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- [Voiceover] In this movie,

I'll show you how to trace



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a piece of artwork using

nothing but uniform strokes.



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And you can see here that

the effect are pretty great.



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The thing is, it's a

more intensive process



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for Illustrator so it takes more time.



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So this piece of artwork happen

to start as a pencil sketch



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that I did with my youngest son, Sam.



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And then I took it into Photoshop

and firmed up the lines.



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Alright, so here's how it works:



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Step one is to go to the file menu



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and choose the new command, or of course,



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you can press Ctrl+N,

or command+N on the Mac.



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And I once again started

with a basic RGB document



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and I went in, switched the

orientation to portrait,



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and clicked OK.



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Alright, next step is

to go to the file menu,



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and choose the place command



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or press Crt+Shift+P or

Command+Shift+P on a Mac.



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And then, if you're working along with me,



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go ahead and locate that

scanned pencil sketch,



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and click the Place button.



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And then, click inside

the document window,



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don't drag, just click,



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in order to place that

image on the art board.



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Alright, next I'm going to go ahead



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and switch to the art board tool,



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and as you can see here,



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I've switched back to the

single column tool box



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just to take up less room on screen.



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And now, assuming that your

smart guides are turned on,



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go ahead and drag the corners

until they snap into alignment



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with the corner of the artwork



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and then press the Escape key

to exit the art work mode.



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Alright, now I'm going

to go ahead and zoom in



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on my artwork quite a

bit so I can keep track



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of the top portion of this document.



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And I'll go up to the image trace button,



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and simply click on it

to start things off.



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And if you get that warning saying



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there's too much resolution,

just go ahead and click, OK



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in order to ignore that dreadful advice.



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In a few moments later,



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Illustrator will work its

default magic on the image.



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Alright, now what we want to do is



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bring up the Image Trace panel,



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which you can do by clicking on this



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Image Trace icon up here

in the Control panel.



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If necessary, go ahead and

twirl open the Advance Settings,



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like so, and for now, turn

off the preview check box.



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And the reason is,



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I've already explained

how these options work



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and I just want to dial in a bunch of them



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that happen to work well

for this particular image.



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So, I'll start by taking

the threshold value



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all the way up to 230 and that way,



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we're tracing more of the

artwork instead of less.



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And I'll Tab my way

down to the Noise value,



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and take it down to just five pixels.



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Next, you want to turn

off Snap Curves to Lines,



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and turn on Ignore White so

that we're going to end up



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tracing just black and not white.



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And then finally, turn

off the Fills check box,



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and what that's going to do

is force Strokes to turn on.



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You can trace both filled and

stroked paths if you like,



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but that's not really the

effect we're looking for.



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So just go ahead and turn

off the Fills check box.



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And then, click on the Trace button.



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That's an alternative to the

Preview check box by the way.



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An alternative way to

at least invoke a trace.



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And a few moments later, you should see



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a bunch of trace strokes on screen.



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If Illustrator freaks out a

little bit in the mean time,



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don't worry about it.



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It shouldn't crash, it

should hang in there,



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but you never know.



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Again, this is a complex

process for the program.



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Alight, now given the default settings,



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we have a ton of gaps in the illustration



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and that's because of this

Stroke option right here.



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And notice it's telling us

the maximum width and pixels



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that will be recognized and

converted to strokes paths.



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So in other words, the bigger the value,



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the fewer gaps you'll get.



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But you don't want to

take the value too high,



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because that will result in longer delays.



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So what I recommend is you

move in kinda baby steps



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and so what I'm going to do is



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take the Stroke Value up to 20 pixels



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and then press the Enter key

or the Return key on the Mac



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to invoke that change.



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And notice the Preview

check box is back on



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so in a few moments, we should

see a progress bar or two.



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If it just seems like

Illustrator's ignoring you,



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just hang in there and wait a moment



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and notice I never did see a progress bar



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but Illustrator did go ahead

and complete the trace.



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Now what we want to do is check things



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to make sure everything

looks the way it should



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and you should see very few,

if any gaps inside the artwork.



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In particular, this little pocket pen



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should be traced in its entirety.



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And in my case everything

looks pretty darn good.



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Now one of the things about

auto-tracing stroked artwork



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is you cannot control the line weight



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until you expand the path outlines.



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So I'm going to go ahead and

close the image Trace panel



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and I'm going to make

some modifications here



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inside the Layers panel by

clicking on a fly-out menu icon,



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choosing Panel Options,

then selecting Other,



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and changing that value to 70 pixels.



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And then I'll just go ahead

and rename the layer Tracing



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and twirl it open as well.



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Now, we want to keep the

original traced artwork



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we don't want to lose it.



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So what you can do is copy and

paste in front, if you like.



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But my experience is that Illustrator,



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as often as not when you

copy this piece of artwork



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will crash, at least on this machine.



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So, an alternate to using

the Clipboard at all



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is to press the Alt key or

the Option key on the Mac



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and drag this item, like so,

just drag it up a little bit.



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And so that's an Alt+drag

or an Option+drag



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and that'll create a copy of it



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without going to the Clipboard,



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which is a lot easier on Illustrator,



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and possibly easier on

your nerves as well.



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Alright, now I'm going

to turn off the original.



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And then I'll go up the the Control Panel



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and click on the Expand button



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in order to scan this special

object to Static Path Outlines



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and then I'll change the

line wight to 1.2 points



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in order to produce this effect here.



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And if you get a little

warning saying that



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Illustrator can't do it,



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just click OK and it should do it anyway.



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Alright, now we want to simplify the art.



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So go ahead and press Ctrl+H

or Command+H on the Mac



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to hide the anchor points.



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And then go the the Object menu,



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choose Path, and choose Simplify.



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And this one really responds

poorly to the default settings



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This sun is a complete mess

and this moon is a disaster.



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So what I suggest you do



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is once again take this Curve

Position value up to 100%,



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then press the Tab key and notice,



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assuming the preview

check box is turned on,



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that the number of anchor points goes up,



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which is not what we want,



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so go ahead and click in

that Curved Position value



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and press the Down arrow key

in order to reduce the value



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until the artwork starts to change



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more than you're comfortable with,



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which once again happens for me at 97%



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so I'll press the Up arrow key

to take that value up to 98%



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but we're still losing more

than 1000 anchor points



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which is great.



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And then I just experimented

with this Angle Threshold value



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but notice how the moon's hand

changes; his elbow as well.



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When I take that value up to 100 degrees,



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we get a little more bending action.



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And incidental, you can take

this value all the way up



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to 180 degrees if you

like, but to my mind,



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that doesn't create

exactly the right effect.



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So, once again, I'll

take it to 100 degrees



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You can see we're still dropping



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more than 1000 anchor points,



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at which point I'll go ahead and click OK



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to apply that change.



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And that's how you trace

a piece of scanned artwork



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using nothing but Uniform

Strokes, here inside Illustrator.