Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

LIVE TRACE, PAINT, AND COLOR

THE FEATURES COVERED in this lesson

have one major thing in common: They can make your

life easier. Oh yeah, and they each have—or at one point

had—the word “live” slapped in front of them, which

conveniently allows me to group them all in the same

lesson. Live, in Adobe-speak, means you can change

the parameters of your modifi cations on the fl y, then

rethink what you’ve done and retrace, repaint, or re-

color your artwork with no penalties or damage to your

illustration. There is no requirement for you to do this

in front of an audience or even use a living subject, as

is evidenced by the various treatments of our decidedly

dead pirate friend in Figure 11-1.

These are all relatively recent features, popping up in

Illustrator CS2 or CS3. Live Trace is a dialog box-driven

function that traces imported raster-based images with

vector-defi ned path outlines. Live Paint lets you fi ll and

stroke shapes you see (rather than areas specifi cally de-

fi ned by paths) using a couple of tools and a few options

in the control panel. The Live Color group of features

(as they were known when they were introduced in

CS3) lets you assemble color libraries and recolor se-

lected artwork using an assortment of options divided

between two panels and a dialog box. The point is when

you use these features, you’re sending instructions auto-

matically as opposed to doing ...