Converting a bitmap to a vector or, in other words, tracing is one of the basic skills that an illustrator, web designer, flash animator, and any other person in a similar profession should have. The works created in this way, as a rule, lose their original appearance, but leave a lot of room for further manipulation.
Necessary
Adobe illustrator
Instructions
Step 1
Launch Adobe Illustrator and open the desired image. To do this, click the File> Open menu item (or use the Ctrl + O hotkeys), select the desired photo and click Open. The photo will appear in the workspace of the program.
Step 2
Click on the photo to select it. Next, the Control panel (it is located under the main menu) will change its appearance, new buttons, fields and other interface elements will appear on it. One of these buttons is Live Trace, automatic tracing. If you click on it, the automatic raster-to-vector conversion will start according to the default parameters. In the fourth and fifth steps of the instructions, you will learn how to change these parameters.
Step 3
Click on the triangle button to the right of the Live Trace. A drop-down menu will appear where you can select one of the automatic tracing options: Photo (Photo Low Fidelity, Photo High Fidelity), Black And White Logo, Technical Drawing, etc.
Step 4
To customize automatic tracing in more detail, open the Tracing Options menu. This can be done in two ways. First - select the lowest item from the drop-down menu that you opened in the third step of the instruction. Second, click Object> Live Trace> Tracing Options.
Step 5
First, check the box next to Preview. Now any changes you make in the Tracing Options menu will automatically appear in the workspace of the program. In the Mode item, you can configure the tracing mode: Color (color), Grayscale (brightness) and Black and White (black and white). Next - Threshold (threshold), Palette (palette), Max Colors (maximum number of colors), Blur (Blur) and others.
Step 6
To save the result, click the Ctrl + S hotkeys, select the path for the future file, give it a name and format that supports vector graphics (for example, *. AI), and click "Save".
