Smoothing image trace sketches

[crunchmouth]

I use image trace to vectorize my hand-drawn sketches. I use the "sketched art" preset. I set corners to "0", expand it, and then use the smooth tool slider. But still I'm left with some sharp, jagged edges, which I do not like. I like curves and round corners. So I have to individually adjust these sharp corners, which can be kind of tedious. Any hints on how I get better results without the sharp corners that I have to correct? Thanks.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

You can also adjust the precision slider (Paths, the first one) and try to get smoother curves.

[crunchmouth]

Thank you, but that doesn't give me the results I'm looking for.

[Monika Gause]

Please show.

[Bobby Henderson]

Unfortunately auto-tracing filters are going to work only so well. They only see a grid of colored pixels and try to average between those colors to guess where a path should be drawn. They can't see or understand the imagery in a subjective manner as us humans see it. So the auto-tracing filters often deliver results we don't like.

It's possible to gain more accurate auto-tracing results by using higher resolution scans and editing those scans in Photoshop to improve contrast and remove any "trash" in the image. But even those steps will work only so well.

Sometimes there is no substitute for drawing paths over scanned artwork by hand. Obviously doing so takes more time, but the results are going to be more accurate and edit-friendly.

[crunchmouth]

Thanks. I wouldn't be opposed to drawing over the lines by hand, but I am not very comfortable with my wacom intuos tablet, and I don't think I ever will. Do you have any suggestions on good drawing tablets?

[Doug A Roberts]

You don't need to draw paths freehand -- use the pen tool.

[Bobby Henderson]

The trick is getting comfortable with Illustrator's powerful keyboard shortcuts for tools like the Pen Tool.

The keyboard shortcuts for the Pen tool allow a path to be edited while it is being drawn. I can also simultaneously toggle zoom in/out and hand-panning functions while using the Pen tool. GPU acceleration allows for animated zoom. That's handy for making small adjustments to the view while doing more careful edits to anchor points or path segments.

I'll have the Wacom Pen in my right hand and left hand resting over the left side of my keyboard above the Shift, Ctrl, Alt and Spacebar keys to press various keyboard shortcut combinations. Lots of other important shortcuts are there (such as Ctrl+Z).

The only thing I don't like about using a Wacom tablet is what the Windows OS does to hobble some of its functions, like pressure sensitivity. Windows Ink has to be enabled in the Wacom tablet driver to allow pressure sensitive operations in the Wacom Pen. I have to leave that setting disabled because Windows Ink will do other things that make me immediately lose my temper. It's hard for me to pass up any opportunity to utterly trash Windows Ink. It's something that really needs to be amputated out of that OS. Microsoft did a horrible job developing it and have done an even worse job responding to negative user feedback about it. They must be pretending the problems Windows Ink causes with graphics tablets doesn't exist.