cool new feature in illustrator CS2

[Ricoool]

The featur is called Live Trace and can convert images/scans into vector shapes, kind of the same feature you have in Flash but with more options/controle.

This feature can be very CPU and RAM heavy.

1. Place an image in illustrator
2. With the image active, click the little arrow next to the button "Live trace" in the top bar and select one of the of the presets or select vectorsettings and play around.
3. images is convertet into vector shapes

[Ricoool]

Here I have traced the same image 2 times with different, bottom image traced with 8 colors settings, top image with photrealistic setting and removed the background.

Image is huge 3000x3000 px, so you can see the effect

[Atom]

Nice!

I don't have CS2. Maybe someday.

So, it makes a vector image from a bitmap image?

[Ricoool]

yes and you can controle a lot of settings when doing it.

here is a combo, a live trace in illustrator and then in photoshop I masked out the car on top of the live trace image

[Atom]

Wow, very nice.

[Kalina]

I love vector art and that's very handy how it can be done in Illustrator, makes me more driven to learn Illustrator now. Thanks for sharing, Ricoool.

[John Scott]

Looks cool. Didn't know what that was called - vector art, eh?

[Kalina]

I've done vector art manually and it takes a long time.

[JuggoPop]

ok... time to upgrade. nice find there.