WoW Mikey!!!! You got a Tutorial for that????

Nice, mikey.
PS or illustrator?

i thought it was a good idea of reyrey's to post a tutorial in the forums so i thought i would too. this is the tutorial i sent blue lurker a few days ago (favouritism )

a first look at my tutorial:

ok i'd just like to say i am in no way a professional when it comes to this- infact at the time of writing this, i only learnt how to do it yesterday but im hoping i can still help some people get into it and get hooked like i am . also, there is no right or wrong way to do things, and my way is nowhere near the best way to do it im sure.

ok first things first:
you should definately use a graphics tablet for this, it makes it a whole bunch easier.

Secondly, for large areas, and areas you need to be precise with, use the pen tool. for all the fiddley bits definately use the pencil it saves a lot of time. also, the best thing to trust when converting photos to vectors is your own judgement. every illustration is different, every wrokflow is different.

until your really good at illustrating, i would stick to doing black and white vectors, then when you have it nailed in b/w then just change the colour of the vector paths. < a pretty usefull trick . also, never, ever, use auto trace tool or similar.

the first tutorial i tried on illustrator was this one:
http://www.layersmagazine.com/when-vector-meets-photo.html
i found it didnt really help, i got lost half way through but you may have some luck with it.

http://giraffenecks.com/tutorials/index.php?ID=13 here you can learn about layer modes and clipping masks. (more complicated tahn in photoshop, you cant just brush it in)

ok now to get started, open up the image you want to vectorise in photoshop, desaturate it and play around with the contrast until your happy with it. check the image size and take a note of the measurements. IMPORTANT: save the image as something different to your coloured photo.

assuming you are starting by doing a b/w image (to start with):-
by this stage you hopefully will have 2 images- a coloured and a b/w image of the photo you want to vectorize (both the same size!). ok now open up illustrator and basicly what your trying to do its copy the areas of tone in blocks of colour, defined by vector paths (shown below). if you find this hard when you try it then you can cheat and apply posterise to the source image you use

if it isnt already open, open the pathfinder window by going to window>pathfinder. in this window you can join paths together, "divide" them which basicly splits the path into many paths (you'll see when you use it). its very usefull for managing your paths anyhoo.



its important to know how the layers work in illustrator as they are confusing if your used to photoshop layers (i found):

always remember your dealing with vectors and they are not rasterised. this means you can scale them without losing detail etc.

any number of paths can be in a layer. you view the paths in a layer by clicking the arrowhead next to the layer name.

you can create sub layers in a layer. this is the equivelent of a group in photoshop, only instead of the 'folder' layer itself, there is an ordinary layer allowing you to make paths on it etc.