Adobe Streamline And Illustrator

[j_polo9]

Any good tutorials on adobe Streamline? Is it even worth using? My few attempts have been a bit odd. It has been mentioned a few times on here but nothing much.

I'm trying to make some vector people, should i just draw them all freehand in Illustrator? Any good tips on doing this? (drasing the people from photographs) Any good tutorials on this?

Edit: Not sure if this should be in the drawing and design forum, kind of an odd question.

[.soulty]

yeah i "tried" using streamline, but only for a short while, within that time i only got grungy looking vectors out of the bitmaps i imported, its seems like you need to set up your images to get optimal results, but i didnt have time when i used it last, so instead i opened up illustrator , set up the images as a template and started drawing it out.

I think its better this way because you can create and maintain a style, which you can make the image unique with your colouring methods and simplified vectors.

[.soulty]

tutorials .. hmm i suggest googling it.

and yep this should of been in dd forums.. moved it for ya ;)

[j_polo9]

thanks soulty, i'm new to illustrator it seems to be a bit more annoying than photoshop. Yea i googled tutorials for streamline not too many... Any good ones anyone knows of for illustrator? I am off to search myself.

[.soulty]

no probs, also check the sticky for links to sites here in drawing and design.

[simplistik]

Umm... no there aren't any tutorials for Streamline... it's a pretty cut and dry program. A sucky one for the most part. It will give you lots of random crap you don't need. You'd be better off creating it in Illustrator (like it should be). It does have it place for a few things... but don't expect to get something good from it if you're tryin to use it on a picture.

You're able to adjust all the settings, the higher the settings the better the results... but the more crappy misc points you'll get. Also, it's not a very printer friendly program either.

The best place for Illustrator tutorials is the user manual. It will tell you most of what you need. Illustrator is pretty much the same as PS, not much of a learning curve goes into it. But as far as online tutorials, you may be better off buying a book on it, since they are few and far between.

[jimhere]

Has Streamline even been updated in the past 5 years? They say that a revamped Streamline-ish trace tool will be part of Illustrator 12 this spring...

[.soulty]

really jimhere? link me! any more info on illustrator 12?

[simplistik]

really jimhere? link me! any more info on illustrator 12?
http://www.thinksecret.com/

[.soulty]

excellent, thanks for the heads up simp and jim. ;)

[sedgemonkey]

I'm going to throw a curveball in as a I love drawing in vector. Illustrator is a pain in the *** to use so I always bust out Macromedia Flash. You can vectorize a bitmap easily and it does a really good job of flattening. You still have to spend a some time cleaning up, but it's a lot better than Streamline. It's definitely much different than Illustrator and not as powerful, but it's great for freehand drawing.

[j_polo9]

sweet thanks!

[=guinness=]

I was curious about this because I use illustrator and had a rather complex image, the thought of using the pen tool gave me a migrane. I tried to experiment by taking an image that was posterized in photoshop into flash and doing a bitmap trace because it gives vectors and was then going to see if I could take that into illustrator.

Short answer: it didnt work, flash will take .ai vectors but it doesn't translate from flash to illustrator as well (correction, at all). You just get a flattened image.

And here I thought I found a round about way to do the same thing as streamline. :diss:

But the upside is that tracing in flash gives a cleaner border on the image than posterizing in PS alone making it easier to use the trace tool in illustrator.

[jimhere]

Future info from that Think Secret (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0501adobe.html) link:


Illustrator CS 2.0

Illustrator CS 2.0 (Version 12), code-named Zodiac, will pack a number of major new features. The software has been re-compiled as a Mach-O application, delivering all the advantages (primarily performance) such apps enjoy.

Drawing in Illustrator CS 2.0 has also been completely reworked, yielding an environment that will more resemble drawing/painting in Photoshop while maintaining all the vectors. Also new will be a Vectorization tool that sources describe as an improved version of Streamline; a new Control Palette that mimics the Photoshop Options bar; and font/text improvements, including strike-through and underline of text.

Sources also say that preliminary work has started on Version 13 of Illustrator, code-named Jason. Details are slim, but Adobe is apparently exploring incorporating multiple artboards into Version 13.