The Best Way to Vectorize Your Detailed Photoshop Art
Vložit
- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- As an illustrator who works in Photoshop, I still have to provide vector files to my clients sometimes, such as with T-shirt graphics. The problem is that my style has a lot of subtle textures and details. I've had very little success using the Image Trace function in Adobe Illustrator - it always takes away too much detail and renders the artwork unusable. Luckily, I've found another way to create perfect vector files that preserve my analogue textures and details that result in perfect prints. In this video, I share how I use Photoshop itself to vectorize my artwork and export it to an Adobe Illustrator (EPS or AI) file.
TIME STAMPS
0:00 - INTRO
1:42 - Why not use Image Trace in Illustrator?
3:07 - Step 1: Save a copy of the file
3:24 - Step 2: Save all layers as Smart Object
3:46 - Step 3: Create a Threshold Adjustment Layer
4:01 - Step 4: Apply Gaussian Blur to Smart Object
4:44 - Step 5: Refine Threshold Adjustment (if necessary)
5:20 - Step 6: Copy All Artwork to the Clipboard
5:35 - Step 7: Create a New Alpha Channel
5:46 - Step 8: Paste to Alpha Channel
5:54 - Step 9: Invert the Alpha Channel
6:03 - Step 10: CMD + Click to Load Selection from Alpha Channel
6:34 - Step 11: Create Paths from the Selection
6:52 - Optional: Rename the Path
7:06 - Step 12 : Export Paths to Illustrator
7:38 - Step 13: (Now in Illustrator) Apply a Colour to the Paths
7:56 - Final Step: Use Exclude in Pathfinder Tool to Separate Negative and Positive Shapes
FIND ME ELSEWHERE
Illustration - www.tomfroese.com
Skillshare Classes - www.tomfroese.com/teaching
1 on 1 Illustration Coaching - www.tomfroese.com/coaching
Thoughts on Illustration Podcast - www.tomfroese.com/podcast
Patreon - / tomfroese
Substack - mrtomfroese.substack.com
Instagram - / mrtomfroese - Jak na to + styl
Thank you for watching! Take my full illustration classes on Skillshare - Get 30 Days Free when you Use My Links. www.tomfroese.com/teaching
Just wow dude. How did you even begin to figure this out? Twenty plus years working with PS and AI and you just blew my mind.
I agree. Illustrator is my money maker. Photoshop is just a needed tool. I'm always bitching to Adobe to combine Illustrator and Photoshop into one program to do exactly this.
Wow, the only person on the internet that shows every single step, and doesn't assume that people know where the various windows are or even why things are called certain names too.
THANKS!!!
Here for you!
This technique is about 20 years old. Nice to see someone going through the old magazines and making tutorials about some of those "Oldies but Goodies".
FYI: I think Deke McClelland was the first to do this. His Mad Scientist experiments were always great and still are.
more like 25 years old and Deke definitely wasn't the first.
@@earthoit was in the ye olde instruction manual that shipped with p shop
@@eartho you‘re right. Time sure does fly. Because I remember it was in the handbook too.. remember the days when we read the handbooks?! It was the only way to learn the software, and maybe an article in How or Macworld magazine.
@@yeknommonkey Is that right??? This was actually in a Photoshop instruction manual? It's interesting because it says something about how Adobe thought people were using the software in those days.
Well they did build that "selection to paths" function in there for some reason, right? They must have had this in mind.
That took a Sherlock Holmes level of genius to solve a problem and make it simpler to use.
Thank you for sharing your excellent solution.
👍🏼
Elementary, my dear Watson! :)
it's a technique we've been using since the 90s...
@@eartho That actually makes sense. LiveTrace came in the 2010s, and I remember using clipping paths Photoshop 4 or something around that version. I didn't know it was that easy to convert selections to paths in the 90s though. My earliest experience using PS was on a monochrome Mac with maybe the original PS on it.
@@TomFroese yeah, Selection to Paths has been around since some of the earliest versions of Ps. I remember using it frequently in my prepress days iin the early to mid 90s.
