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