Auto tracing raster linework in photoshop

[Phosphor]

And it's a rare instance that using ANY Auto-Trace feature in ANY application produces satisfactory results.

[BLUDVLZ]

Not in Photoshop... at least not one that will retain color information. The product you're looking is called Adobe Streamline.

[Matt Genevieve]

Does anyone know of a way to auto trace linework in photoshop from a raster image (tif) that will create vectorised lines as opposed to vector shapes. I know it can be done in Freehand and Illustrator but the results are not that satisfactory.

[Mathias Vejerslev]

Actually tracing in Photoshop can yield pretty good results. I recently made an action based on Pierre愀 conversion technique (published in upcoming Computer Arts mag).

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Make sure you扉e got a suitable high resolution.

Add a top threshold Adjustment Layer, and set threshold to make sure the file is monochrome.

Ctrl-click RGB channel, then go Select>Inverse.

Go to Paths palette and click the Make Workpath from Selection icon.

Name the path.

Export to .AI format from File>Export.

I recommend cleaning up nodepoints in Illustrator via Object>Path>Simplify.

You can also make a Custom Shape.

Ofcourse this is all monochrome - you need to colorize later if needed.

This method works damn well with pencil sketches too.

Mathias

[pierre courtejoie]

Indeed, Photoshop has more resources than one think...

another solution (for the cleaning of Paths) is to simplify the image in PS, using Gaussian Blur, for instance.

The full technique is visible in the current issue (83) of Computer Arts (and I'm not paid by issue sold, so I hope that I don't breach any forum rule...)