Topic: How do I create vector art?

[DammitDan]

Well I managed to design a pretty neat logo for the cafe racer, but unfortunately the decal printer requires a vector art file.  I don't have any experience doing this, and I'm not sure how to transfer the image from a tiff, jpg or psd format (the formats I've got it saved as of this moment).

How would I go about making the image into vector art?  I've already got the Adobe CS3 suite (which is what I used to create the file).

[gerhed]

I'm pretty sure a bitmap is vector.
It's a conversion option in Photoshop.

[DammitDan]

I think I may have figured it out...

I didn't realize that you could import an image into Illustrator and have it trace it for you.  I think I solved the problem (although it looks a bit more cartoonish now  )

[seaweb11]

(although it looks a bit more cartoonish now  )

well it is a Yamaha

sorry, had to be said.

[DammitDan]

    

Here's the post-vector-art-imization (and unfotunately re-converted to .jpg, but it's a higher DPI image)



I think it turned out good!  And it'll look "smashing" on my little black and blue cafe 

[Sam Green Racing]

Are you not going to show us the cartoon version Danny.

Sam.

[DammitDan]

That was the cartoony version 

It just rounded the edges a bit more than I liked, but I can deal with it.

[Buber]

Hold on your horses. Actually Corel has much better tracing possibilities. Especially PhotoPaint. Just download yourself trial version and try it! And whetever you are converting, try different options - there usually are, pertaining to sensibility of the tracing, curving, etc. You can get really good results.
MAYBE IF I will find some spare time over the weekend I can do it for you, but can't promise.. Weahter's fantastic here 

[SD750F]

A really good reproduction house that will print your decal should have Adobe Illustrator. With Illustrator you can convert all bit map monochromatic images to a vector. Then you can re-apply the colors and shades you desire. But you will have to redo your bitmap image by dropping the fill color because it sill interfere with the translation.

Scott

[DammitDan]

Well I sent the image to the printing house and they said it's too messy to work with.

Guess I get to spend another 5 hours tracing again.  Whoopee!

[dustyc]

I feel your pain.  I made this up in my vector program.  If you'd like it, PM me with your email address.

[dustyc]

A little fatter

[DammitDan]

Wow...  That looks great Dusty!  And it didn't take you 3 days like it took me! 

I guess that's the benefit of actually knowing what the hell you're doing 

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to help me out.  I actually just finished doing a re-trace of the original sketch, which hopefully they'll accept this time.  I'll let you all know.




I think it's pretty close to the look I was going for to begin with...

[dustyc]

I sent them to the email address in your profile.  I sent the tall version and the fat version both in one file, and sent the file as Adobe Illustrator 6 (an older version for compatibility) and .eps in case you can't open the Illustrator file.

It's all about practice and having the tools.  I've got about 15 years under my belt.  The software I use is Flexi and I like it better than Illustrator and CorelDraw.   

[dustyc]

Oh, yours looks great by the way. 

It's actually a real pain to trace stuff(I'm sure you know now) .  Even when you use an autotrace, you usually have a bunch of cleanup to do.  What I did was took the triumph logo I have in vector format and chopped it up and rearranged things(flipped over the U's and chopped the horizontal stroke from the H and put it in there, then chopped the U in half and copied the fat leg over the skinny leg, chopped up the T and turned it into a Y, the thing that took the longest was smoothing out the swoop at the end where the H used to be), put on the outlines, then cleaned up any overlaps.

[DammitDan]

I did much the same as you did, Dusty.  However, I did all the editing in a sketch by hand first by tracing out the shapes of the original logo.  Then I scanned that into the computer.

Ah the fun of creating something (almost) from scratch.  Now I just hope the printing house doesn't take my idea and run with it.  Copyright infringement is the suxorz!