@@eartho @eartho We never stop learning and it is good that Tom has taken the effort to remind and tell people who have never seen this technique that this is an option.
I am incredibly grateful for this tutorial, the last few months I have worked on my works with photoshop and fresco, which allows me to have my lines vectorized and with a very good resolution, however I have older art that is great and I want to use it for merchandise and I have been looking for a long time for something that would help me vectorize without having to do them from the beginning again, the image tracing of course did not help me at all, since I lost a lot of details and it was frustrating since my works in general contain many details, this has been the tutorial that definitely gave me a solution, I have tried it and it was simply incredible and the details are still there, I am very grateful! 🦄
I love this! It preserves hand drawn looks better than any other method. Thank you!
You are so welcome!
This is a fantastic approach! I’ve been struggling with this for years!!
This is simply amazing! Thank you so much for sharing!
¡¡¡¡This is gold !!!!
This technique is a step above the technique you taught in your courses at Skillshare. It's very kind of you to release it for everyone. God bless you Mr. Tom!
Thanks! This is different from my skillshare classes but uses similar techniques. The difference is that the goal is vector output in this video.
You just expanded my brain sir! I knew all these tools but would never think to use them that way it's so genius, thank you so much!
Thank you! Glad it helped!
This is also going to be a huge time saver (and a quality booster) for my motion design! I spend so much time prepping elements for animation in illustrator. Thanks so much!
Excellent!
Brilliant - I had never thought to use this approach. Thanks for your generosity!
You're very welcome!
Good workflow! Never had to use threshold before, but will deffo use it now
Omg, thank you so much for sharing this invaluable information!
This is super helpful! Thanks for sharing!
stunning flow, thank you so much
What a fantastic tutorial. Love it
holy wow. this opens up so many possibilities. tysm
Love this! Been wkg both PS and Ai over 17yrs and I never knew this! Ha! I stick to illustrator mainly but am so excited to switch to this method! Thank you!
That's a nice approach 👌🏻 Thanks.
Wow, an amazing alternative to Potrace! Thank you! 🙏🏻
Fantastic method!!! I'll try it in a while!
Lo mejor que pude haber aprendido este año
This is fantastic, both is content and presentation, thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is so helpful, thank you!
So helpful! Thank you
Thanks so much! This is really useful to know
Thank you for sharing the technique
That is awesome. Thanks for this tutorial!
Glad it was helpful!
Great video! Really informative and helpful. I’ve had to wrestle with image trace for years now but l I’ll have to try this next time.
Instant sub.. bro this is nuts! I never though of using this method. Image trace is unreliable and I end up reworking it all by hand. This is has so many use cases, much appreciated!
Thanks so much for the sub! Any other questions send em my way.
Wow what a great tip! Thanks 🙏🏼
You're so welcome!
Such a long laborious process for something that CorelDraw does in a few clicks. That said, still very helpful for PS users. Thank you!
This is brilliant. Thank you!
Glad it helped!
Great tutorial. Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Great video! Having worked in Photoshop and Illustrator for 30 years, I have preferred Photoshop's "simple afterthought" path tools to Illustrator's dedicated ones. This tutorial is further evidence.
Glad it was helpful!
INCREDIBLE! MORE PLEASE!
OK!
This is a great technique, I would say that I've seen it before but your explanation is easier to follow. However, as a screen printer myself, I couldn't see why your print shop would ask for a vector even though your Image is 600 dpi and bigger than the final print. As far as I know, that is more than enough to print your shirt, furthermore, the printing process is already lossy, so giving them a lower fidelity artwork sound counterintuitive. Vector artwork is mandatory for stationary print, but the mesh on the screen is also finer than on meshes for garment. In the end, you're saying that the 600dpi (possibly more since you said your artwork is larger than the final print) is not enough for your print shop, that uses a process that is inheritable lossy (we are talking about max 200tpi - threads per inch) and is physically impossible to produce a higher fidelity final print. I think they might prefer a vector, but they're perfectly capable of dealing with 600dpi bitmaps.
