Friday Fundamentals: Tracing Rasterized Line Art in Illustrator

Martini Hour 089, in Which Deke Gets to Legitimately Use the Word Palette Again

Expanding and Separating Artwork

In this preview of "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced," Deke shows you how to make an authentic pirate flag. Today, Deke uses Illustrator to expand, separate, and prepare a piece of artwork for output to any medium.

Live Trace and Resolution

In this preview of "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced," Deke shows you how to make an authentic pirate flag. Today, Deke prepares the base artwork for tracing in Photoshop and auto-traces it in Illustrator.

All Pirate Flag Files and Art

Adding Contrast and Color

In this preview of "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced," Deke shows you how to make an authentic pirate flag. Today, Deke uses Photoshop to distill the base art into three colors: rich black, blood red, and page white.

Editing Scanned Line Art

In this preview of "Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced," Deke shows you how to make an authentic pirate flag. Today, Deke uses Photoshop to adjust, distort, and otherwise refine an ink drawing into a work of perfection.

Sketching the Pirate Flag

In this exclusive preview of his upcoming Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced video course, Deke shares six phases in the creation of an authentic five-by-three-foot pirate flag.

Martini Hour 087, In Which You Wonder Where the Heck We've Been

Martini Hour 086, In Which We Vectorize Our Rasters