Low Quality Raster LOGO Reconstruction in Vector Format

Preparation

When scanning I scan the image at 600 ppi because  that is what we were told to do it in but if we did not remember the best thing to choose would be the highest. I did a selective scan so I did not have all of the other junk in the image that was only going to make a bigger file size. I used greyscale as the color mode because the image is just in black and white.

Clean Up in Photoshop

To clean up the image in Photoshop I move the levels of black and white in the image so that the blacks would go darker and the whites whiter. This means that the grey squares would go white and disappear and make the image look cleaner.

Live Trace in Illustrator

Live trace could be a viable solution depending on how messed up the image is. If the image is not that messed up it could be a solution but if the image is very messed up you may need to reconstruct it. I created the best that I could by using 3 color trace so that all the mess that was grey would disappear.

Logo Reconstruction Using the PEN Tool in Illustrator

Using the pen tool I recreated the image by using curves to try to make it as equal as possible to the original but only better. To create the oval I used only 2 anchor points which was a struggle at first but then I got it. The way to do it was to create an anchor point at the top of the oval and then click and drag so that you can make a curve and then make another one at the bottom so that you can complete the oval. For the reconstruction of the bat you needed to do the same but in some parts you needed to move the anchor handles to that the curve would go the way you wanted it to. I used yellow fill for the oval with black stoke and I used black fill on the bat.

File Formats

When I scanned I set the image to a TIFF file and then when I used it in Photoshop to clean it up I changed it to .PSD. When I move the PSD to Illustrator and finished doing the trace or the reconstruction I set them to .ai.

Advice on Vector Creation

My advice would be to practice as much as you can so that you can do the things correctly.

High Quality RGB Converted to Vector

A better way to get a higher quality vector image is to convert the raster image to RGB first and then raise the resolution so that way it has move colors to work with. The image that was in indexed color had very jagged edges as compare to the RGB vector which has smoother edges.

Raster RGB and INDEXED Increased Resolution Quality Comparison

In this assignment I used to images in different color modes. I used one in indexed color mode and the other one in RGB color mode. I raised the resolution on both of them and the results varied. The index color image when I raised the resolution the image did not have good quality as the edges were very jagged. In the RGB image the edges were a lot smoother as the image had more colors to work with as compared to only the 256 colors in Indexed color mode.

Vector File Size Comparison

COMPLEX
For this assignment I made 3 vectorized images, I made a simple image which used image trace of 3 colors, a complex image which used the image trace of High Fidelity, and just a simple curved line. The 2 first images were made from a raster selfie which I played around with the color and contrast.  The simple vector image has very little points compared to the complex images which the screen is filled with points. The line only only has 2 points in the image. File sizes are as follows: Complex with the largest file size, Line strangely with the second file size, and the smallest is the simple image.

SIMPLE

LINE

GIF Colors and Quality

GIF file format is in the indexed color mode and this means that instead of having the full 16.7 million colors of RGB it only has 256 color which also means a smaller file size. The first image is in 6 colors and the file size is 277 KB compare to the second image which is in 200 colors and the file size is 737 KB.

JPG Compression and File Size

JPG file format is useful for when you want to get a file delivered. It is not useful when you are still working on an image because when it converts to JPG the file quality goes down to make the file size smaller so it will be easier to load. When you are converting to JPG you have the option for quality, either you want the highest quality or you want the worst quality. In these images I chose the qualities to 100%, 60%, and 0%.  0% percent quality JPG is only useful if you are sending the image to a person who still haves the old dinosaur computers.