Thank you! Two points here: first, I agree, vectors are totally unnecessary. I work with letterpress and silkscreen often and prefer to send colour separations as bitmap files. But I have found there’s no convincing some suppliers about this, and they will refuse to accept anything but vector. Second, the 600dpi in my file is more about having enough resolution for the smallest details in my artwork to come through in the vector, less about retaining fidelity in the final print. But it would be interesting to compare output of 300dpi and 600dpi versions with this process.
@@TomFroese The only reason for the supplier to refuse (that I can think of) - file size on vector files should be lighter in general.
Mr. Tom - You're amazing. Thank you.
Sincerely, Mike
Thank you for sharing!
My pleasure!
Really cool!
LEGENDARY!!
Really helpful
I don't have illustrator. There are several very good vector AI tools on the web. I also love a program called Vector Magic.
Are they free? Or do you pay a sub? Curious how they might compare.
@@TomFroese thank your for sharing this tip. I have both, Illustrator and Vector Magic. Using this technique I could get better results than both of them.
You are my new god! #Amazing trick! Thank you!!❤
This is brilliant! Makes total sense on how you did it too. I could have used this 100 times. Now I can. Haha Thanks for sharing.
Happy to help! I wish I knew this years ago myself.
Thank you SO much for this Tom!
Hope it helps!
OMG!! You're a genius! This is soooo much better than image trace ❤❤❤ Thanks for sharing!!
Thank you! It took me a long time to figure this out!
Awesome tip
Well done !
🤯 thank you sooo much!!
You're welcome!
That's pretty cool bro!, never knew that functionality! Especially the last littlebit "pathfinder - exclude"
very helpful thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Cool, good tip. Select to path for the win
That's the idea in a nutshell!
Image vectorization sometimes requires an old-fashioned way, like video. Thank you.
Great tip! I always wondered why Adobe never updated the Trace Image function, it must be ancient by now...
Good question!
Amazing
Great Job!
Thanks!
Bravo! I would have never guessed that the PSD make maths would retain that level of fidelity. PSD file size (pixels) is critical for sure. But one must ask, "Why can't Illustrator autotrace do this?!"
A very good question!
Thank you
Many steps, but could be useful one day. Thanks! :)
Feels like just a few steps to me after years of trying to figure this technique out 😂
Amazing how tools we all know can do a lot more then we are aware of
I knew it was possible cause I saw someone getting a vector so clean from an ink drawing they scanned like 20 min before and it wasn't on that awful trace look but I never figured that out. Thank you so so so much
You are insane and I love you! This is amazing!
Haha, feeling the love!
Nice. Thank You.
Thank you too!
I've seen far more complex videos demonstrating how to do this. Well done simplifying this process. Less steps is better :)
That makes me happy! If you ever have the time, I'd love to see some of those more complex videos, just out of curiosity. Thank you!
This guy is just fall from sky to us 🖖
thanks so much for sharing this.. this method is superb 😎
Thank You! After 40 years your technique will save me massive amounts of hours linking people to your video…
DIY - greatest Tutorial !!! Only i missed was the file start resolution in photoshop?
Thank you, please do share away! Resolution is in there. This file was around 14x16 “ at 600, if I remember correctly. That’s because of how small the lettering and texture details were.
subscribed 💪💪 good luck
WOW!
You’re reale hero
Thanks
I was literally looking for a solution like this a few days ago. Trace image was not working. Ended up cleaning the image pixel by pixel. Thank you so much!!
Glad I could help! Wish it could have come sooner for you though!
@@TomFroese That it was available at all is a godsend! Google results being as they are, all it provided were alternative ways to toggle trace image options. That wasn't the last time I'll be in that position and now I have an easy solution. Plus- pixel by pixel editing was a great exercise in attention to detail XD
Wow! ...Wow!
Interesante, tomo nota. 👍
great video like the actions. I don't have adobe Illustrator, could you tell me other programs that I could export to?
You can actually do the exclude paths operation directly in PS. If you create a fill layer using the path in PS you should be able to see the result there. I’ve heard good things about Krita if you’re looking for a free vector based graphics app.
