Start a new Illustrator document and after placing the duck in this new document (File > Place), a Live Trace button appears in the control palette. Choose a preset from the dropdown Preset menu, which is accessed from the small arrow to the right of the Live Trace button. Try the others to see what happens. I chose Photo Low Fidelity. You can see the difference in the duck, but still it looks like it is one piece. This is because until we click the Expand button to actually convert the trace to vector paths, it's still live and you can make changes that will be automatically updated.
Using the New Live Trace Feature in Illustrator CS2
To use Live Trace, you must place a bitmap in Illustrator using the File > Place command. You can use a bmp, jpg, gif, png, tif, or even a psd file. I'm using something simple to start with, a little fellow I call the Adobe Duck that is found in the Adobe > Photoshop CS2 > Samples folder. The file name is Ducky.tif. This duck is a simple image to use for the Live Trace tool. The background is solid white so he will be easy to isolate. In fact, we can even trace him without removing him from his background.
Prev
- Intro to Live Trace
- What is Live Trace?
- Tracing an Image with Live Trace
- Expanding the Trace
- Using More Complex Settings
- Making the Live Trace Filters's Job Easier
- Tracing the Photo
- Photo-like Vectors
Vector & Bitmap Info
Illustrator Resources
Explore Graphics Software
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