoshop will yield auto-traceable
results. Isolation of subject from background, Levels adjustments, posterize
command, various alternating blurring and sharpening steps will isolate
traceable dark/light areas.

Then comes trial and error with FH's trace tool settings. Tracing photos is
an art, not an automated function.

Judy Arndt


Erin S. wrote:

> I've been trying to figure out this effect for quite a while:
>
> [url]http://www.freestylermx.net/tutorials/navelements/index.htm[/url]
> (halfway down page, blue outlined figure under "Example 2")
>
> The effect is an outline of a figure or object that looks like a drawing with
> no fills. This tutorial (at the above link) says, "these figures are really
> just traced photos." The thing is, I've tried every possible setting on the
> Freehand Trace Utility and I can't get it to look like that. The closest I
> come
> is a rectangle outlining the photo itself, or maybe tracing a color 100px or
> so
> inside on a few areas.
>
> Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
>