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.