Need Help Vectorizing!!!

[FAMUAKA23]

Can anyone tell me the best way to vectorize this image? I have checked the Wildform Flix website and I know there is a way to get an image in just two colors without looking too "cartoony". What I am attempting to do is cut out just Madonna in the chair, and to get rid of the background. I had then planned to change the brightness/contrast settings so that the whole remaining image i just filled in black. I tried just using the lasso tool in Photoshop but time consuming doesn't even begin to describe that task because I have to do 200+ frames the same way. Can someone please help me out? I would really appreciate it. I have attached the image that I am using, and I can send you an example of how I want it to look in the end in an e-mail. I know the image attached is small, bu just let me know and I'll send you a larger one. Thank you.

Kelly

[jimhere]

In Photoshop, there's something called "Posterize", which will turn the image into as many colors as you type in (4 to 8 will look vectorish). In Photoshop CS Posterize is an adjustment Layer (I don't remember if it was in previous versions. It was under "Image" in v6...). As far as cutting her out of 200 images, here's the image set at Posterize 2. Maybe it's good enough?

[jimhere]

Oh, and if that works, you could make an action and let PS batch the 200 images while you go out for coffee,,,

[FAMUAKA23]

Thanks for the reply Jim...let the fun begin!!! I have already tried the "Posterize" command in Photoshop, but that's not quite the effect I'm looking for, although I understand that I wasn't very specific in my original post. The exact example of the animation I'm looking for is in the intro of this website...check out the guy on the skateboard near the end (not the one at the very end). I am trying to do an effect of a person walking, but I want it to be in a black silhouette just like on that page. Right now my main concern is what is the easiest way to cut out an image from the background. I can probably get it going after that.

http://www.xyleminteractive.com/archive/genetic/geneticSite.html

Kelly

[Shazmax]

Not sure if your using the right term...vectorizing an image? Vectors being mathematical rather than raster - so the best program I would suggest would be to use illustrator. At least that's what would be the best for me...then you could re-trace the face and the image...etc. Oh...sorry my bad...just had to think about it a bit. The best program to transfer an image to a vector pretty quickly would be adobe streamline. Unless you want to do it by hand...streamline will do it in black and white and you can modify the changes from there. I'm assuming your trying to put this into flash without the image taking up too much kbs?

[Shazmax]

Ah the skateboard dood....pretty easy thing to do if its just black and white and animated. Just find the clips in the video and you can retrace those clips in illustrator. There might actually be an easier way though if you know adobe premiere and exporting it to a .swf.

[FAMUAKA23]

EXAAAAACTLY!!! I have Adobe Premiere and After Effects, but neither of them seem to have the ability to make my image a simple black and white, where the foreground image is a black silhouette. Does Streamline? I attached the original image ot the post. Can you take a look at it and tell me whether you think it would get a more precise B&W result in Streamline?

[FAMUAKA23]

Yeah, see I know how to do the whole Premiere thing, but I just can't seem to get my levels right to turn the image to just black and white, like in this sample (if the animal were black and the background were white)...Do you have any of the programs? Could you test it for me? If you need a more detailed image, just e-mail me KBrown33@aol.com

[DDD]

and why cant you use flix for this? Something you want to look up is the term "keying". You can do this in AE but you have to remove the talent from the bgrd. Then you can play with the saturation settings and such to get your solid black. Also try poser 5. It has some drag and drop walk sequences with parameters that can be set.

[FAMUAKA23]

I tried Flix once before with a setting of just two colors, but I couldn't get it to work just right. Maybe I just need to fool around with the settings so that I get the correct amount of black in the foreground and white in the background. Is there a way to preview it before doing that long encoding process just to make sure you have the colors right? Oh yeah, and did you mean for me to look up "keying" in regards to Flix, or just keying in general?

[DDD]

I have not used flix in quite sometime......if you have AE then you have all you need right there.

[FAMUAKA23]

Okay Dan, so check this out...I'm going to pull my file into After Effects. What effects should I apply to the project to begin adjusting the image to how I want it to be? I apologize for being so annoying about this, but I'm in the embryotic stages with this stuff! Thank you for taking the time to help me.

[DDD]

np....I dont have much time to type up giant explanations but what you want to do is key out the bgrd. Look in the help files I believe there is a tut on keying. Type in "keying" or "chroma-key". That should give you a sound idea of what to do. I still think flix is what you want to use. But this could be good experience in AE.

[FAMUAKA23]

Sounds good. I think I'm going to do just that...just Stix with Flix...wow!!! It's late!

[Inflicted]

You can also make your picture black & white in PS
with "brightness/contrast", save it and import it in Adobe Streamline.
A liitle more tricky, but you'll get real vectors!

good luck...