- [Voiceover] In this movie we'll take a look
at how you can combine strokes along with colored fills
when tracing our work inside Illustrator.
So here we are looking at a Vector take
on Albrecht Durer's classic 16th century rhinoceros,
which might be better than
the last illustration we looked at.
And so let's see how we can
put something like this together.
I'm gonna create a new document
just by pressing "control n" or "command n" on the Mac.
And I'll once again set the profile to basic RGB,
this time our horizontal orientation is gonna work great.
At which point I'll click okay
in order to create that document.
Then, I'll go on up to the file menu
and choose the place command,
again we have a keyboard shortcut
of "control shift p" or "command shift p" on the Mac.
And I've got this image here called "Grayscale rhino tif"
that I'll just go ahead and double-click
in order to load my cursor and then I'll click
being careful not to drag inside the document window.
Alright, now I want to scale the art board to fit the image.
So I'll select the art board tool,
which I can get by pressing "shift o,"
and I'll go ahead and drag the corners
until they snap into position
with the help of smart guides.
After which point I'll press the escape key
in order to exit the art board mode.
And I'll go to the layers panel,
look in the fly-out menu icon,
choose panel options.
I just can't stand small thumbnails
so I'll select other and change the size to 70 pixels.
And then I'll just go ahead and rename this layer "tracings"
and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac.
Now at this point the image is looking pretty terrible
and that's because we're so far zoomed out from it,
but if you zoom in to 300% or more
it'll start looking a lot better.
Alright, now I'll click the image trace button
and ignore the warning by clicking okay.
In order to give Illustrator a chance
to take a first swing at things.
And then I'll click on the image trace panel icon
to bring up said panel.
Alright, now I happen to know
some settings I want to apply here.
So I'm gonna twirl open the advanced area
and I'm going to turn off the preview for a moment
while I adjust some settings.
I know I want to switch the mode
from black and white to grayscale,
so that we can trace various shades of gray.
At which point Illustrator asks you
how many grays you'd like,
I'm just gonna leave it set to 50,
but you can adjust that value to taste.
I'm gonna take the number of paths up to 100%,
I'm gonna take the corners' value down to 50%,
and I'll take the noise value down to just one.
Then I'll turn on the "ignore white" checkbox
and I'll turn off "snap curves to lines,"
and finally I'll click on the trace button
to see what Illustrator comes up with.
And bear in mind,
this time it's gonna create more path outlines,
but they're gonna be various shades of gray
this time around.
So obviously we have a more complex tracing
then we've seen in the past.
And in my case my screen is turning black,
but once it finishes we can see
these wonderful shades of gray
that Illustrator's come up with.
Alright, now let's add some strokes on top of them.
By first getting the image trace panel
out of the way of the layers panel.
And then I'll twirl open that panel
and grab this guy right there
and alt or option drag him up ever so slightly
to create a duplicate.
Then you wanna make sure that
that top tracing is selected.
Turn off the preview checkbox once again,
switch the mode back to black and white,
because notice that the fills
and strokes check boxes are dimmed
when we're working in either color or grayscale.
So go ahead and switch back to black and white.
I'm gonna set the threshold this time to 150,
the other values are fine as is
except for the fact that I'm gonna turn off fills,
which automatically turns on strokes,
and I'm gonna change the stroke value
right there to 20 pixels.
After which point I'll go ahead
and click the trace button once again
in order to apply my settings.
Now, it's gonna look terrible at first
and that's because you can't adjust the line weight
until you expand the strokes.
So what we're gonna do is select this entire layer
and then bring up the layer's panel's fly-out menu
and choose duplicate tracings
in order to duplicate that layer.
Now what you wanna do is scroll down here
and turn off the top tracing in this blue tracing layer.
And then just go ahead and twirl this layer closed.
And double-click on an empty portion of the top layer,
the one we just duplicated,
and let's change it to "expanded"
and change the color to light red
just so we can tell it apart.
Alright, now with this big stroked object selected,
click on the expand button up here in the control panel.
And then let's take the line weight value
down to just 0.3 points
in order to produce these much more delicate lines here.
Alright, now I wanna colorize the grays a little bit
so I'm gonna hide the image trace panel
and I'm gonna select this lower object right here.
And notice it's appearing blue,
that's just because you have to collapse
and expand this layer once again for it to turn red.
And so with it selected,
go ahead and click on the expand button once again,
in order to expand the trace object to static path outlines.
Alright, now I wanna go ahead
and fuse all these objects together.
And this is a kind of preview of coming attractions
in the very next chapter.
What I want you to do is go up to the window menu
and choose pathfinder to bring up the pathfinder panel.
And then just go ahead and click
on this very first icon in the first row.
What it does is it goes ahead and unites
all of these various path outlines
into one overarching outline,
which is just gonna make things
a little simpler in the long run.
And as you can see,
you're gonna get a progress bar
because we are creating
a fairly extraordinarily complicated document here.
So try to be patient with Illustrator
as it does its best.
Then I'll go ahead and hide the pathfinder panel,
and I'll click on the fill icon up here in the control panel
and I'll change it to this medium shade of blue,
which is "R0G113B188."
And then finally I'll click on the word "Opacity,"
once again up here in the control panel.
And I'm gonna change the blend mode,
which is a topic that we'll be looking at
in a future chapter of this very course,
and I'm gonna change the mode to color
so that we're colorizing the rhinoceros in the background.
And then I'm gonna take the opacity value down to 50%
and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac
to hide that panel.
And finally, I'll go ahead and press
"control shift a" or "command shift a" on the Mac
in order to deselect that artwork.
And I will press the "f" key
a couple of times to switch to the fullscreen mode.
And I'll go ahead and press
"control 0" or "command 0" on the Mac
in order to fit the artwork on screen.
And that folks is at least one way
to combine strokes along with colored fills
when auto-tracing a piece of classic artwork
here inside Illustrator.