best way to scan and save line art?
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- walker
** ok, newbie questions, you've been warned!
i'm wondering what the best and most time-effective method would be to scan and process a ton of black&white line art and low-res photo-copied images for use in Illustrator or InDesign as vectors?
I have a pretty cheap scanner - but all I need is to scan the images and somehow convert them into usable EPS or .ai file that I can save as a small library.
Do I use LiveTrace? Threshold? what's the best "accepted" way of doing this?
Would love to get some opinions from the pro's beofre I waste hours of my time doing it the wrong way.
PS: Most of the images that I need to extract are old traditional symobols, oriental rubbings, antique line-art and william morris-type floral designs... they are rough images.
- tparsons0
You answered your own question. Use Live Trace in illy.
- ********0
don't know if this is the best way, but you could use the inverse of the image as an alpha channel in PS, select it and convert selection to paths, .5 pixel tolerance, save path to Illy
- Dancer0
rand is long winded and old school. That will make for massive file sizes.
Get with the program jeez
- Dancer0
Oh sorry, what I would do, scan in B&W bump up the contrast/brightness so the black is black and the white is white, bring into Illy and live trace (line art)
- walker0
this is helpful...
so LivetTrace would be the accepted method. and save as .ai?
any hints on scan res or settings for low-fi images destined for LiveTrace?
- tparsons0
Walker..... you should really start testing it out yourself and figure out what works best. What better way to learn.
Have fun with it, you might discover something new.
- walker0
point taken - tparsons...
but I have 768 pieces of art to scan and process into vectors... and I wanted to just get it right the first time instead of figuring out I was doing it the wrong way after doing 250 of them. But point taken.
- grafiske0
Parsons! SERIOUSLY? You learn as you go?
That is incredible, have you brought this idea up to schools or universities? $$ Bling bling my friend.