Live Trace and Live Paint in Adobe Illustrator CS2

CATEGORIES: Illustrator, Tutorials | Matt Kloskowski | July 24, 2005

The quality of the new features in Illustrator CS2 is significant for just about any illustrator. Among them, the new Live Trace and Live Paint features are probably the most glamorous and useful. In this tutorial, we’re going to see a real-world example of how these features can be used to take an ordinary piece of line art and convert it to vector using Live Trace. Then we’ll use Live Paint to quickly and easily add color. Finally, you’ll learn a few tricks to help export this file to Photoshop for any detail painting.

[If you’d like to download the image used in this tutorial to practice this technique, visit www.layersmagazine.com/magazine-downloads.]

Live Trace

STEP 1 Place Line Art in Illustrator
Create a new RGB document in Illustrator CS2. Choose File>Place and navigate to the file that contains the line art you’d like to trace in Illustrator. This file can be in many formats. For this example, we’ve taken a drawing from Patrick Shettlesworth of www.polykarbon.com. He’s an incredible artist and produces some stunning anime imagery. This was given to us as a GIF image but it could just as easily have been a TIFF or PSD among others. Once you find the file, click the Place button to place this image into Illustrator.

STEP 2 Tracing Options
Click on the small circle to the right of the layer’s name in the Layers palette to target the image. You’ll see the Live Trace button appear in the Control Palette under the menu bar. You’ve got a few options at this point: You could just click the Live Trace button to use the default settings and see what happens, or you could click the down arrow next to the Live Trace button and pick one of the listed presets. You could also create your own custom settings in the Tracing Options dialog (Object>Live Trace>Tracing Options).

STEP 3 Click the Live Trace Button
For the sake of this example, we’re just going to use the default settings. It actually does a great job on this line art drawing. To use the default settings, just click the Live Trace button. In a few seconds’ time, you’ll be left with a vector version of the line art. In fact, the process took less than 3 seconds to trace on my computer and the quality is excellent. Repeat after me please…“Wow!”

STEP 4 Adjust Threshold for More Detail
Adjust the settings in the Control Palette to fine-tune the traced outlines. Adjusting the Threshold or Min Area settings will produce some interesting results. You can also click the Trace Options Dialog icon next to the Presets drop-down list to adjust all of the settings. In this example, we were able to bring out a little more detail in the line art by reducing the Threshold setting to 90.

Live Paint

STEP 1 Convert Object into Live Paint Group
Now that we have our outlines, it’s time to add color. Let’s take a look at another new feature in Illustrator CS2 called Live Paint that will help speed this process along. Live Paint lets us color this artwork intuitively. Instead of selecting each subpath and coloring each small area, Live Paint automatically detects paths and gaps and allows us to fill them accordingly. For this example, we first need to convert our tracing to a Live Paint group. Click the Live Paint button in the Control Palette to convert the artwork into an object that can be used by Live Paint.

STEP 2 Use Live Paint Bucket to Fill Forearm
Select the Live Paint Bucket tool (K) from the Toolbox. Set the Fill color in the Color palette to R: 94, G: 84, and B: 75 and set the Stroke to None. Move your mouse over her left forearm and take note of the outline that appears as you hover over various parts of the traced image. This is a visual cue to inform you that this area is a Live Paint group and will be filled if you click with the Live Paint Bucket tool. Click the mouse to fill the forearm with the current Fill color.

STEP 3 Fill the Face
Next, set the Fill color to R: 253, G: 211, and B: 151. Using the Live Paint Bucket tool, click on the face area to fill it. If you’ve been following along with the settings that we’ve used, you’ll notice a portion of her hair is filled as well. This is because of gaps that exist between the paths created by Live Trace.

STEP 4 Turn on Gap Detection
Fortunately, there are settings to help adjust gaps so we can paint the illustration more accurately—it’s called Gap Detection. To use Gap Detection, click the Gap Options icon next to the Expand button in the Control Palette. In the Gap Options dialog, turn on the Gap Detection checkbox. Then experiment with the Paint Stops At settings by choosing one of the options, clicking OK, and hovering over the illustration to see which areas the Live Paint Bucket tool highlights. In the image we’re using here, the Large Gaps setting worked best.

STEP 5 Finish Coloring; Adjust Gap Options as Needed
Continue painting the rest of the illustration with the Live Paint Bucket tool. See the accompanying image for an idea of what colors we used throughout. Remember, if you’re having a problem painting a specific area, you can always go back into Gap Options and adjust the settings.

Export to PSD

STEP 1 Expand the Live Paint Group
Now that our image is painted you may notice it looks a bit flat. You could add some shadows and highlights right inside Illustrator to give the appearance of depth; however, Photoshop is much better suited for painting this type of detail. But we need to do a few things before exporting this artwork to a PSD file to make it easier to work with in Photoshop. The first step is to expand the Live Paint group so we can have access to each object in this illustration. To do this, click the Expand button in the Control Palette.

STEP 2 Cut and Paste Outlines to Separate Layer
Next, we need to separate the black outlines from the colored portions of this illustration. First, target the Group in the Layers palette and choose Object>Ungroup. Using the Direct Selection tool (A), select an area of the traced outline that is filled with black. Choose Select>Same>Fill Color. This will select all areas that are black (the outlines). Then choose Edit>Cut (Control-X [PC: Command-X]). Lock the layer and create a new layer above it named “Outlines.” Then choose Edit>Paste in Front (Control-F [PC: Command-F]). This will paste the outlines onto their own layer.

STEP 3 Delete White Areas; Release to Layers; Export
Unlock Layer 1, select a white area with the Direct Selection tool, and choose Select>Same>Fill Color. You can delete these white areas since we won’t need them. Now, the original layer should only contain the colored sections. Target Layer 1 and choose Release to Layers (Sequence) from the Layers palette’s flyout menu. Now you can choose File>Export. Select PSD for the Save as Type (Mac: Format) and click OK (Mac: Export). Enter the above settings and click OK. Your file will be exported to Photoshop with each color on its own layer and separated from the black outlines, making it easier to paint.

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