Outline an object

[Ann Thamm]

I want to outline objects. I work with decorative folk art and would like to outline the different geometric shapes and rearrange them into new patterns. I cannot use Streamline by Adobe because I have Millineum and Streamline does not support ME. I was told on the phone that Illustrator 10 will outline an object. The auto trace tool however does not work for me on a raster object. How then does one outline a path around an object? Would Classroom in a Book help me with these different actions? I still do not know how to change a raster to a vector. I have Photoshop 4...could I use that program?
Would I need to upgrade Photoshop to work on this problem? Ann

[Ed A. Ortiz]

I've never used AI 10, but I would imagine the Auto Trace option would work for vector objects only. You're probably going to have to trace the shapes with the pen tool.

>Would Classroom in a Book help me with these different actions?<<

Yes, it would. You can also go to Adobe's Expert Center where there are a bunch of tutorials. You can get an idea of how the AI tools work.

>I still do not know how to change a raster to a vector.<<

You can't. The only way to do this is either with Streamline or trace the shapes with the pen tool.

>I have Photoshop 4...could I use that program?<<

Kinda hard to say without seeing the image. It might be possible. You can't change a raster image into vector objects, but you might be able to select the shapes and turn the selection into paths.

Hope this makes sense.

[Ed A. Ortiz]

Oh yeah, you will have to upgrade to Photoshop 6+ if you go that route.

[Alexander Kogan.]

I would imagine the Auto Trace option would work for vector objects only.

Ann, Ed,

the Autotrace tool works with and is made for working with bitmaps. You have to click with the tool a couple of pixels outside a one-color area on the bitmap. The trace parameters are set in the Type and Autotracing under Edit>Preferences menu.

It works pretty well if the image is clean and color areas are well defined (you may want to posterize the image in Photoshop by going to Image>Adjust>Posterize, it will reduce colors in the image). The only "bad" thing is that you have to trace the color areas one by one.

[matthew hattie]

Auto Trace and I don't get along very well. I'd be inclined to use the wand tool in Photo Shop, make my selection a work path and then copy it to Illustrator. You can end up with a lot of points and a jagged line, but sometimes you can get an acceptable result after simplifying the path... My two cents.

[Dee Bolland]

Auto Trace tool is very cool - but only with well scanned images. It's the same old thing - cr*p in, cr*p out - so if your initial image is low res and badly scanned, poor Illustrator won't have much of a chance working a miracle. I've had to work with textiles in Illustrator before, and part of the fun was rebuilding these complex patterns in Illustrator, then you can REALLY get to grips with rearranging and re-designing patterns. It would be good to see an example of the designs you are attempting to re-work, but trust me on this. Rebuilding artwork is "fun"! Yaaaaaay! :>

[Ann Thamm]

Dee! Could you give me an idea of the process you went through to "rebuild a complex pattern"? For instance did you use the pen tool to draw the outline? I got the auto trace to make some outlines but the outlines would pop off once I tried to work on another area of the pattern...BTW I ordered the Classroom book today and hope to get help from it...The patterns that I am interested in are Swedish folkart, German bauernmaleria, Russian zohostova..all kinds of art that you can create with acrylics and brushes...I guess you could say the patterns are geometric...I have also studied tesselations..interlocking patterns ...I would like to try out my patterns first on the computer and also try different colors in the pattern. Ann

[Eric Purkalitis]

I'm amazed that streamline doesn't work with ME. The interface and install are such dinosaurs, I thought it was probably written for windows 3.1. I'm as surprised it doesn't run on ME as I am it even runs on 2000 or XP.

It sounds like your shopping for something to do this. You might try algolab.com or just search for "raster to vector conversion," there's some shareware out there too.

I'm not a fan of the auto trace tool, for a quick and dirty tool I use Macromedia Flash. Yup, you can covert to raster in there and cut and paste to illustrator.

[Dee Bolland]

Ann - sorry for not replying sooner, I lost track of the thread. I'm sure you'll love Classroom In A Book - has some great chapters on drawing tools. Yes I used the pen tool mostly for creating patterns, and some very complex ones at that. Technique I use mostly is stroked path [no fill]. Draw along the centre of the lines making the pattern. Once drawn, increase the weight of the stroke, then use from menu OBJECT/PATH/OUTLINE STROKE. Then have some fun with the Pathfinder pallette and start joining areas, filling colours and textures. Then you can start repeating with copy/dragging and reflecting etc. I once even recreated a complex tattoo design using this method for a logo. Pathfinder can be real powerful. Would be nice to see some of your work sometime. Hope it all goes well! :)

[Teri Pettit]

Ann and Dee,

This is kind of getting off the topic of raster-to-vector conversion, but for tesselations and textile patterns, you might want to try this trick using the Transform live effect. It lets you interactively experiment with pattern tilings without having to manually do the copy-dragging.

Decide on the size that you want your repetition to be.

Draw one copy of your main design, sort of near the upper left of your page. Group it. (Even if it is just one object.)

