Need help! How can this be done?

martinatkinson

martinatkinson

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Hello!

I have a small problem. A graphic I have measures out to be 1"x1" but for what I will be using it for I really need it to be 15"x15". If I try to scale it up in Photoshop I get jagged edges or a weird lumpy sort of edge. Anyone know how I can do this?

The pict is attached to this post.

Thanks so much you guys!

Albert
 

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Well, this is the catch with bitmap (raster) graphics: they only contain as much detail as they contain. That means that if you enlarge them, the new image only has as much detail as the old image, but now on a larger scale.

So, with your example, each pixel will be blown up to a 15 x 15 pixel square, which is not really acceptable - too many jagged edges.

For some reason I couldn't download your picture, but I'll tell you this. If it is a photo, you can probably blow it up to about 3" x 3" before it starts to look really bad.
If it is a piece of line-art, a diagram, a cartoon, etc, then a capable designer can drop it into a vector illustration program such as illustrator and trace a vector design off the top of it. Once finished, the vector image can be resized right up to billboard scale without any loss of detail. I have done this with a handful of company logos when all the advertiser can give you is a lousy little picture from their website. It is not easy, and takes even a skilled designer a fair bit of effort.

If you can get a larger original of the image, you'll be better off. Have it scanned / produced to a scale of 15" x 15" and don't resize it when you are putting it in your document - crop it if you must, but each time you resize an image you lose detail.
 
You mean like this?
sign.jpg
 
That's exactly what I mean. I once traced a scanned map using this method to create a distribution map. With all highways and towns marked in it took me about four hours. I've also done a couple of company logos and so on. It is an annoyance, but often your clients give you source materials that are just so far gone you can't do anything to save them, and have to start over.
 
Hello!

Thank you so very much! Can you tell me what apps you used to do this? I tried using the tracing tool in Freehand 5.0 but with no luck.

Once again, thanks for your guys help!

Albert
 
I don't know what program he used, but Adobe's Streamline software is made specifically to turn bitmap graphics into vector. Once they're vector you can scale them as much as you want in freehand or illustrator.
 
I do not understand what the problem is... why don't you just trace over the shapes with Adobe Illustrator... then you will have vector.
 
In my case I used CorelDraw, but Illustrator is another one that is well suited to the task. But as I said, it is not an easy thing for beginners to get the idea of. There is no magic-tool that does it, you have to use your vector tools to trace on screen as you would with paper.
I have used CorelTrace and found it to be useful for some line-art, I have never tried Adobe Streamline out.
You do realise, though, that what you get will be a tracing - a line-art representation - of the bitmap image you started with?
If you can get your hands on a better quality original, that would be far better.
 
Corel Draw... yuck!

Sorry had to say that... no offence, but I gave up Corel draw for lent. (about 7 years ago).

I won't use it...

but on to the topic.

martinatkinson,

Your task is a common task for any designer, raster vs. vector.

If ever you want to enlarge any graphic you should first ask youself... is the graphic I want to enlarge raster or vector? Assuming you've got this image inelectronic format already. If not, you can always enlarge the image at the point of scanning.

This topic has been talked about a lot on this board, so I won't bore you with a repost of that information, but be aware of that clarification before you proceed to doing this task in the future. Maybe we should put together a FAQ, if one's not posted somewhere on this board.

A trick which works great for solid images in photoshop, where the original image probably was an illustration is as follows...

- Open an image in Photoshop use the magic wand to select the color region, in this case black.

- Under the select menu, choose select similar.

- eliminate any stray pixle selections (if desired)

- choose paths tab choose 'make work path'

- name the path (i.e. "my path")

- choose (from the file menu) "export paths to illustrator"

- save the exported file and switch to illustrator (or a program that will read Illustrator's .ai files)

- color and size the image as you like in Illustrator... save the file as something like "myImage.eps" from illustrator.

Now, if you need to print this image, you might be able to leave it in the .eps file format, but if you're looking to use this image on the web, try opening the .eps file you saved in illustrator in photoshop and saving it as a jpg or gif. (in this case I'd use gif with transparency selected.)

Done!

Of course this is one of many ways to accomplish what wdw_ did in his example. Results vary, becuase it's all dependant on the magic wand selection, which is not the best way to select a region of color. So if the original image has anti-aliasing that will effect the selection of the path.

