Welcome to Printful’s design series, where we’ll show you practical tips that you can
use to create awesome designs for print-on-demand products.
This episode will be about vectorization.
By the end of this video, you’ll learn to make this out of that.
Vectorization is a process where your bitmap/raster image that consists of pixels is made into
a vector that consists of shapes.
What’s great about vector images is that no matter how you change their size they won't
lose quality.
As opposed to a bitmap image that'll only get worse when the scale exceeds its original
size.
Vectorization can help you create elements that can be used in designs for many different
sized products.
For this task, I’ll use Adobe Illustrator.
I'll open an image with a transparent background.
As you can see the image doesn’t take up all the space on the canvas.
Vectorization requires processing power, and keeping the image at its current size can
reduce the strain on the system.
Next, I’ll go to “Window” and click on “Image Trace”.
A new window will open up where I can adjust the settings to convert my image into a vector.
The first two lines contain presets, which are based on the advanced settings below,
we'll ignore these for now.
When I go to “View” I can switch between different options of how I want to see the
result of the image trace.
By pressing on the eye icon located next to it, I can view the original image.
Under ”Mode” I can choose if I want my vectorized image to be made of colors, shades
of grey or black and white.
I’ll select “Color” and with that a new “Palette” panel becomes available.
“Palette” gives me the options to set the color range of my vector.
The “Limited” option narrows down the number of colors making them easily manageable,
while “Full Tone” gives me a wide range of colors based on my image, which makes it
hardly recognizable as a vector when looked from afar.
The colors slider allows me to set a specific number of colors to be included in the final
result.
For this example, I’ll choose a “Limited” color palette and set the number of colors
in my palette to 5 and press “Trace”.
It might take a while for the vector to render.
Now that my image is vectorized I’ll press “Advanced” to make a few adjustments to
it.
I’ll set my view to “Tracing Result with Outlines” this will help me see the changes
I’m about to make.
Back in Advanced settings, under ”Paths” slider I can adjust the colors shapes to be
more or less detailed.
I’ll leave it at its default setting of 50%.
The “Corners” slider makes the edges of the shapes smoother or sharper.
When set to the maximum this gives the color shapes a really rough look, so I’ll set
it to 5% to smoothen them out.
In the “Noise” slider I can set the minimum number of pixels for the areas that I want
to be included in the vectorization process.
For example, when I set it to 1pixel the tiniest details like the pores on this apple start
to appear, and if I set it to 100 pixels those details are excluded from the final result.
I’ll leave it at the maximum setting.
In the next panel, I can choose between two image tracing methods.
When set to “Abbuting” the color shapes are placed next to one another, and when set
to ”Overlapping” larger color shapes are stacked on each other.
I’ll select the first method and proceed to “Options”.
The checkbox “Snap Curves to Lines” is selected by default.
This means that curves that are close to 0° or 90° degrees get turned into straight lines.
Watch what happens when I uncheck this box.
The edges of my color shapes get even smoother.
If your original image has a white background you can check the box “Ignore White” and
the background will be removed, leaving you just with the vector of your chosen element.
Even though my source image is a PNG, as you can see the “Image Trace” option also
includes the transparent background as an individual shape.
That’s why I’ll make sure the box is checked so that the background isn't included in the
final result.
To finish our vectorization process, I’ll head over to “Object” and under ”Image
Trace” I'll select “Expand.”
This will separate all the color shapes on my vectorized image to their individual layers,
that I can edit in any way I want.
For example, I can remove these white shapes from my vector.
I’ll choose the “Direct Selection Tool”, then go to “Select” and click on “Deselect”.
Now I’ll hover over the white spots until the path outline appears, click to select
it, and press “Delete” twice on the keyboard.
Before I export the vector, I want to scale it up.
For that, I’ll choose the ”Selection Tool”, click on the layer, hold down “Shift”
and drag the anchor point to resize the vector.
I recommend saving this as an Illustrator file, in case you need to return and change
the colors of your graphic in the future.
To export this vector as a PNG, I’ll head over to “File”, “Export”, and ”Export
As.”
A new window will open up, where I’ll type in a name for my image and under “Save as
Type” I’ll select “PNG” and press “Export”.
This will open up a new window with PNG options.
Here I can choose the resolution of the PNG file as well as set the background type.
Since I want to export the file with a transparent background, I need to make sure that in “Preview”,
the“Background Color” is set to “Transparent”.
Next, I’ll press “OK to finish exporting the file.
That’s all for today!
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See you next week!