Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

15. Turn on the Preview check box. Every setting you change in

the Tracing Options dialog box is a dynamic effect. And those

effects will be sooner enjoyed if you turn on the Preview check

box so you can watch your trace develop as you work your way

through the settings.

16. Peruse the choices in the left section. Note that at the bottom

of the dialog box there are two sets of View settings. These

two pop-up menus are exactly analogous to the chunky and

smooth pyramid icons we saw earlier. Their position here also

gives you a clue to the other options available. In other words,

the Adjustment options on the left side affect the raster image,

and the Trace Settings on the right control the vector output.

Let’s start with the options on the left:

•

The Mode setting contains a pop-up menu from which you

can choose the type of trace you are performing: Black and

White, Grayscale, or Color. For our image, the default Black

and White option is appropriate. (We’ll take a look at trac-

ing color in the next exercise.)

•

The Threshold setting is exactly the same thing we saw

earlier in the control panel in Step 8, basically setting the

luminance point at which pixels should be considered

black or white.

•

The next two options are dimmed because they control

color images: The Palette setting determines which color

palette will be used, and the Max Colors value designates

how many col ...