Expert: Amy - 3/3/2009

Question
Illustrator CS on a Mac.

I'm totally new to Illustrator, though I know Photoshop. I've been given an .ai
handwritten logo for a web site that is black on white. (The name of a band
hand-drawn). I need it white on black (or white on transparent) for the web
site.

The .ai file is approx 8000px wide and 4000px high. The actual logo will be
about 250px wide by 100px high on the site. The width of the page (and the
banner containing the logo) will be about 980 px. What's the best way of
going about this?

I've tried various things: invert colors, save for web as a gif, but everything
keeps looking pixelated in the final version. What to do?

Thanks!

Algis

Answer
Hi Algis,

If you don't need to create object-based/vector art from the logo you've been given, I would just do it in PhotoShop. Illustrator's not really the tool to convert and process images.

If you DO want to create scalable vector art from this logo, which I think might look better, based on my experience on what the words "I've been given" connote, you should play with the Live Trace function of Illustrator.

Now I am no expert at Live Trace - and it's one of those things where the options you choose are determined by 1) what you've been given and 2) what you want as the end product.

Do a search on Live Trace tutorial and you will find MANY very good Live Trace demos (videos and screen-shot based, too) for FREE on the internet. You sound intelligent and you will probably figure it out in about 5 minutes.

Basically, you select the imported graphic (which has been imported as large as you can) and choose Live Trace > Tracing options. Check the []preview box and watch how each option changes the end product. To start with, choose from the drop-down menu of presets. When you find one that gives you good results, tweak the options until you get exactly what you want!

Once you get the vector version created, you will find that generating great gifs from it is as simple as in PhotoShop. The only difference here is that you might need to scale the original artwork to a larger size (300% maybe) and then change the image size of the gif in the Save for Web dialog. Creating tiny gifs from tiny originals never works in Illustrator. You get a blurry mess.

I hope this helps! Feel free to email me at AmyLynPace@yahoo.com if I can help you further.

-Amy