How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

From: "James"

How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

Maybe this isn’t what you want, but open the Channels palette, duplicate one of the channels (drag it to the bent page icon) and on this dupe run Filter > Stylize > Find Edges …

Bill

In article <M9TYb.2547$>, James
wrote:

How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

It *IS* line art.

"Steve Moody" wrote in message

In article <M9TYb.2547$>, James
wrote:

How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

It *IS* line art.

🙂 It really is! I wonder if he didn’t mean vector art, or raster outlines.

yeah probably vector because i want to put it into my cad program

"jjs" wrote in message

"Steve Moody" wrote in message

In article <M9TYb.2547$>, James
wrote:

How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

It *IS* line art.

🙂 It really is! I wonder if he didn’t mean vector art, or raster

outlines.

Good luck.

I’m going through the same process with a few very simple raster logos I’d like to convert to vector. Bottom line is, there’s no easy way in PS get accurate results without a LOT of work, either by manually retracing with Bevier lines, curves, or using Quick Mask, the Extract tool (what a joke), or Filters/Stylize/Find Edges.

All of these methods entail a lot of cleanup and none worked well for my particular logos, so I went in search of third-party utilities.. Most were even worse than PS. I tried CorelTRACE, AutoTrace, PTVector, R2VTool, WinTopo and a half dozen others, with limited amounts of success. AutoTrace produced the best results but lots of cleanup was still required. If you have Flash, there’s supposedly a great and easy way to convert raster images to vector, but unfortunately I don’t have Flash on my system.

For the life of me I don’t understand why finding simple edges in line art and making vectors out of them is such a problem for these programs. Or even expanding/improving the options in PS’s Find Edges would help tremendously. At least accurate paths could be exported to Adobe Illustrator or another vector graphics editor.

Rick

"James" wrote in message

yeah probably vector because i want to put it into my cad program
"jjs" wrote in message

"Steve Moody" wrote in message

In article <M9TYb.2547$>, James
wrote:

How can i convert a color cartoon into line art?

It *IS* line art.

🙂 It really is! I wonder if he didn’t mean vector art, or raster

outlines.

"RickT" wrote in message

Good luck.

I’m going through the same process with a few very simple raster logos I’d like to convert to vector. Bottom line is, there’s no easy way in PS get accurate results without a LOT of work, either by manually retracing with Bevier lines, curves, or using Quick Mask, the Extract tool (what a joke), or Filters/Stylize/Find Edges.
[… snip good stuff …]
For the life of me I don’t understand why finding simple edges in line art and making vectors out of them is such a problem for these programs.

As you noted, it takes a lot of manual work, touch-up and correction – all human decisions, and we don’t even know how we know this stuff.

Have you tried Adobe Streamline? It must be ‘trained’ or configured to get very close to what you need, but with some work (reading docs) you might have better luck. You can download a version from Adobe. ‘Save’ is crippled, but it might give you an idea.

In article <c13051$1dadt8$>,
"RickT" writes:

…
For the life of me I don’t understand why finding simple edges in line art and making vectors out of them is such a problem for these programs. Or even expanding/improving the options in PS’s Find Edges would help tremendously.

Oddly enough, Smart Blur has better options for finding edges than Find Edges does.

Another possiblity is to use High Pass followed by an Omega-shaped curve that changes middle gray to white and light or dark gray to black.

Running Median several times with a small radius may help to clean things up.
—

Warren S. Sarle SAS Institute Inc. The opinions expressed here SAS Campus Drive are mine and not necessarily
(919) 677-8000 Cary, NC 27513, USA those of SAS Institute.

"jjs" wrote in message

"RickT" wrote in message

Good luck.

I’m going through the same process with a few very simple raster logos I’d like to convert to vector. Bottom line is, there’s no easy way in PS get accurate results without a LOT of work, either by manually retracing with Bevier lines, curves, or using Quick Mask, the Extract tool (what a joke), or Filters/Stylize/Find Edges.
[… snip good stuff …]
For the life of me I don’t understand why finding simple edges in line art and making vectors out of them is such a problem for these programs.

As you noted, it takes a lot of manual work, touch-up and correction – all human decisions, and we don’t even know how we know this stuff.
Have you tried Adobe Streamline? It must be ‘trained’ or configured to get very close to what you need, but with some work (reading docs) you might have better luck. You can download a version from Adobe. ‘Save’ is crippled, but it might give you an idea.

Thanks, but I eventually got what I needed via AutoTrace and potrace (which also required a lot of fiddling, but at least they’re free): http://potrace.sourceforge.net/

Rick

In article <c138pg$iub$ (Warren
Sarle) wrote:

[…]

Oddly enough, Smart Blur has better options for finding edges than Find Edges does.

True! That option needs a new name. Suggestions?

In article , jjs
wrote:

Oddly enough, Smart Blur has better options for finding edges than Find Edges does.

True! That option needs a new name. Suggestions?

We can rename it all we want, but until Adobe changes the name, it will still be smart blur.