I guarantee this is a 100 percent pirate-free episode of Martini Hour. Of course, I can’t attest to what this Mayan dude (below) did in his spare time when he isn’t hanging on on the beaches of the Yucatan peninsula. In our final installment of quasi-official Illustrator month, we return to Live Trace but this time, using the color trace settings, which produce some pretty cool and amazing results, whether you use scanned colored art (as in this week’s logo) or a full color photograph.
Here’s what we cover in this week’s episode:
Live Trace, as we’ve now possibly beaten to the ground, allows you to convert your raster-based images into vectors, which means that you can scale your colored images to any size you need, not to mention create a fairly awesome effect.
If you’re tracing a graphic piece of artwork, thinks in big areas of color. Think high contrast. It’s one of the reason portraits are interesting for this process.
The Max Colors sets the number of colors for your trace, adapting the potentially large numbers that exist in your original to the limited number you set. The higher the number the more paths you’re going to see.
The process of making a custom palette of colors (say, from your original) is annoying but often very worth it. Especially in the case of our portrait where we were able to choose the healthy colors from the original skin tones and ask Illustrator to use those colors in its trace conversion.
Note: you can also take a color photograph and turn it to a black and white trace. In fact, here is the photo we mention in the show in its original photographic state, black and white trace, a default-ish color trace, and a color trace with custom palette created from the original colors in the photo. Notice how mu
Give it a try. Listen to this week’s show, then recolor your world. Here’s the regular-quality audio file. You can stream, or for best results, right-click and choose Download or Save. Here’s the high-res version; you’ll want to download rather than stream. And don’t forget our usual plea to subscribe via iTunes.
Cheers to a great month of Illustrator-ization, and here’s looking forward to a return to pirate-free Photoshoppery next week. (OK, I can’t guarantee that the pirates have fully left the building. That’s the way pirates are.)
InDesign
Is there a way to set up InDesign so that when using a two up layout I can type some info in a text box on one side of the layout and have it appear in the same text box on the other side of the layout so I don’t have to type it in twice?
You and Colleen are by far the best!
Thank You,
Rick
It seems like the easiest solution
Would be to create your text on the left page and then duplicate the entire text block onto the right page.
You might also create a master page, define a text variable, or take advantage of one of the other automation features. But if all you’re wanting to do is type the same text onto two pages, I don’t know that those options do much to simply the process.
AI
Loved Illustrator month. I hope AI isn’t abandoned entirely.
very good article you might
very good article you might also create a master page Custom Logo Design, define a text variable, or take advantage of one of the other automation features. But if all you’re wanting to do is type the same text onto two pages landing page design, I don’t know that those options do much to simply the process thanks again.