Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 7/8/2008

Question
QUESTION: I have a little doubt about the results of my traces in Illustrator - after pressing the "expand" button when I want to edit the trace result (when tracing color photographic images) little white lines that are visible between each vector shape appear.. are these important?.. will they print?? Or should I not worry about them? It seems that the shapes don't quite fit together exactly. Thanks very much, Tom.

ANSWER: Hi Thomas,

As long as you do not have a white stroke applied (sorry had to mention it), it will be fine. The white gap that shows up between colors is just on screen and shows up once and a while.

If this is a significant gap, check it in outline mode and make sure the lines overlap or at least match up. Sometimes live trace does cut objects a little weird depending on your settings. If it looks ok in outline mode, you should be good, but pulling a proof is always a good thing.

Thanks

Kevin



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Something new. Is there an easy way of selecting a rectangular area within a vector image  - and then cutting it out of the rest of the image - like the Marquee tool would do in Photoshop or even something similar. I want to cut up my vectors into blocks...

Answer
Hi Thomas,

There is no easy way to do what you are asking.

Here are some suggestions you can try: Use the knife tool to cut apart your images, if you hold down option (alt-pc) you can get straight lines across multiple shapes, but its not an exact science. Another option, again not easy, is to draw boxes over the top of your image to create tiles then use the pathfinder palette to select the image and the boxes and divide.

Either way, I would save this out as a copy before experimenting.


Thanks

Kevin