Bitmap to Vector?

Line art and stencils from a bitmap? Tough question.

Manuel X. from Ohio, USA, using Photoshop CS with Windows XP, writes in with:

[Quote:] I have some nice drawings that are in Bitmap format. How can I turn them into line art? Or Line art into stencils? Can Photoshop do that? Thanks. MX

Reply:

First of all, do you want line art? Or do you want a stencil? (Is the "stencil" you are speaking of a real-world stencil? As in: stencils for screen printing or spray painting?) You really didn't give us enough information.

Use the Pen tool to trace the color areas, or shapes into vectors, and then fill, stroke or send to further processing. For stencils you'll want fairly hard, smooth edges to solid, flat color areas.

If it's line art you're looking for, convert the bitmaps to grayscale, then use the Brightness / Contrast adjustment layers to "homogenize" your image and clean up edges.

This is as far as we can go on the information you've provided.

Comments

[Asty]

I have a question for Permalink or anyone else.I Want to convert a photoshop file (Jpeg,PSD,EPS) or what eva!! into a Bitmap that I can use in Illustrator, has a screen for silkscreen printing. What do you recomand???

Thank you in advance
Peace.

[dayana]

i wand some questions in photosop

[Morgan]

I'm tring to do artwork for a buddy of mine that makes t-shirts. I have photoshop 6.0 and I am trying to print out color seperations were each print is the seperet color and that is it. for some reason it keeps printing out the 1st color then the 1st and 2nd color together then 1,2,3 colors and so on.

please help

thankx

[Steve]

I used to use streamline to convert my pixel files into vector art. I now have Photoshop CS2. I was told that the program could do this by it's self. How do I do that?
Thanks,
Steve

[Mosaic]

i like that program line art so that i could get idea in my business....

[Heather Sult]

I have a detailed colored drawing provided to me by a customer that i need to screenprint. The pic has some shading. I need to print out seperations in Photoshop but can't figure out how to do it. It seems complicated. I tried printing out the cmyk seperations, but for expample the black shows up on all pages. I will need to print about 5 colors from the pic. Can you help me?
Thanks!

[Martha]

I do line art in simple lines like coloring book style and need to clean up the jagged edges.
Can you help me learn how?
Thanks

[Debi Rowland]

I am trying to make a color photo into a silk screen stencil for my son to use on a cd is making for an audition piece for college. I just got Photoshop 3 and need "layman" instructions. Can anyone walk me through the process? I tried the instructs above but I don't have the keys or sections they refer to. Peace. Debi

[Sean]

I have a full color picture I want to put on a shirt. The shirt is black and the print is white, it will be similar to this

http://www.everythingenglish.com/images/tshirts/morrisseyvictory.jpg

Is there some way I can do this in Photoshop? I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm just not sure what this is called. Thank you

---------------- Photoshop 911 Answers:

Yes, that's pretty easy.

First convert the image to Black and White. Switch the mode to "Grayscale" or go into Hue/Saturation and slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Both yeild different results, so experiment. (There are other methods, but these should work since you're eliminating most middle tones anyway.)

Now, make your photo VERY high contrast, either by using "Levels" or "Brightness/Contrast" (you'll have to just play with the controls until you achieve what you're looking for)

You didn't say what version of Photoshop you are using, so we cannot give specific menus and commands.

To print WHITE on a BLACK T-Shirt, you'll need just the "Highlights" of the image.

For this use the "Select by Color" (under the "Select" menu) and click "Highlights"

This will result in a selection (racing ants) around just the highlights of the image.

Make a new layer, and then FILL the selection with white.

Make another new layer UNDER the just-filled white image, and fill that new layer with black.

This will help you 'proof' the image to see if it's what you're looking for.

If it worked, just make another selection of all the image you previously filled with white and now fill it with BLACK.

Delete all the other layers, export the BLACK layer as an EPS file and it's for output to film to burn the photo stencil for the screen printer. Then merely silk-screen the image in a good, Nazdar opaque white.

Oh, you'll also want to make a Type layout for the typography -- but that will be in another color, needing a separate film.

Hope this helped.

[Sarenda Godfrey]

I have a photo that I want to take the background out so that it is transparent. I want to place this image in macromedia flash to use for a website I am designing. When I do this there is a white line around the image. I don't want to have to go around the whole image and delete the transparent pixels to make them not appear as white in another program. What can I do to get rid of the white line around the image in Photoshop and be able to take it to another program without the white line.

[JC]

You can try MagicTracer raster to vector conversion program. I've gotten some really good results from this program for my line art and logos.