image trace / illustrator CC 2017

Just out of interest anyone , whats the specific need to image trace?  what do you use the output for for ?

Do you just like the effect it gives.

Breaking it up in Photoshop sounds a good idea, KShinabery, but you mention skin - to me that  always seems to come out  very poorly, just a coarsely contoured mess

Image Trace  has been severely lacking in detail trace capabilities since they switched to the new panel format. I've gone to bat several times with the teams about this, but there is no urgency to change the parameters since they would have to scrap the entire widget to recalibrate.

I have an example file of an exploded view diagram. It worked great using Technical Illustration in CS2-CS5. Then the new version arrived and it all broke and gotten worse with each iteration.

I've gone with third party solutions since.

When it comes to Image Trace.... especially with highly detailed images.... I found this helpful.

Let's say I have photo of person wearing a light shirt and dark pants.

What I will do is break the image up in Photoshop into various sections.... skin, shirt, pants.  Then I bring in each piece into Illustrator then use Image Trace on each piece separately.  Then put them together to form one object.  The problem I noticed is that images where the values in highlights and darkness vary greatly have issues with running Image Trace on the whole picture.  So breaking them part was a way for me to get everything a little more accurate.

This can be done with any photo.... a house..... a carousel... you name it.  By separating the pieces so to speak it will really help. I have been doing this little trick for years.

There is one kind of images that are traced worse: black and white images with a lot of detail.

You cannot improve it beyond a specific point.

There are third party applications available for tracing black and white, and there are rumours that those are better. I haven't fully tested them. One of them is „Bildvektorisierer“ im Mac App Store

Another one is the online tool Vector Magic: Convert JPG, PNG images to SVG, EPS, AI vectors

Depending on the system you can or can't run older versions of Illustrator. If you have licensed them, it's not forbidden to use them. CS2 won't run on your Macbook, the other versions might just run enough to do an image trace. Probably not with High Sierra, maybe with Sierra, probably with Yosemite. Not sure if you can install them, because the installer need sto be compatible as well.