Learn how to quickly digitize hand lettering and calligraphy using the Image Trace tool in Illustrator. Read the full tutorial post digitizing using Image Trace here: http://hellobr.io/image-trace Subscribe to my channel and get more great tips http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=jnnfrcyl Jenn is a Philadelphia-based illustrator, web designer, and creative lifestyle blogger. INTJ. She lives for funky-cute illustration styles and has a passion for typography. Loves: pens, burritos, running. Digitize Your Hand Lettering Easily Using Image Trace in Illustrator 0:03 Today I'm going to show you how to vectorize your hand lettering from paper to digital using Image Trace in Illustrator 0:10 I'm going to use my Tombow Dual Brush Pen to write some letters. 0:37 I've gone ahead and texted myself this photo. I'm going to take it from Messages and drag it into Photoshop. 0:42 From here we need to adjust the levels of the picture so the blackest part of the text is black and then the background is really white. 0:49 If you hit Command+L you're going to bring up the levels palette. The quickest way to do this is to hit the white eye dropper and click somewhere until the white gets whiter. And then click the black eye dropper and do the same thing for the black part of your text. 1:04 Hit the lasso tool (L) and select the most important part of the picture. You can see towards the outside because this is from a photo there is some darkness going on that you don't want to bring into your drawing in Illustrator. 1:24 Hit Command+C to copy. Open Illustrator. 1:34 Hit Command+V to paste. 1:40 Because the artboard is actually smaller than the file, what I'm going to do is hit Command+Shift+H to hide the artboard. 1:49 Open your Image Trace Palette. If it's not already open, go to Window, Image Trace. 2:00 You want to start with a preset that's going to give you black and white because that's what you're working with. Go ahead and select Black and White Logo. That's a really great place to start. 2:17 You want to make sure that your Advanced section is expanded so you can see all of your options. 2:42 What the Paths does: the lower the number of paths, the smoother your drawing is going to be. Same with Corners. I generally like to not have a ton of corners, but sometimes you lose some detail if you get rid of too many corners. 3:03 Now that everything is done, I'm going to hit the Expand button. This is going to convert all of these into different paths. Then I need to ungroup this twice, do this by hitting Command+Shift+G twice. 3:18 So then take your Selection Tool (V) and then select the outer part of your drawing and hit delete. Do the same for all of these pieces within your drawing that you don't want to be colorized. 3:34 What I'm going to do now is go in and smooth some of these out. Some things look kind of funky; they digitized weird. Zoom in and select the path that you want to edit. 3:53 Go to the smooth tool, which I've changed the shortcut to be Shift+S. You can do that in Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts. I use the smooth tool so often that I feel like it's something that's good to have on your shortcuts easily. 4:12 Now that I have the smooth tool selected, I'm going to go ahead and trace around this edge. It doesn't have to be perfect; I'm just doing this with my trackpad on my laptop. Whenever you need to switch from path to path, you need to make sure to hit the (V) tool and then hit Shift+S again for the Smooth Tool. 4:53 Generally the less points along a path the better, because then the smoother your work is going to be. But because this is digitized hand lettering, you also want to keep some of its character. So, it doesn't have to be perfect. 5:14 If you ever need to really need to go in here and adjust an anchor or you want to get rid of an anchor point, you can hit the (P) tool and hover over an anchor, and when the minus comes up you can subtract it that way. You can also go in with the Direct Selection Tool (A) and click on an anchor, drag the handles out, whatever you need to do. 5:44 Hit Command+0 to view all your artwork. You can plop this on top of photos, you can use it as your blog logo, et cetera, whatever you need to do. 5:55 If you like this video, please subscribe and share with your friends and let me know if there are any other Illustrator or Photoshop tutorials that you'd like to see in the future. Thanks! Please like, favorite and share this video. Subscribe if you haven't already done so here: http://youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=jnnfrcyl Follow me for more tips so your blog can look better and your art can look awesome in less time. Website: http://hellobriostudio.com Blog: http://hellobrio.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/jnnfrcyl Instagram: http://instagram.com/jnnfrcyl Email Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ghaif -Jenn

• published: 09 Mar 2015
• views: 3