Learn how to convert a raster image into a vector image using Adobe Illustrator's Image Trace tool, and understand the advantages and limitations of this process. The article also provides insight on how to modify a vector image after its creation, illustrating the process with a practical example.
Key Insights
- The article explains the process of converting a raster image, which is comprised of pixels, into a vector image using Adobe Illustrator. This conversion allows for image modification, unlike with raster images.
- Adobe Illustrator's Image Trace tool provides several presets and advanced options to customize the conversion. However, it could produce less clean results when applied to images of lower quality or those with non-distinct lines.
- While the article shows how to manually modify the vector image after conversion, it also indicates that this could be a time-consuming task, particularly for a complicated image.
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In this video, we'll begin our final project. So let's begin by opening up our first file. Go to File > Open, and this time, rather than opening an Illustrator file, we're going to open a JPEG—a raster image—directly within Illustrator.
We'll click Open. If we zoom out, we can see our raster image. A raster image, unlike a vector image, is composed of pixels.
Pixels are the small squares of color that make up our image. In this case, we can see all of the different pixels that form our image. Unfortunately, with a raster image, we can't modify it, and therefore, we'll want to convert it into a vector so we can modify the lines and image.
To convert this raster image into a vector image, we're going to select it and go to Image Trace within our Properties Panel or our Control Panel. Selecting Image Trace, we'll see that our image is automatically transformed into a vector preview. To view the details of this conversion, we can open our Image Trace Panel, where we'll see additional settings.
At the top, we have different presets—everything from Default to Three Colors—and as we go through them, we'll see that each has different attributes. In this case, let's select “Black and White Logo, ” and we’ll see Illustrator working to create the vector image using these settings. From here, we can also modify the view from Tracing Result to Tracing Result with Outlines, which will show us the editable paths.
We can select just Outlines or any of the other view modes. We can also adjust advanced settings by toggling the Advanced drop-down and changing values such as Paths, Corners, or Noise. Additionally, we can select one of two methods—Overlapping Shapes or Cutout Paths—and finally, we can choose to Ignore White.
Ignoring white can be helpful when we have an image on a white background. However, in this case, we actually want to keep our white windows. So let's close the panel and look at the preview of our vector image.
If we zoom in, we'll see that although this has created a vector image, it's not a very clean result. Our windows are sometimes broken, and the distinct lines don't appear very smooth. This illustrates one of the downsides of using Image Trace.
Let's zoom back out. Using Image Trace on a low-quality image doesn't always yield good results. Distinct lines, minimal colors, and high-resolution images usually help to create better vector outcomes.
However, in this case, the image is complex, and not all of the original lines are clearly defined. A higher-resolution image may have produced a cleaner vector. To solidify the trace, we can click Expand, and now we've converted our image into vector paths.
We could go in and modify elements like the windows by double-clicking to isolate them and using the Direct Selection Tool (A) to flatten each window. We’d adjust the handles and reposition points.
However, as we can see, this would take a lot of time to do across the entire image. So instead of continuing with this vector creation, we're going to use the original Illustrator file provided for this course. Let's now close this image file—we don’t need to save it.
In the next video, we'll begin working with our city illustration within Illustrator.
See you there!