Using the New Live Trace Feature in Illustrator CS2

Tracing is the act of making the image into a collection of vector paths and shapes, rather than pixels. So where does the Live part come in? When you place a bitmap image in Illustrator, the control palette at the top of the work area has a Live Trace button. Clicking this button changes the control palette to Live Trace options. This is like the options bar in Photoshop, and is new to Illustrator CS2. As you make changes in the settings, Illustrator updates the trace. There are different vectorization options that determine how detailed the trace is and if it is color or black and white, and if it is to be color, how many colors should be used. Choose a preset from the Presets menu for automatic tracing. Presets range from a simple black and white to detailed photo high fidelity. The more colors you have the larger the file will be.