Will Xara X-2 top this?

[carygee]

Was tooling around with AI-CS2 this weekend and was blown away by the Live Trace|Live Paint features. Talk about show-stoppers!

Raises the bar for the next release of Xara X (assuming I haven't passed on by then http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[carygee]

Was tooling around with AI-CS2 this weekend and was blown away by the Live Trace|Live Paint features. Talk about show-stoppers!

Raises the bar for the next release of Xara X (assuming I haven't passed on by then http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[gwpriester]

The Live Trace is pretty awesome isn't it?

I have not explored the Live Paint.

Gary

[RTK]

All the reviews I have read are pretty much freaking out over the live trace feature. Unfortunataly very few reviews have detailed examples... And as far as I can tell, the trial downwload from Adobe is not CS2 but CS? (Or maybe they haven't updated the webpage yet)? I'm very excited to see what it can do with scanned line drawings... http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

[Don Lamb]

Gary,

How does Live Trace compare with Adobe Streamline. Any improvements?

[gwpriester]

I gave the live trace a good workout when I was writing my review of the Creative Suite 2.

First of all it is very fast and more accurate than you might expect. But then it is just Adobe Streamline, tweaked and made available in Illustrator. For what it's worth, CorelDRAW has had this built in trace cability for many versions now.

It has a series of presets that include Color 6 and 16 colors. low and high fidelity, grayscale, hand drawn sketch, detailed illustration (b&W), comic art (b&w). technical drawing (b&W), black and white logo, inked drawing (b&w) and type.

The tracing is very accurate and the speed of the process is relatively quick.

Gary

[Albacore]

What a time saver.

Just think Gary how easy it would have been to use with your latest workbook logo design.

In most of the reviews that I have read it is much better than Corel Trace and also it is a live feature.

[gwpriester]

How does Live Trace compare with Adobe Streamline. Any improvements?

To be honest, Don, I have not used Streamline for many generations so I can't answer your question. I suspect that as with any technology, the Adobe engineers probably looked at the code and tweaked it a bit.

Just think Gary how easy it would have been to use with your latest workbook logo design.

http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif (eh, heh heh...) I did use it. I just did not want to make a big deal about it.

But I brought the trace into Xara and did a lot of tweaking.

Xara is still worlds ahead of Illustrator in terms of ease of use and interface. I always feel like I am in an alien environment when I use Illustrator. A better analogy might be trying to run in knee-deep mud. But if someone has a better tool, Live Trace for example, then why not use it?

Gary

[carygee]

For those who do not have access to AI-CS2, I found this cool little video tutorial that highlights the live trace tool. Hope you find it interesting:

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/.../livetrace.htm

[LogoVend]

To be honest I've not used illustrator since 8 or 9 so I had a download of CS2 and yeah the trace is better - but it's still very slow and annoying - as Gary says.

Just give me a mesh-shade for fill and transparency in Xara X2 and no other tweeks or changes and I'll be happy - it's about the only thing it Xara doesn't have and kinda annoyings me. Oh yeah and better envolope handling.