Horse Image

[royallindy]

Sorry if this seems basic, but I am rather self taught and somehow can not figure this out. I have a customer who needs a vector image for screenprinting that is of a horse jumping. She has supplied me with a real photo of how the horse should look. How can I get a basic picture, smooth edges with black fill that will look like her picture? I have at my hands Photoshop, Illustrator and Elements.

Thanks!

[Virgo Nightingale]

Open the image in Illustrator and get really friendly with the pen tool.

[D-Frag]

or you can do a "posterize" in Photoshop. delete all the junk, save it as black and white. open it in Illy CS2 if you have it, and play with the auto trace function. quickest way to do it imo

[DrummerHead]

Open the image in Illustrator and get really friendly with the pen tool.

indeed

[(gra-ph!c-D'sig-nah)]

Well the ideas I was going to give you have been given.....go with it!

[royallindy]

Thanks everyone for helping out. I have the basics down but alas, the pen confuses me. I am going to play with it more this weekend and am planning on upgrading to CS soon. Learning on my own is a bit tiresome...but that is what happens when you find out you have a desire and flair for something after you graduate with a boring old degree in Business! Also, do you all feel that a tablet would help in this? I own a small screenprinting company that caters to riders (hence needing the horse image). My first shirts were words and some basic royalty free stock images. I have gotten a reputation as being the go to person for equestrian designs and am at the limit of my knowledge. People are coming to me with specific types of horse image requests and can not freehand draw worth a crap! Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated and I am slowly getting in over my head!

[SharkFinStudios]

You could always post up in the Classifieds section that you need an illustrator. The pen tool is going to be your best bet. If you don't know the program it can be tough. You could always pick up a few online tutorials and learn the pen tool. Best of luck to you.

[cornfed]

Open it in photoshop. Go adjust the threshold. If you need certain areas to show up better, undo your threshold and dodge/burn the area that you want to show up/not show up. Magic wand the black area, go under paths, tell it to make work path then save the path. Then export the path to illustrator. You can tweak it from there. It'll turn out something like this (not a horse, but a photo nonetheless that I applied the same technique to and then made a painting of). If the lines aren't smooth enough for you, then apply a gaussian blur of 1 or 2 before you threshold it. That's what I'd do anyway...

[cornfed]

sorry, forgot the image!

http://popnouveau.com/site/local/images/anya.jpg

or this

http://popnouveau.com/site/local/images/tophatman.jpg

[SharkFinStudios]

That's true, you could work on it in Photoshop. It all depends on the level of detail you are looking for. If the detail isn't a huge concern then cornfed has a great solution. If detail IS an issue then you will need to venture down a different path. I have been doing t-shirts recently (with a horse theme) for a local company and had the same dilemma. I just busted out the pen tool and went to town. If you could post up an image of what you have and what you might need we could probably help a bit more.

[urstwile]

Yeah, an image would help. Are you constrained to creating the image yourself, or do you have the option to buy vector artwork of a horse in a similar pose? Does it have to match the photo pose exactly, just be vector?

[royallindy]

Thanks to all who are lending a suggestion or two. Basically, the situation I find myself is this...I need a different type of horse jumping image than this one used on this shirt http://horseoffcourse.com/edge.htm and I need it to be clean and a solid vector. I know that down the line I will need more as people have aproached me to create things specific for a riding discipline or breed. Hiring out every one really is not an option as I am guessing that the cost would outwiegh the benefit. So back to square one with many of your suggestions.

If someone wouldn't mind expaining. How are these images created? Like the image of the black horse jumping off in the above link or all of the royalty free stuff that I use on my site for example. Are they drawn first and then scanned and cleaned up?

[urstwile]

I'd say that D-Frag's and Cornfed's solutions are going to work the best for you, if you're forced to do all of these yourself.

[emberleo]

Vector imaging is definitely one of the best ways to deal with these sort of issues especially if you want to have continual good quality. I definitely suggest you take the time to learn the ins and outs of the pin tool. It's incredibly important and much more efficient than trying to find other ways around creating the image yourself. Find a good tutorial and don't expect to master it in one sitting because it won't happen.

[royallindy]

I experimented last night. I have my first image done after reading a tutorial on the pen and I am picking a few books up from the library tonight. This is kind of what I was after, but need to clean it up a bit. I think the legs look a bit funny. Everyone ws right. The pen tool is what it is going to take I think! What a confusing little tool though! Anyhow, just wanted to thank everyone for being so helpful!

http://horseoffcourse.com/temp/jumpfrontend.gif

[SharkFinStudios]

Now you are getting it! That is coming along nicely. Actually the legs look ok to me. Some minor tweaking there, but they look good. What I would adjust is the head and the mane. The head looks very 'blocky' and could use some slight curves so everything isn't in such a straight line. As far as the mane, make it more flowy. Do those and I think you have the image down.

Are you putting text on the shirt as well or just this image?

[Alan G]

Couple of tips regarding the pen tool. (You're doing pretty well so far, by the way!)
1. Go to Lynda.com and check out the training videos. There are several on Photoshop that cover different versions (sounds like you've got 7), and the pen tool is well covered.
2. Get Adobe Illustrator 101 (DVD) by Matt Kloskowski and/or Adobe Illustrator 1-on-1 (book plus CD) by Deke McClelland. Either of these will get you, if not from Zero to 60, at least to cruising speed very quickly. Neither one is very expensive, especially since you can get the book from your local library.

[bazman]

Learn the pen tool. It has soooo many uses, this would be a great way of getting to grips with it.