What is the Best way to trace to vector

[plasmacreations]

Good Afternoon,

I currently use adobe illstrater to trace images then export as DXF. I see everyone on here tracing pictures that look great what are the steps and or the best way to do this? Thanks for the help.

[rdj357]

Many are hand traced or cleaned up. For auto tracing, I usually clean up or modify the pic with a raster editing software like PAINT.NET first.

Here's a video I made to show one way to edit files for tracing using paint.net . The programs I use after that will be different than what you're using but the same principle applies!

https://youtu.be/xEzVGRxDw88

[MemFor]

Auto trace function in illustrator works great. If that doesn't get it perfectly I will just create a new layer on top of the art I am tracing and use the pen tool to trace it by hand. The pathfinder is very helpful to join shapes and add tabs.