- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll show you
how you can get still better results
out of Illustrator's auto-tracing feature,
by first upsampling the image to a higher resolution
inside Photoshop.
So I'm going to start by switching from Illustrator
to Photoshop, and then I'll go up to the image menu
and choose the Image Size command.
Now one of the great things about this dialog box these days
is that it's scalable, so I'm going to make it take up
the entire screen and that way I can see a big preview
of my image as I work on it.
Now, notice over here we're seeing a resolution value
of 300 pixels per inch.
Ideally, if I wanted a higher resolution,
I would have scanned the image at a higher resolution
in the first place.
Unfortunately, the scanner I used, as I was saying,
it's just a consumer-grade office scanner, tops out
at 300 pixels per inch.
You just can't get any more fidelity out of it.
Fortunately, Photoshop CC is very good at upsampling
these days, and so to add pixels to an image,
you turn on the resample checkbox,
go ahead and make sure the setting is automatic,
and then crank the resolution value up
to whatever it is you want,
in my case, I'm going to go up to 600 pixels per inch,
which is going to double the number of pixels horizontally,
as well as double the number of pixels vertically,
so that we have four times as many pixels as we had before.
At which point, I'll go ahead and click the okay button
in order to upsample that image.
Now, it may take a moment in order to apply the change,
after which point, I'll go up to the File menu
and choose the Save As command,
and I ended up saving this file as Upsampled to 600 ppi.jpg
because I'm working with the JPEG format,
and I'll even just go ahead and save over my original image
by clicking on the Save button, followed by Yes.
You always want to make sure your JPEG options
are cranked up to the highest quality, which is 12,
and if you set your format options to Baseline Optimized
you'll generally get a slightly smaller file,
at which point, go ahead and click okay
in order to save that image.
Now I'll return to Illustrator.
To be safe, make sure that nothing is selected on screen,
and then once again go to the File menu
and choose the Place command,
or you've got that keyboard shortcut of control shift P,
or command shift P on the Mac.
Then, I'll go ahead and locate that file I just created
and I'll click on the Place button in order to
load my cursor with the image,
and I'll just go ahead and click,
not drag, with the cursor in order to place the image
at its full size.
And now, I'll just go ahead and drag it into place,
and assuming that your smart guides are turned on,
it should snap into perfect alignment.
Alright now, go ahead and zoom in just a little bit
and I'll return to the Image Trace button
and just go ahead and click on it.
At which point, of course, Illustrator will warn me
that this is gonna take a while to trace,
because after all, I'm working in a higher resolution.
But that's what we want.
You may at this point want to turn on the Don't show again
checkbox so you're not reminded of this bad advice
in the future, after which point, go ahead and click okay
in order to begin the trace.
And it is gonna take a few moments here,
you are gonna see one or two progress bars go by,
after which point, I'll just go ahead and zoom in,
and I'll click off the image to deselect it,
and now let's take a look at the difference
between the higher resolution scan
and the lower res scan.
And it's probably gonna make a little more sense
if I zoom in a little farther.
This is the tracing of the 300 pixel per inch image,
and this is the tracing of the 600 pixel per inch image.
And as you can see, we get more fidelity in this tracing,
we have a lot more lines to work with.
And it's especially noticeable down here
where we've got some words.
This is the 300 pixel per inch version,
versus the 600 pixel per inch version.
And so you can make that kind of difference
just by upsampling the image inside Photoshop
before you trace it in Illustrator, after which point,
I'll go ahead and rename this newest tracing
600 ppi and press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac, to accept that change.
Alright, and just to be safe, I'll go ahead and turn off
the 300 ppi version of the image.
Alright so we are making some very positive modifications
to this tracing, but we can do better still
with the fragile details by adjusting
the threshold setting, as I'll show you in the next movie.