[Ver de Terre]

I realize this question has been somewhat addressed previously, but I am wondering if someone can lay out the basic options for converting scans of black and white hand-drawn line art to vector graphics for print reproduction.

Mostly, I am interested in what kind of software is available for this purpose, and any comments on functionality. Would Illustrator or Freehand handle this task well?

If anyone has good links or recommendations for books on the topic, I would appreciate hearing them as well. Thanks.

[designbc]

Adobe Streamline does it.

[eggman]

Originally posted by designbc:
Adobe Streamline does it.

Yes. I've used Streamline for years. And it hasn't been updated in years. There's no version for X.

The more recent versions of Macromedia FreeHand also contain a tool which will vectorize images.

Streamline provides more options, but I find that I don't use most of them - all the ones I ever seem to need are there in the FreeHnad tool.

The results invariably need to be massaged, with either product.

[dampeoples]

I think Expression3 from creaturehouse.com can do it.

[godzookie2k]

flash will do it and so will silhouette

[gadster]

If you don't have Streamline or Flash, Illustrator will do it. Use the autotrace tool. Save the scans as 72 dpi tiffs or picts (no resample) in photoshop. Place into your illustrator file (they will be huge in size, this is good) use auto trace, delete placed images, scale your vector art back down to a realistic size, and you are done.

[kulverse]

I recommend Silhouette or CorelTrace (Great App, but I realize spending $300 for the only decent app out of the entire Corel Suite is not worth it though). Strealine works fine though classic. I have no luck with Illustrators auto-trace though.

[xmindbombx]

do a hi res b&w scan in photoshop (600 dpi or better). use your magic wand with tolerance set at about 20 and the contiguous option unchecked to select a section of black, now you should have the whole piece of artwork selected. option or right click to bring up the contextual menu. choose "make work path " and set the tolerance to the minimum (0.5). name the work path, and go to: file>export>export paths to illustrator. once you save the file open it in AI (there is no fill or stroke on the path so i would recommend switching out of preview mode) fill the path with whatever color you want and have a blast.

[Ver de Terre]

Thanks a bunch for the replies. Definitely things to work with there, I think.