Great video. How do I separate colors as you suggested. Do I create a channel for each. Thanks
Great question! I'll make a video about this soon.
Absolutely awesome! I hate the Illustrator tool to vectorize.
*This is brilliant!* Thanx. Actually I was under the impression that the lesser the anchor points in any Illustrator file. This way the artwork is filled with thousands of anchor points. Can we apply the *Object* ... *Paths* ... *Simplify* to lessen the anchor points?
Not a bad idea to experiment with this but it may be an unnecessary extra step.
WOW.
Brilliant technique. Now we just have to figure out how to get this working for multi-color w/o having to get too deep into the weeds of seps...
The holy grail
Selecting the path and adding a solid color layer creates a masked shape. Do this for each color layer. Save as psd and open in illustrator, retaining layers. You will have all your colors saved in separate layers in illustrator.
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. May your future generations be blessed beyond earthly limits.
W O W. Just W O W
I was not expecting this level of such a well thought out tutorial when I clicked this video, I thought that this was going to be another quick hack with questionable quality, but this goes wayyy past my Expectations!!!
Thank you! Happy to exceed your expectations. No click bait here.
This is a game changer! Thank you so much for this!
Happy to help!
saved me so much time and $$, thought i'd have to buy illustrator, this was a great simple explanation. Thank you
Glad it helped!
You'll still want it if you'll be working with vector files a lot. That or Inkscape which is free.
Is this method possible in Affinity Photo? I have followed along as best I can to the point where you are in the channels panel, but it doesn’t seem to function the same way as Photoshop. I can’t figure out how to create a new channel, paste the selection, invert, and select just the white portion.
Hey I hope someone here can answer this! I have never used Affinity.
Wow! This is huge! Thank you so much!
How well does this work with color images? Definitely need to give this a try regardless!
Thanks! See 0:34 for colour notes.
@@TomFroese somehow I totally missed that xD thanks!
One or two comments say the first 3 minutes were useless ;)
What tolerance setting do you recommend when creating path in photoshop ?? You neglected to mention that step
I’ve never had to make this decision. Where would that step be necessary?
Great technique. I’m curious though, if you used image trace and then selected “high fidelity photo” wouldn’t that retain all the details you’re talking about? I realize it would probably give you a million shades of diff colors, but I imagine if you’re working with a solid color design it wouldn’t be difficult to then just make it all white or all black. Again, I’m asking from curiosity not judgement 😅
No it isn’t as clean as my method in my experience.
After the blur trick, would illustrator be able to vectorize it better?
I tried it. It still struggles to balance fine detail and clarity in my experience.
❤
I've never gotten good results with "create path from selection" in Photoshop. Maybe my resolutions were too low.
Could be your resolution, or could be that there are gradients and blurs which can never be translated to single colour vector art. Hint: try using halftones or dithering after doing the threshold part, to simulate a gradient.
Easy when you know how! Love this. Thank you.
ur kidding me wtf! nice vid
wwooooow nice
Bro u said this was best but like how can it be best if you didn’t even make the art in illustrator bc that is vector and then why did provide context I didn’t want it and this is supposed to be FOR ME. And like how can u say it is vector when I do this and then export my gif and it’s pixelated when I zoom in? So why did you lied?
Jk❤ great video! I’ve never tried this technique but I definitely will be using it next time I need to convert something! Back in the day I used to use this software called Cocoapotrace and it was so good at vectorizing hand drawn art. Sadly it’s no longer around.
Dude chill 😂 I’m sure there are paid apps that do better than this (some are mentioned in the comments). Works great when you need to preserve fun details.
I guess I wonder why not just create that graphic in illustrator originally? I feel like it wouldn't take much for you to convert your workflow to just design it vector from the get go? I know plenty of textured designs are easier to do in photoshop, but this really looks like it would be vector first, and the texture brushes are so simple, I've used textured brushes in Illustrator to achieve the same results over the years with no issues. Then no conversion needed at the end.
In a perfect world this video would not be necessary!