How to convert print pencil sketches to vectors?

K

Krow

Disciple
We are planning on a print campaign which is based on cartoons/sketches somewhat on the lines of R.K.Laxman's cartoons. The problem is that we have great pencil sketch artists with us, but not a clue as to how to print it on a very large flex, say 6 feet by 4 feet.

I want to know if there is a method to auto trace the same sketches on CorelDRAW or Illustrator or even Photoshop. The result should look like an R.K.Laxman cartoon, i.e.,

309696877_d22a857ef7.jpg
like this.

I hope I have been clear enough about what I need. TIA. :)
 
Yes you can trace using PhotoShop and illustrator.

1. Scan and port your image to PhotoShop.

2. Make the image greyscale or 2 colors and increase the contrast to max.

3. Merge the output, select and copy paste the image to illustrator.

4. This is tricky but depending on the art you will have to play with tracing setting to get your desired result.

5. You can work on the traced output further, making it smoother and cleaner.

6. Once you get your desired output you can very well print it .... :)
 
One method will be to scan the art at 600dpi. then open the scan in photoshop, clean them up using levels and point #2 above, but make the colors to 8 colors to keep detail.

save the cleaned-up image with new name and open (file > place) it in illustrator and use the trace tool.

you will get a complex type of vector art with white fill in some areas. Trying to do any more work on this will be troublesome. This vector can be printed at any resolution you want.

another option is to just clean up the scans in photoshop and just print them as raster. the flex printers take psd files too.
 
You can hire someone to retrace the original pencil drawings to high quality vector PSD's.

In fact I can do that ..... im pretty Ok with vector art & simple illustrations like that can be done pretty easily & quickly
Here take a look

Ka-Booka's Gallery
 
Vector Magic worked for me. I converted the scanned JPEG's (600dpi) to .eps format, imported them in CorelDRAW X4 and deleted all the paper (offwhite colour) from the eps vector. Then, I filled the vectors with black colour and gave them a black outline. Job done. :)

Thanks a million to all who helped. :)
 
Live Trace option in Illustrator works great....

I have done it before several times...

tracing sketches and getting them enlarged. Even some black logos.. works fine for me
 
if your using photoshop my method may work for you:

1st i increase the size of the image by 4

then i reduce it to 1 bit (black and white)

then i select the black part completely

then i convert the selection to a path (2 pixel tolerance)

then one can make a form or export the path as ai

(too much then i know)

edit: here is the resulting pdf

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1484680/vectorisized.pdf
 
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