Better importing/tracing from Photoshop to Illustrator?

[whamalamaboom]

AI isn't made for traditional painting with textured brushes rather than paths you stroke or patterns you apply. PS has some okay options but it's also limited for painting. I need Fresco but my PC isn't compatible and I don't have an iOS device, so I use Krita and it's amazing.

The problem is my artwork has to be large enough for printing on the products I sell. My designs in AI are fine since they're vector based. Krita/PS are raster based so I have to paint my artwork at the actual output size/res I need and my PC can't handle files that big.

I thought a solution would be to paint in Krita/PS, export the image, then use trace in AI to vectorize them, but no matter which settings I play with, the intricate strokes and textures are lost in translation.

Since Krita isn't Adobe, I'll ask about PS. Any suggestions on how to retain the details in my art in PS and get it into AI so I can make it a vector? Or if there's a way to output to a higher res inside PS without distortion?

I know I'm trying to fit a round peg in a square hole going from raster to vector, but I'm desperate for anything that could improve my results or any other software/methods you'd recommend for painting on an older PC. Thanks!

[Mohammad.Harb]

Try super zoom filter from the neural filter in photoshop 

[whamalamaboom]

Hey, thanks for the reply! I forgot to mention since this was more about AI thank PS but since I'm on an older PC also running an older OS (Win 7), I don't have access to some of the latest features introduced in recent versions of PS like the neural filters. I've been keeping track of them though for when I eventually can upgrade!

[jdanek]

"The problem is my artwork has to be large enough for printing on the products I sell"

I would like to know what size it is you are working at and at what resolution?  When you say "print", what method is being used ( i.e., offset, inkjet, silkscreen, etc. )?  Also, how many colors are you talking about?  A lot of quesions, I know, but need to know when making any type of recommendation(s).

[whamalamaboom]

Thanks for the reply! To simplify, this is about providing the printers with what they ask for. The files need to be minimum 8000px-14000px at 300dpi. I have different products printed with different methods. Sublimation, DTG, etc, and I can paint with 2 colors or 200.

My question is solely about the fidelity of textures and strokes. I'll see some of the image's original appearance lost because of that complexity if I paint small and try to trace into AI due to the limitations of going from raster to vector. I'm not talking about in the printed result. I'm talking about the visual look of the artwork in the files themselves.

[John Mensinger · Accepted solution]

... export the image, then use trace in AI to vectorize them, but no matter which settings I play with, the intricate strokes and textures are lost in translation.

By @whamalamaboom

You don't really say at what stage you see this loss of intricacy. Export? Trace?

In any case, about Image Trace: While the thought; "I need to scale this up, so if I can make it vector, that would solve my problem," isn't necessarily a flawed notion, people who pursue it often, perhaps usually, find that upscaling trace results is a very different proposition than upscaling native-drawn vector objects. If the image traced at small size was highly detailed, the vector interpretation of those details can become even more problematic than the pre-trace pixel shortage, in terms of upscaling. In place of those details, you may find yourself left with numerous weird and ill-defined shapes that only get weirder looking as you make them bigger.

Image Trace simply isn't the solution to a too-small raster image.

[whamalamaboom]

Thank you! This is what I'm seeing, so I'm asking if there are other suggestions (methods, filters, software, doesn't matter) that may be better for painting if I need to use larger files, which I'm already aware is unlikely. I'm still asking because no one knows everything. There might be something I've never heard of before that would help.

I'm in the middle of testing the trace with some of my paintings at various sizes to see how small I can paint before things go really wrong lol Sorry, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about losing detail tracing in AI. 

[Met0]

Invest in yourself and get more RAM for your computer.

[whamalamaboom]

Sadly, the issue isn't memory. My PC is just very old. It's already maxed out on what its motherboard can even handle at this point from upgrades I've done over the last decade to RAM, graphics cards, hard drives, etc. No more is being sunk into it. The plan is getting a new one and unfortunately, we're still in the middle of a pandemic. Not everyone has money to spend outside of food and rent. We make do with what we've got for now.

[whamalamaboom · Accepted solution]

I've been painting small in Krita and opening the file in Illustrator to trace. By adjusting the trace settings under advanced, I've been able to get results that look pretty identical to my original work. Keeping noise down, overlap method, paths and corners high, full color at 100 and going from there. While some details being lost or reshapen can change the look of a piece, a lot of the more abstract work is fine. Adjusting those settings as I go works wonders. Thanks all!