[ARENA]

I would like what is the best technique for processing photographic raster images into vectors with the applications available for Mac OS X. I need to achieve this vector look for a project I'm working on.

So what i've been doing is: First clean up the image in photoshop, adjust the colors and such and apply the 'Cutout' filter to get simple areas of color. The with Flash MX import the modified image and use the trace bitmap option.

That way gives decent results but i wonder if there are better methods for doing this.
Does the new Freehand MX can also do auto bitmap tracing from an image?

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[KeyLimePi]

Anyone remember Adobe Streamline? What ever happened to that app? Everytime I see one of these commercials/videos with a lot of lineart-as-video I think about it.

[art_director]

Originally posted by KeyLimePi:
Anyone remember Adobe Streamline? What ever happened to that app? Everytime I see one of these commercials/videos with a lot of lineart-as-video I think about it.

keylimepi: i love your user name. yes, i remember streamline. in fact, i bought a copy last year. a great app. i wish they'd make an os x version though.

arena: as keylimepi said, check out streamline. it's a great app and you have better control over how your vector graphics turn out. i cannot say whether freehand mx has an auto trace feature. since freehand 10 did i would guess they kept it in for mx.

[ARENA]

Thanks for the suggestion, i'de love to use Streamline but since there's not an OS X version of it, it's a no go for me.
Do you know if there is a 'Trace Bitmap' option in Freehand (10 or MX) that works the same as the FlashMX one? i mean, just selecting and image and have it traced rather than use a tool to go manually tracing zones of the image.

[eggman]

Originally posted by ARENA:
Do you know if there is a 'Trace Bitmap' option in Freehand (10 or MX) that works the same as the FlashMX one? i mean, just selecting and image and have it traced rather than use a tool to go manually tracing zones of the image.

Yes, there is.

[art_director]

Originally posted by ARENA:
Thanks for the suggestion, i'de love to use Streamline but since there's not an OS X version of it, it's a no go for me.
Do you know if there is a 'Trace Bitmap' option in Freehand (10 or MX) that works the same as the FlashMX one? i mean, just selecting and image and have it traced rather than use a tool to go manually tracing zones of the image.

Yep, there is.

[ARENA]

Ok, thnx.

[anarkisst]

Ssilhouette for OS X...expensive as hell, but very good.

[ARENA]

Originally posted by anarkisst:
Ssilhouette for OS X...expensive as hell, but very good.

Does it works as good and effective as Streamline did?

[ccrider]

There's a free demo that lets you use it for 15 days, as either a stand-alone app or an illustrator plugin.

Try it out!