Converting photos to vector art for dxf exporting...

[YNOT]

Here's the situation...

I design large carton graphics for our company. The carton graphics are 'flex-printed' and the art is mostly vector based with the exception of 1 grayscale eps photo on three panels. Once I'm done with my artwork we release to the plate makers and it's all good.

Here's where I run into my issue...

Our internal engineering department has to have the artwork to drop into their mechanical CAD drawings for production and they require dxf format. Luckily there is an option to export to dxf from Illustrator, but for some reason the images don't work because they are still 'rasterized' files. Is there any way to easily convert the photos to some kind of vector format so they would work? Obviously I could hand draw each product, but why spend countless hours for this when they won't really be representative of what is truly on the carton.

I save all of our product warning and beauty labels out in dxf for engineering and they work perfectly...because they are all 100% vector based files. It's the photos that are throwing things off.

Anyone have any ideas as to how I can get around this? or any another forums you could direct me to that might know what to do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

[jimking]

Are the grayscales one color? If so, as a test convert the grayscales to a hires bitmap mode and give it a shot.

[YNOT]

Yes...they are one color images. I'll try that, but isn't a bmp still a raster file? Or not?

[doubting_thomas]

Yes it is still raster. I think what jimking is suggesting is to
create art that is simpler and see if that works. Bitmap tiffs' pixels
are either on or off, and that may help. Makes sense to give it
a shot. Color can be applied in Illustrator, if you have CS2.

[jimking]

You can check this site out. http://www.prepressforums.com
A bitmap image, or line art, is one that is made up of either black or white pixels. There are no colors and there are no gray tones whatsoever (for drawings or artwork with gray tones, see grayscale). This kind of image has a 1-bit depth.
When we think of bitmap images, we most commonly think of line drawings, signatures, cartoons or logos made up of solid black and white images and text. Though they may looked jagged on-screen, bitmap images can print very crisply and cleanly with smooth edges if it has enough printing resolution. I think for halftones to really work is for the grayscales to be at a high res. such as 900-1200 dpi.

["Technical" Terry]

Is the dxf/CAD drawings the final printed product, or are they just an intermediate to show position of content? If it is just an intermediate, I would use live trace and use one of the presets to get vector art. It won't be as pretty as the eps, but ok to get an idea of what the final will look like.

[YNOT]

Is the dxf/CAD drawings the final printed product, or are they just an intermediate to show position of content?

Well, the CAD drawings are what our plant uses to check against the final carton when they arrive from the printer. It just needs to be a close representation of the carton I guess, but they want it as accurate as possible.

[YNOT]

Okay...i'm at a dead-end again. I tried the 'BMP' thing and it's not working. What I get is a black box with a distorted image to the left portion of it.

I may resort to leaving any images out and just put text in place stating that an image is there.

Any other ideas?

[PersonasBinar]

either livetrace in CS versions of illy... or find an old version of Adobe Streamline. You can get a high fidelity vector version of the photo, that are pretty darned good, massively complicated vector files.

[doubting_thomas]

Okay...i'm at a dead-end again. I tried the 'BMP' thing and it's not working. What I get is a black box with a distorted image to the left portion of it.

Are you saving as a .bmp? If so, that's not what jimking was talking about. The
file should be saved as a .tiff file using Bitmap mode (Image>Mode in PS). If you
are saving as a bitmap .tiff, that's odd. :confused:

[jimking]

Are you saving as a .bmp? If so, that's not what jimking was talking about. The
file should be saved as a .tiff file using Bitmap mode (Image>Mode in PS). If you
are saving as a bitmap .tiff, that's odd. :confused:
Ditto.

[PrintDriver]

Our draftsmen use .jpg files to place graphics panels on elevations in AutoCad and Vectorworks. Or, at least that's what I supply them with. They want them as small as possible while still being representational on a D-size drawing.