In the end, if you're planning on enlarging that image 400% or more, I'd redraw it in illustrator... that way you can control the radius of the shoulder area of the people. (notice how the example posted by wdw_ has kind of a bumpy path around the shoulder area of the left-most person? wdw_ probably used some automatic method as I described with mabe a path smoothing or two in the process.)

as I said, there are a lot of ways to manipulate graphics and a lot of it is dependent on the graphic you're trying to enlarge. Given your example, I'm assuming that you're new to the enlarging game of graphics, so if that's true and you need some more help, feel free to email me and I'll work with you on ways to develope a process.

evildan@mac.com
 
Hey, I think I have to stick in a good word for Corel here. When we were setting up a small-town weekly paper a few years back, we opted to do layout in CorelDraw 8. We actually got a lot of free help and advice from Corel, and a few of the lead programmers came out just to see how it all was going for us. We also had "Calibration Technologies" come out and test the performance and accuraccy, and they were quite happy with the results. There were some teething issues with the R.I.P.'s used at our press facility, but these were easily solved with a script that made sure any cut-out graphics were converted properly before posting to FTP.

Anyway, by version 8 CorelDraw was mature enough to use for production work. Once you have mastered the tools that give you accuracy, such as guides, then it is a really fast program to whip up very detailed pages very quickly.
We still used PhotoShop for graphics even though Corel had given us free licenses of PhotoPaint. I don't think PhotoPaint will be ready for the professional for some time.

Anyhow, if you had a 32 page paper made up of 4 colour, spot colour and monotone graphics to be prepared in under 10 hours, CorelDraw would be a fantastic tool. I look forward to getting my hands on 10 for Mac os X. If you wanted to do a professional looking job and time was not a problem, then yes, Illustrator is the better option.
 
Symphonix brings up another question actually...

Should page layout be done in a vector-based application? Like Illustrator or, dare I say it, Corel?

This is a real question, I'd be interested to know if more designers are doing that now. When I was a graphic artist, most of the new people without formal training were using Illustrator to produce the entire page layout. That created a number of issues when the project was taken to film. The process was about five times slower than what it was ripping a similar page constructed in Quark (using graphics imported from Photoshop/Illustrator).

I realize that's not a major concern to the designers, mainly the people responsible for pre-press production, so perhaps this is a dead issue.

Maybe I'm a loyalist, but I still use Quark whenever I have a page layout project.

In my art department at the time I was a graphic designer, we could accomplish a 32 page paper with four color graphics in under 10 hours all the time. If you utilize the tools that Quark offeres, page production is a snap. I don't know how I would begin doing that in Corel or Illustrator with as much ease as the Quark option.

I guess it's all about what each designer feels comfortable working in.
 
Should page layout be done in a vector-based application?
Click to expand...
Quark Xpress is a vector-based application.

I've never used coreldraw, but I have tried to doprint design in Illustrator. It's a pain because Illustrator doesn't really support multiple pages. It will tile, but no nice page layout features. You're better off usin PageMaker or Quark. It's really not that big of a deal to have linked EPS artwork that you import from Illustrator.

Personally I prefer the Adobe Philosophy of having seperate applications for different tasks. They work so well with each other that it really isn't a big deal to switch apps.
 
You're right Quark is a vector based application, my bad... My question was phrased incorrectly... should page layout be done in programs that are primarily used for graphic creation and manipulation?

I have not used Adobe Philosophy... isn't that just a PageMaker re-skined?

How is it on speed and performance?

I know PageMaker is dead, which is a shame, I learned page layout on PageMaker... when it was Aldus PageMaker, but still sad to see it go. Quark was a better program hands down though.
 
Sorry. I shouldn't have capitalized Philosophy. You are thinking of InDesign most likely. I was referring to the Adobe philosophy of making an application for each task (i.e. Illustrator for Vector graphics, Photoshop for raster graphics, InDesign and Pagemaker for print design etc.) Some other software companies want one app to do it all.
I've never used InDesign, but I get the impression it's very different from PageMaker. PageMaker was an app that they acquired when they bought Aldus way back. I used it up until about 6.5 and it was never a real "Adobe" product. I think InDesign is. Not exactly sure why they have both.
Sorry for the confusion.
 
I'd say programs such as Quark, which move the emphasis to the entire publication, are far better if you have to work on, for example, a book or brochure.
Illustrator and CorelDraw each handle (basically) a page at a time, and that makes them inappropriate for books and so on where text has to flow from page to page. However, they are well suited to the production of magazines and newspapers, where text rarely flows from one page to the next.
I used both Illustrator and Corel to create advertisements, and I found that the end results were of an exceptionally high quality on either program, but the style would be subtly different. There are some techniques that work best with illustrator and others that work well with corel.
 
wdw, that was nice of you to do that... a bit too nice.

everyone should know some elementary Illustrator.
 
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