Go to Effects>Distort & Transform>Transform, and enter the width of your pattern tile in the Horizontal Move box. Enter at least 2 in the Copies box (I prefer 3.) Press OK.

(Optional: If you want to make a symmetric design, you can insert a Reflect Transform effect before the step where you make the horizontal copies, entering Copies as 1.)

Now bring up the same dialog box from the menu again, and apply another Transform effect, this time with the Vertical Move distance being minus the size of your design, and again entering at least 2 in the Copies box. (Optional: If you want alternating rows to be staggered, like a brick tiling, enter half your horizontal tile size in the Horizontal Move distance in the same transform where you enter the Vertical Move distance, and set Copies to just 1. Then repeat with a second Vertical shift, this time entering the Vertical Move distance as twice the row height, and no horizontal shift.)

You will now have one editable copy of your design, but it will display several copies across and down. Whenever you edit one copy, the others will update automatically.

This method is very convenient for seeing how your pattern will tile before you actually define it. In the "old fashioned" way of designing patterns where the design overlaps the tile edges, you had to manually make sure that you did the exact same edit to each side, generally by deleting the old copy at one side and repeating the shift-drag.

Since the Transform effect puts each successive copy behind the others, if you want the stacking to go the other direction you can instead start with your main design at the right and enter negative horizontal shifts, or at the bottom and enter positive vertical shifts.

At this point you can save your combination of Transforms as a style, by clicking the New Style button in the Styles palette. The Style will apply only the shifted duplications. (Since it has no paint, it will have an invisible thumbnail, so you may want to give it a name like "1 in x 2 in pattern tiling" and display your Styles palette in name view.)

If most of the elements are stacking the way you want, but a few aren't, try dragging those elements from the top to the bottom or from the left to the right, or vice versa. This will keep the same stacking order relative to the objects in the selectable copy, but reverse the stacking order relative to the duplicates that are coming in from the Transform effect.

If you decide you want to alter your tile dimensions, open up the Appearance palette and double-click on the Transform effect, and change the Move distances. (Don't click on the Effect menu again; that adds a new Transform effect, it doesn't alter the options of the existing ones.)

When you've got everything stitching the way you want it to, option-click the Rectangle tool, and make a rectangle the size of the pattern tile. (If you did one of the brick tilings, it will need to be twice the height of a single row to include both the shifted version and an unshifted version.) It doesn't really matter where this rectangle is located, as long as it covers one copy of everything. I usually put it near the center, then drag it around to minimize the number of objects that get cropped by it. Send to Back, and make it no-fill. (You may want to keep a thin stroke on it temporarily, just for visibility.)

Select your grouped design, and do an Expand Appearance. (Before doing this, you may want to make a copy on another layer and lock it, so that you will have the uncropped design available for later editing.)

With either the arrow-plus tool or the lasso tool, marquee-drag or lasso a selection big enough to contain all the objects that extend into the background tile. Select>Inverse, to select everything that doesn't extend into the pattern tile, then Delete.

Now remove the stroke from your background rectangle, if you didn't already. Select the background rectangle and everything in it, and define your pattern.

If you are interested I can email you a .ai file with a sample style already set up for this, applied to a pattern design of overlapping leaves.

[Alexander Kogan.]

Teri,

shouldn't the initial object (after it is grouped) be targeted? If the group wasn't targeted, the effect would be applied to all of the objects in the group rather than to the group itself, wouldn't it?

[Teri Pettit]

Alexander,

Are you still using AI 9? In AI 10, when you do a Group command, the group automatically gets targetted.

[Alexander Kogan.]

Teri,

oops :) Yes, I am. If I even hint my boss about buying something, she'll just laugh at me. As things are in Venezuela, everyone is happy just to have something... :(

I didn't know about this (useful!) feature of AI10. Thanks a lot!

[Ann Thamm]

Thanks for all the help coming from this subject of outlining objects...especially thanks to you Teri for the files. I have my classroom in a book and have to start studying hard! What I was wondering is if I upgraded my Photoshop 4 could I then scan patterns in it and then put the scanned patterns from Photoshop into Illustrator 10 and work them over maybe cutting apart certain elements and then rearranging them into new patterns? Does the scanned picture in Photoshop automatically become a vector artpiece once it is in the Illustrator 10? Ann

[Teri Pettit]

Ann,

No, scanned images do not become vector when you place them into Illustrator. There are some autotracing tools, but they depend on having clean image art with flat color areas, and most people prefer to just draw the paths themselves with the pen tool because it makes much nicer outlines.

If you plan to use Illustrator for vectorizing images, would recommend reading the Help about "template layers" (a better name would be image tracing layers) and "Auto Trace Tool".

Another method which some people use with success is to turn selections into paths in Photoshop, and then export those paths to Illustrator. There are online tutorials describing how to do that. I don't offhand have the URL, but you could google on "Photoshop Illustrator tutorial" and get tutorials that mentioned both products.