Due Date: March 18
Adobe Illustrator ArtBoards are a utility that allows the designer to create multiple pages or documents within a single Illustrator project. In this activity, you will use these artboards to complete a series of images using ImageTrace - a feature that can take photo-grealistic images and change them to vector graphics.
- Create a new folder in your Communications 1/Multimedia folder and title it “Art Boards and ImageTrace – Pug”
- Download the image of the adorable PUG from here and save it in your “Art Boards and ImageTrace – Pug” folder
- Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document using these settings:
- Create four artboards and title them like so (Artboards can be found under Window on the menu bar)
- Arrange your artboards in this configuration using the Artboard Select tool on the Toolbar
- Place the pug (and rescale it if necessary) into the four artboards
- Click on Window and make sure Control is checked (if not, this will bring up the Control Bar under the Menu Bar)
- Select the Pug on the “BW Imagetrace Pug” artboard and click on the “Image Trace” button on the Control Bar
- Click on the Image Trace Panel button on the menu bar
- Use these settings to change the image of the pug to Black/White
- Click on the “Expand” button on the menu bar. This will break the image up into its individual black and white segments
- Select the pug on the “3 Color Imagetrace Pug” artboard
- Use these settings to change the image of the pug to 3 colors
- Click on the “Expand” button on the menu bar.
- Select the image on the “16 Color Imagetrace Pug” artboard
- Use these settings to change the image of the pug to 16 colors
- Click on the “Expand” button on the menu bar
This is what you should see so far - Select the Black and White Pug and then click on “Object” and then “Ungroup” on the menu bar
- Deselect the pug (just click anywhere in the gray "paste board" area
- Now, re-select any of the white sections of the “Black and White Pug” image
- Click on “Select” on the menu bar and then click on “Same” and then choose “Fill Color” (this will select all white objects)
- With those areas selected, move them to the right of the rest of the Black and White pug image. This should leave just the black areas of the pug.
- Create a new rectangle that fits directly on top of the “Black and White Pug” artboard and color it a light blue (if your blue keeps turning to gray, it is because Illustrator is stuck in Black/White mode. In this situation, we need to tell Illustrator we need to be in RGB mode. Select Window (on the Menu Bar) and then Color.
- Right click on the rectangle and select “Send to Back”
- Your image should appear as so.
- Save your document as a "Pug Image Trace Finished.pdf"