Revising Art

Eva4

I've created the raw images of a deck that have been scanned in and traced in Illustrator. However, this has left my images a bit uneven and rough. Can anyone recommend a technique or program that can smooth the edges and darken the lines? I have no experience really with Illustrator or other digital art programs. I'm looking for something that is not so difficult as using the tools, but more like an effect such as the tracing feature in Illustrator. Any offline techniques would also be much appreciated, if this is practical. Thank you!
 

reall

hi! I usually work in Digital from the start and recommend Gimp and Sai just check on tutorials how to do that?:) all best with your project!^^:))
 

Eva4

Thank you for the info and the tip. I will look into them!
 

blue_fusion

You can adjust the brightness and contrast, sharpness, and even despeckle the raw scanned image via Photoshop, and then trace it on Illustrator - this is what I do when I digitize my line drawings. Good luck! Hope you share images of your progress too so we have an even better idea on what tips to give you. :)
 

McFaire

When you do the tracing in Illustrator, if you use the custom settings for the trace, there are options which can smooth. First make the Photoshop adjustments that blue_fusion suggests. You can also reduce the number of colors in Photoshop to increase smoothness.

But really, there is no substitute for learning a few editing techniques in Illustrator to fine tune your traced images.

I'm curious though, why do you need to trace in Illustrator? It sounds like you are not using the features that Illustrator is designed for -- vector editing. To trace, Illustrator converts images from pixel-based to vector-based, so that you can use the vector editing tools on the image. It is this conversion that is causing the unevenness that is giving you trouble.

It might be better to just open the scanned images in Photoshop and experiment with the effects there?
 

Eva4

You can adjust the brightness and contrast, sharpness, and even despeckle the raw scanned image via Photoshop, and then trace it on Illustrator - this is what I do when I digitize my line drawings. Good luck! Hope you share images of your progress too so we have an even better idea on what tips to give you. :)

Thank you, blue. I am going to be switching over to Photoshop!
 

Eva4

When you do the tracing in Illustrator, if you using the custom settings for the trace, there are options which can smooth. First make the Photoshop adjustments that blue_fusion suggests. You can also reduce the number of colors in Photoshop to increase smoothness.

But really, there is no substitute for learning a few editing techniques in Illustrator to fine tune your traced images.

I'm curious though, why do you need to trace in Illustrator? It sounds like you are not using the features that Illustrator is designed for -- vector editing. To trace, Illustrator converts images from pixel-based to vector-based, so that you can use the vector editing tools on the image. It is this conversion that is causing the unevenness that is giving you trouble.

It might be better to just open the scanned images in Photoshop and experiment with the effects there?

Hi, thank you for the great ideas and advice! I've never tried Photoshop before but will this weekend. It sounds like something more simpler to start with. Thank you for the info on Illustrator as well. It really has helped. :)
 

McFaire

Hi, thank you for the great ideas and advice! I've never tried Photoshop before but will this weekend. It sounds like something more simpler to start with. Thank you for the info on Illustrator as well. It really has helped. :)

You're welcome!