Adobe Illustrator CS2 ?

[rmgreen]

I am practicing Sam's lettering and monogram (on-demand) systems.

Project: A practice plate of a Buck knife(GRS Pattern 063/R. Smith) full length scale. This pattern has a area in the middle which would be nice to have an initial or monogram.

My logic, which maybe questionable, was to scan this pattern into Adobe Illustrator and apply an initial using the method Sam used on his banjo illustration in the Adobe Illustrator Lettering for "Bending Text".

1st problem - Scan was saved as a JPEG image. When I opened it in Adobe Illustrator it gave me an image that was jagged(rastor) rather than smooth clean lines. I need to save this image is some file extension that saves the image as a vector image with clean sharp lines.

The end result is to have a initial/monogram set up as a laser ink transfer ready to be transferred to practice plate.

This is probably the first of several "problems" I may run into but I hope someone familiar with these programs can help me.

Roger:thinking:

 

[Newton Pens]

place the jpg in illustrator and do a live trace. It might help some - but you're going to have to clean the image up no matter what.
You'll have to find a vector, or make a vector. Learning the pen tool is a good idea. I love illustrator and that little pen tool. I don't know how to use photoshop except to adjust curves and brightness and little things like that, but I LOVE illustrator for it's tracing options.

 

[Phil Coggan]

I think you're scanning at a low size, try it at 600.
Phil

 

[rmgreen]

Newton and Phil,

Using the pen tool works BUT increasing the dpi when scanning is simpler,faster and more accurate. Many thank you's!!!!!

Roger

 

[Neo Dutch]

The only way to get a vector is to draw it yourself using the scan as a guide, or use autotrace and clean it up by hand.

 

[Sam]

I rarely use auto trace, but the few times I did, I found manual tracing with the pen tool to be faster. Having to clean up the mess left by autotrace can be really time consuming. Of course it depends on the complexity of the image being traced.

 

[Newton Pens]

yeah - even a clean black ink line drawing will become messed up in auto trace. That pen tool is good stuffs.

 

[dlilazteca]

I'm not to familiar, Pen toool you mention is for illustrator or Photoshop?

Carlos De La O III

 

[Southtexas]

Carlos, Pen tool would be the vector based drawing tool in Flexi... Like the bezier tool
Cliff

 

[Sam]

I'm referring to Illustrator.

Don't forget that Adobe GIVES AWAYS CS2.

 

[dlilazteca]

Carlos, Pen tool would be the vector based drawing tool in Flexi... Like the bezier tool
Cliff

Hey! A flexi user!

Carlos De La O III

 

[Southtexas]

Former Flexi user... lol
Too rich for my blood on my own. Now I use Corel, Inkscape, Gimp and an old version of Photoshop. But I still remember quite a bit of Flexi.
So many programs, so little time.
Cliff

 

[LVVP]

I prefer Illustrator