Day 10 of 365 Photo Challenge

Before you begin, you will need to be familiar with Adobe Illustrator. You will need a scanner or a camera, doesn’t have to be professional, a phone camera is fine. A traceable drawing or sketch and a computer or laptop.

Step 1: 

You must draw or sketch the image. This can be done with your preferred method. Once you have completed the image, proceed to step 2. We chose this image of rattle snake drawn by a 6 y/o artist. The idea is for him to be able to create his own coloring book. Be sure to use an image that is easy to outline.

Step 2: 

Trace the image with a black marker. Make sure there aren’t any gaps in the drawing because it can cause more work and the final image would look very sloppy and unprofessional. It will make step 3 very difficult. After this, you can scan the image or take a photograph and upload it to your computer or laptop. Be sure to use the highest quality  and resolution your electronic devices can provide. After the transfer, digitizing the image in Adobe Illustrator is fairly simple, providing that there are no gaps in the trace. Also, it is very important to remember where the file is stored so you can locate and open it in Adobe Illustrator.

Step 3: 

This step is pretty simple…Open Adobe Illustrator and locate the image you want to digitize. Be sure the artboard is larger than your image. Using the selection tool, highlight the layer that contains your image. This should toggle the top menu revealing the option to use the “Image Tracing” tool. Basically, what tracing the image in Illustrator takes the bitmap image and makes vector paths to create the clean and crisp look that we see in all print media. At this point, you can print it out and colorize it manually, or if you are familiar with Illustrator, you can color the image using the “Live Paint” tool.

I encourage everyone to play around with the settings and tracing options until you get the art expression that you are looking for. We added another example of a digitized image and will continue to add them here as time passes.

Example: Trace Wolf

Example: Vector Wolf

Please feel free to ask MSPLens question about this post or any of our post, we love to help and share our knowledge with our readers. 

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