Drawing a logo..

[emdotdee]

I've drawn this logo/tag many many times on paper and then finally made a large version that i'm happy with...

Now i need to make it into a vector but i don't know the best way.

I've tried tracing this image using the pen tool in illustrator 10 but i can never get the paths to match the lines of the photo.

I've also tried to use the pen tool in photoshop cs with similar crappy results.

Can anyone give me any tips please? or point me to a site with good tutorials (i can never find anything relevent when i search)

thannks

 

[hsotnicaM]

You're on the right track using Illustrator. I'm not sure of your skill level, however. To match the drawn logo takes time and skill. I've often placed the drawing I scanned as a template and used various tools to match the scan. Can't do it tonight, but would love to try to match it.

 

[MDARFUS]

Turn line drawing to vector image

If you have access to Illustrator CS2 (or CS3) you could use the Live Trace feature found under the Object menu. It works best when used with a clean scan (aka - no paper rules) with good contrast (background is pure 100% white, lines are pure 100% black. I've used the image you posted in the forum to try it out before posting this advice. It came out resonable well, but this original image wasn't a clean start, so maybe you'll get a better result. I've attached a PDF to this reply for your review, which you "should" be able to open in Illustrator 10.

Good Luck =')

MDARFUS

 

[emorydunn]

The way I would do it is not with a pen tool at all but with photoshop's magic wand tool tool. So, just scan your logo into PS and then just select the line and copy into another document. This will allow you to have a perfect image. The only limitation is that you will need a fairly clean image to work with- that means no little red dots and preferably no lines, but those shouldn't do too much. Hope this helps

BTW: nice logo.

 

[iMeowbot]

Some of this may seem painfully obvious, but I'm spelling it out because the ideas trip up lots of people.

Vectors are not ink. Even though Illustrator includes pencil and brush tools that give the illusion of freehand drawing, it's really a fundamentally different medium. Underneath the user interface, all you really get to work with are lines and curves with rigid rules set to a handful of formulas. You can keep adding points in an attempt to catch more and more of the details of the hand drawing, but it will never be a truly exact reproduction. Extra points even tend to look a little silly in vector work, it's against the medium's nature.

Because it's a different medium, decent vector tracing is not so much a mechanical process (see the sorry results achieved by autotrace software). You can and should use your judgement, it's okay to interpret (yes, this is strange thought when you're tracing your own work, but it's really an advantage: you know exactly the look the artist was trying to achieve and don't need to guess ).

Try to keep your eye on larger sections of the drawing, and find the overall shapes in there. If you see a big sweeping curve, draw the big curve and don't break it into a bunch of segments. It is okay if your vectors don't line up exactly with the hand drawing. Your aim is a pleasing representation of the drawing, this isn't an engineering exercise.

You may find this little tutorial helpful as a general guide. It's really about making digital type and not general drawing, but in this case you are trying to capture a symbol and the drawing tools are essentially the same.

[ed: this is a quicky example of the general idea.]

 

[Mike Teezie]

I've drawn this logo/tag many many times on paper and then finally made a large version that i'm happy with...


Now i need to make it into a vector but i don't know the best way.

I've tried tracing this image using the pen tool in illustrator 10 but i can never get the paths to match the lines of the photo.

I've also tried to use the pen tool in photoshop cs with similar crappy results.

Can anyone give me any tips please? or point me to a site with good tutorials (i can never find anything relevent when i search)

thannks

If you send me a decently hi-res image of the scan, I'll make a vector version for you.

 

[hsotnicaM]

Here's a gif. If you would like the Ill file I can try to email it to you - PM me. (I'll convert it to ILL 10) That way you can see how I did it and experiment with it yourself.

 

[Mike Teezie]

Here's what it looks like:

PM me your email address, and I'll send you the .ai file.

 

[emdotdee]

Wow, iMeowbot, you've pretty much created an almost perfect version of what I wanted to reproduce, even the colour shades are right.

I didn't really want a literal copy of the drawing, I wanted to copy the outline so that I could smooth out all the edges but I found the pen tool to be difficult to work with.

Thanks to everyone who posted examples, i'll get PM'ing now so I can play with them and see if I can get it how I want it.

 

[jng]

The way I would do it is not with a pen tool at all but with photoshop's magic wand tool tool. So, just scan your logo into PS and then just select the line and copy into another document. This will allow you to have a perfect image. The only limitation is that you will need a fairly clean image to work with- that means no little red dots and preferably no lines, but those shouldn't do too much. Hope this helps

BTW: nice logo.

As iMeowbot said, vectors are different and ideally if you're making a logo you want it in a vector so it can be easily manipulated, especially resized. Using a want and paint bucket defeats the whole purpose of that.

Great logo emdotdee and all the Illustrator folks out there. I, too, find Illustrator perplexing. Hopefully will figure it out soon.

 

[emdotdee]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh I need some help with this..

I opened up iMeowbot's .pdf in illustrator and managed to tweak it up a bit.

For some reason though, the document/artboard (or whatever you call it) size is 14440px by 14440px which means that when i go to "save for web" the whole thing crashes. I've saved it as a .ai and .eps but have not been able to resolve the issue.

Even when I try to open it up in photoshop it wants to create a 700mb+ file size.

What's going on????

 

[hsotnicaM]

First start with document set up and make the document smaller. Then select all and make the artwork smaller.

 

[iMeowbot]

What's going on????

I can't even remember what the options in illustrator 10 looked like. It seems to be attempting to save the whole artboard instead of the clipping area.

If the clipping area is still there and save for web doesn't give you the option to choose that (perhaps there is something that CS3 sets in the PDF that confuzzles 10), what you might do is create a new document, then copy and paste all the objects over so that all that weirdness is out of your way.

 

[emdotdee]

Hmmm, for some reason, whenever I open a new document at 800px by 600px it stills gives me a 14440 by 14440 white square with a black box in the middle (which i assume is the 800 by 600 size i entered) It's very strange.

Is there any way to reset Illustrator?

Anyway, after I tweaked the .pdf and saved as a .eps I opened that in photoshop cs and it gave me an 800 by 600 size image which was perfect for what I need.

I played with it a bit more and have finished with this...

I'm really happy with it, it's perfect for me to place on a photo as a watermark and I've used it on the header in my blog http://emdotdee.co.uk (I change the header photo every now and then).

Thanks for the help guys.
Dyer

 

[iMeowbot]

Hmmm, for some reason, whenever I open a new document at 800px by 600px it stills gives me a 14440 by 14440 white square with a black box in the middle (which i assume is the 800 by 600 size i entered) It's very strange.

That's normal. In order for your crop area to take in save for web, you do meed to make sure it's using the appropriate type of clipping. In CS3, it's under the Image Size tab, you normally want "Clip to Artboard" not checked. I really don't remember if the dialog arrangement is unchanged since your version, but something similar should be available in there.

Still, glad that everything worked out for you in a roundabout way