Can you import rasterized images into Adobe Illustrator from PS and save them as vector without hastle?

I want to create an infinitely scalable image but it is incredibly hard for me to create a vector in PS because of the complex tracing involved if I were to build a path.





Thank you in advance gurus!Can you import rasterized images into Adobe Illustrator from PS and save them as vector without hastle?
Yes and no. Illustrator is of course designed as a vector program, so doing vectors is generally easier than building them in Photoshop (where they will ultimately have to be rasterized anyway!) If you bring an image into Illustrator, it is possible to run Live Trace to let the program create the vectors from your image. However, if your image has a wide color range and/or lots of detail, and you are trying to reproduce it as a vector version, you are going to end up with a complicated mess. You could literally end up with thousands of paths and anchor points, and if you want to manipulate them, you can create a real hassle for yourself. If all you want is a vectorized image that you are not going to do anything with other than be able to resize it, you may be okay. But be aware that if you go to print with this, depending on how you want to get it printed, those thousands of paths can create a printing problem. If you willing to do some adjustments in Photoshop first to decrease the colors and increase the contrast, you may have fewer problems using Live Trace. And when you do a Live Trace, use the Live Trace Options panel with Preview checked so you can select different options and see what Live Trace is doing with the image before you accept the trace. Also once traced, to best be able to work with the resulting objects, Expand the image.





You can also bring the image into Illustrator and hand trace everything as you did in Photoshop; time consuming but ultimately gives you more control, and the paths remain paths because you are in Illustrator, you do not have to rasterize them.





Hope this helps!Can you import rasterized images into Adobe Illustrator from PS and save them as vector without hastle?
no, you have to work a bit more ;)





open the image in ps, make the selection of what you want to use as path, than go to the paths window (its where the Layer-window is) click on the arrow and select Create Path or something like that (sorry, i have german photoshop cs1, so i dont know exactly how they're called)





than go to file, export, paths to illustrator
Like Amy said, if it's monochromatic, or has a very simple set of colors, use live trace. If not, get ready to spend some time with the pen tool.