transforming hand-drawn illustration to vector path??

oblio · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 1

Hi - I was working for a design studio on ad-hoc, and one of the graphic artists showed me how he scanned hand drawn designs, converted them in photoshop to vector paths (without manually tracing over the image) and then imported those paths into illustrator. It was a long time ago and I've forgotten the ropes.

Can anybody shed some light? Would be truly appreciated!!

Thanks,

Dan

dirtyface · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 22 Location: Sheffield UK

Yes mate I've done this before. Its not the best way really cos you have to use a trace function and depending on which one you use can really change the results. I recently bought a copy of streamline, an old bit of kit that was meant to be combined with illustrator cs. It works for what your wanting but if you buy an intel mac (like me) it wont work!! Illustrator cs2 does have a trace function that was meant to be a merge of streamlin but I aint used it so cant comment.

By the by the use of photoshop for this technique is simply to clean up your scan, i.e take out the paper imperfections so the trace can run smoothly.

Hope that helps