Using Live Trace for Auto & Hand-Tracing

CATEGORIES: Illustrator, Tutorials | Sharon Steuer | February 14, 2006

Use the same image as a foundation for both a background created using Live Trace and a handtraced foreground.

Scott Crouse drew this portrait of George Jenkins, the founder of Publix Markets, as part of a series of exterior murals for the Publix grocery store chain. To communicate the warm, friendly personality of “Mr. George,” Crouse applied his personal illustration style as he handtraced the portrait from a photograph. The background image did not need to be as distinctive, so Crouse saved time by using the Live Trace feature to create it from the same photograph. For easier hand-tracing, Crouse simplifies images by limiting tonal levels and removing distracting stray bits; in many cases Live Trace can replace Photoshop for this preparatory task.

Original Photo

Step 2

STEP 1: Preparing the document

Crouse chose Select All Unused from the Swatches palette menu, and then he clicked the trash can icon in the Swatches palette to delete the selected swatches. Removing all unused swatches from the document made it easier to see the swatches that will be created later by Live Trace. Crouse chose File > Place to select the original photograph of Mr. George and add the photo to the page.

Step 3

STEP 2: Copying the image layer

To separate the foreground and background images, you can duplicate them while keeping them aligned. Drag the original layer (not just the image) to the New Layer icon in the Layers palette, then double-click the name to rename it. To prevent changes to layers other than the one you’re editing, click the lock column to lock any layers not in use. The background is edited in the next step, so lock the foreground layer at this time.

Step 4

STEP 3: Tracing the background.

Crouse selected the photo and chose Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options. You can produce results similar to Crouse’s by applying settings like these: For Mode, choose Grayscale; for Max Colors, enter 3 (some images need more levels); and select Output to Swatches. Leave other options at their default settings. Click Trace to commit the settings. The tracing is live, so you can change the settings at any time by choosing Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options.

Step 5

STEP 4: Adjusting the background graphic’s colors

To keep the viewer’s focus on the subject, Crouse gave the background a light, low-contrast appearance. Selecting Output to Swatches in Step 3 added colors to the Swatches palette as global swatches applied to the Live Trace object. This is valuable because editing a global swatch updates all of its applied instances. To edit any of the new global swatches created by Live Trace, double-click them. In this case, the gray tones were changed to colors and lightened overall.

Step 6

STEP 5: Simplifying the foreground copy for hand-tracing

In the Layers palette, lock the background layer and unlock the foreground. Select the foreground image and click the Tracing Options button on the Control Palette to edit the Live Trace settings for the selected image. Here, Max Colors was changed to 7, Blur to 1 px, Resample to 150 dpi, Path Fitting to 1 px, and Minimum Area to 10 px. The optimal values depend on the resolution of the image, so try different settings until you see what you want.

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