Step 4: Copy/Paste image to Illustrator documentĬopy and paste the image to the Illustrator document you created previously. It needs to be a decent enough resolution so that you're able to trace over all the facial features. Since we're doing faces in this tutorial, select a photo with a person in it. As you do more intricate work, you may need other windows like Stroke, Appearance, Transform, and Align. On the menu bar, make sure you have these handy 'Windows' open: Color, Layers, Swatches, Tools, and Transparency.

Step 2: Assure you have the following 'Windows' open: Color, Layers, Swatches, Tools, and Transparency Tutorial for Tracing Photos of Objects with Adobe Illustrator Step 1: Open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document (Ctrl+N) approximately 15x15 inches Basically, any copy of Illustrator should be able to handle this approach. If this tutorial doesn't explain something well enough, please check the object tracing tutorial first! Otherwise, I'm more than happy to answer questions :)Īs usual, I'll be using an ancient copy of Adobe Illustrator 10 (circa 2003) in order to do this. The specific skills this tutorial assumes you have are: raster vs vector graphics, the concept of layers, creating new documents, locking layers, creating new layers, hiding layers, using the pen tool, choosing fill colors, and adjusting fill transparency. So, if you're frustrated in the beginning, that's totally normal!īefore following this tutorial, you really need to be familiar with the concepts in my previous tutorial on tracing objects. Alternatively, you could follow the tutorial that I learned with years ago, here.

Here's the continuation of the previous photo tracing tutorial with Adobe Illustrator! But now we're making illustrations of people! 'Finally getting to the good stuff.

Adobe illustrator 8 trace image