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- [Voiceover] In this movie,

I'll show you how to auto-trace



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an image inside Illustrator.



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And I'll also show you

the effects of resolution



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on the quality of the results.



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And the very short story there

is more resolution is better.



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So the first thing I'm gonna

do is click on my image



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with the black arrow tool

in order to select it.



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Notice we can see the resolution up here



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in the control panel.



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Ppi stands for pixels per inch.



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300 tells us that we

have 300 pixels per inch,



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both horizontally, as well as vertically.



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Which means 90,000 pixels per square inch.



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Which is your typical professional

quality print resolution.



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Alright, I'm gonna need a copy of this guy



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for demonstration purposes,



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so I'll go up to the edit menu

and choose the copy command,



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or of course, you can press control + c



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or command + c on a Mac.



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Next, notice this image

trace button right there.



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If you click on the down-pointing

arrow head next to it,



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you'll see a menu of presets.



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If you're tracing a

photograph and you want color,



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then you can try out one

of these first two guys.



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The next ones trace

low-color images including



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just shades of gray.



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If you drop down to line

art and technical drawing,



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which would seem like the

best settings, just know that



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they trace stroked outlines.



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Which may turn out to be what

you want, and I am going to



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include a movie about

that inside this chapter,



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but they're very slow.



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For this kind of artwork,

you want one of the



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black and white options, which will trace



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filled path outlines, and so you could try



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black and white logo,

sketched art, or silhouettes.



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Or better still, just go

ahead and click on the



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image trace button and let

Illustrator do it's thing.



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Now, at this point it's

going to warn you that



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it's going to take a moment

or two to trace the artwork.



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And that's because we have

a large image, meaning that



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it contains a lot of pixels.



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If you want to reduce the image

size, you can rasterize it



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to a lower resolution

using the rasterize command



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under the object menu.



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I'll show you what that

looks like in just a moment,



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but this is terrible advice

as you're about to see.



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So I'm just going to go

ahead and click okay in order



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to trace the artwork.



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It is going to take a

moment, and you may see



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a few progress bars, after

which point you'll see



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the traced version of the artwork.



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Which isn't gonna look nun

too good at this point.



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We're gonna make it look

much better in future movies.



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But let's see how that compares

to tracing a low resolution



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version of the image as

Illustrator just recommended.



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I'll go ahead and press control

+ f, or command + f on a Mac



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in order to paste a copy of

the original pixel-based image.



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And then I'm gonna twirl

open this tracing layer here



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inside the layers panel, and

I'm gonna rename this guy,



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the new one, 72 ppi.



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And then, to lower the

resolution of the artwork,



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I'll go up to the object menu



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and choose the rasterize command.



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And I'll leave the color model set to RGB.



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And I'll set the resolution

to screen, 72 ppi.



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The other settings really

don't matter for our purpose.



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So I'll go ahead and click

okay in order to reduce



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the resolution of that image.



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And you can see the difference.



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This is the before version,

which is pretty sharp,



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and this is the after version,

which is pretty darn choppy.



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Alright, let's see what

kind of difference that



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makes for image tracing.



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I'll once again go up to

the image trace button



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and just click on it.



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Notice this time

Illustrator doesn't complain



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and it's lickety-split fast,



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but it looks absolutely terrible.



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So this is the 300 ppi

resolution version of the image.



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And this is the 72 ppi.



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And so the moral of the story is



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you always want more pixels, not fewer.



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It is going to take Illustrator

a little additional time



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in order to perform the

trace, but it's gonna give you



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better results as well.



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And notice now by the way,

that Illustrator has gone ahead



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and renamed these objects image tracing.



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I want to remember their

original resolution,



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so I'm gonna change the

bottom one to 300 ppi,



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and I'm gonna rename the top guy 72 ppi.



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And then I'm gonna change

their order as well



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so the better tracing is on top.



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And that's how you perform

a first-pass auto tracing,



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preferably on a high resolution image



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here inside Illustrator.