Actions do not record Live Trace

[t3rman]

Okay heres the problem.

I have about 100 pngs (500 x 500) of a line drawing a skyline. I want to vectorise all of these in a batch action. I have tried to do an action to reduce the artboard to 500 x 500 which it ignores, do a live trace, which it ignores, save as and close which it does. I am performing these actions on a png if that makes a difference.

Two Questions:

1. Does anyone know why it is not recording the live trace and canvas size change.

2. Is there anyother way of creating this effect with an output of vector.

I am using after effects but now need to vectorise and then import into flash, if anyone knows of a better way of doing it then i would love to know.

An example of the effect can be seen here, http://www.fakepilot.com/work/tahiti/ This guys stuff is absolutely wicked.

Cheers

Michael

[kazbear]

Well, though Illustrator will not allow you to set that in an action, you can have the Document Setup Pallete come up by using the "Insert Menu Item..." option on the action FLy-out menu. This may also be the only way to add Live Trace as well... during recording, try choosing "Insert Menu Item..." from the fly out menu on the Action Palette. Then you can pull down from Object>Live Trace>Make. That will put itself into the action. You will have to make your changes to the Live Trace options first, then save that as the default in order for the action to apply your specific Live trace settings...

-kaz

[t3rman]

Cheers mate.

That worked, is their a similar thing that i can do in order to resize it as well as that does not seem to be working as well??? Just a quick point, i did not have to do it from the fly out menu. I just went straight to the Object menu on the main menu. All i need to do now is to put it into a batch and I am away. I am pretty sure you can do that but if you could point me in the right direction i would appreciate it.

Thanks though, really appreciate the help so far :)

Michael

[kazbear]

Ok, I see. Cool, I just assumed...

I still don't see how you can do the resize though (You mean the Document Setup to change to 500x500 artboard?).

But it may not matter. Not sure about your application but if you save it out as an EPS file, then it will crop to the bounds of the art - the Artboard is not a factor.

However, do you mean scaling the object? This worked for me, either double clicking on the scale tool, or pulling down from Object>Transofrm>Scale...

The first couple times, it did not put itself in the action, but I clicked on a few things, tried Rotate to make sure that would work and now it seems to work ok. Not sure whats going on there.

And finally, if you are asking about batch (Not sure if you were, but here you go) then its located in the Fly-out menu. Just choose the action and the folder...

Please clarify if I have misunderstood anything.