If you use the Preview option in the image trace panel window, make a small adjustment only, and then wait before you click again. For instance, if you start with a simple black and white sketch with bold lines, tracing should be straight forward. Once you image trace your artwork, you will no longer have strokes, everything will be shapes.Įasy shapes will make for easy tracing. You need to Embed your image onto the artboard before you can start to image trace. Here are things you need to know about image tracing in Illustrator: But it can be time consuming and CPU heavy to fine tune with the preview setting on. The Image Trace panel (Window > Image Trace) has several options to help you perfect your vector tracing. This tutorial Create a children’s book illustration with DynamicSketch in Adobe Illustrator shows how to use DynamicSketch to sketch and trace your Illustrations.Īdobe Illustrator's image tracing can be a bit hit or miss. Next, use guides to mark out the key areas, then start to redraw using either basic shapes, or with a natural drawing tool like the Pencil tool or DynamicSketch. Reduce the opacity of the image to 50% and lock the layer. Using the Phantasm plugin you can increase the brightness, enhance the contrast, and even desaturate to reduce it to a clear outline.

If you have drawn on paper or on your drawing tablet, then you need to bring that image into Adobe Illustrator.Įmbed the image onto your artboard in its own layer.

There are many methods to bring your sketches or iPad illustrations into Adobe Illustrator in order to vectorise them. This is best practice if you intend to share them or have them printed etc. Vector graphics on the other hand, are paths and shapes that can be easily reshaped and scaled. This means they cannot be scaled without distorting, as they are basically colored pixel squares. Why do you need to convert illustrations into vectors? Some drawing tablets and apps produce your final artwork as raster graphics, also called bitmap graphics.

Vector on procreate