There are two ways a PC can describe a image.

One is by Pixel, that means the image data discribes every single pixel that has to be displayed on the monitor.

However there is another way, by Vectors.
In school you learned, or will learn, how a mathematical formula can be drawn out.
This is basicly how vector art works.
Instead of pixel informations a vector image is build up of mathematical formulas.
But in modern programs you wont see anything of the formulas (thank god).

Vector can have several advantages over Pixel,
the images are smaller (kb wise) and you can resize it as much as you want it, without degrading the image(good for printing as you can make a image small and blow it up later).

Disadvantage however is,
to archive photorealistic quality in an image means alot of formulas, resulting not only in huge files, but also in slow display speed (the computer must do the formulas afterall).

For programs:
Adobe Illustrator, Coreldraw are the biggest one PSP has some vector funktionality in it aswell.
And there are tons of others I think.

btw. Flash and 3d Programs are Vectorbased aswell.

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

You can convert your scanned lineart into vectors using adobe streamline.

But I dunno 130 euro is a bit too much (as allways with adobe) for a program that only convert pixel to vector, tho its the best on the market from what I heard and saw.

[ 05-11-2003: Message edited by: G.i.A.m. ]

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

quote:

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Originally posted by G.i.A.m.:
But I dunno 130 euro is a bit too much (as allways with adobe) for a program that only convert pixel to vector, tho its the best on the market from what I heard and saw.

[ 05-11-2003: Message edited by: G.i.A.m. ]

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I think doing a search for "vector, trace, convert" should find some of them.

VanillaBD sorry I never worked with Illustrator so I cant help here.

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Wer nicht vom Meister lernt, lernt nie etwas.

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Does anyone know how to work with Illustrator?

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I do, but it is quite hard to explain in words if you haven't used vector tools before, BUT half of learning illustrator is learning how to use the PEN tool, so look for tutorials about that.

Try this:
Choose the pen tool, click a point in the middle of the canvas.

Do NOT let go of the mouse button but drag it out to one side.

This should give you a dot with two handles, one pointing to where you drag and the other in the opposite direction.

Now click a new dot somewhere else, but this time do NOT hold the mouse button down.

You should now see a curved line between your two dots.

Now if you choose the WHITE ARROW and click and drag on of the handles on the first dot, you will move your curved line.

If you have a Wacom Tablet, you can use a modifed version of the freehand tool (Adjust it's resiliance, smoothness and so fourth to make it nice and curvy, or rough and detailed, according to your tastes) and do pretty well for yourself without the Pen tool, but understanding vectors is the basis of Illustrator, so sooner or later, you're going to figure things out the hard way.

With practice though, you can achieve perfect curves in just about any situation you want with the Pen tool. I suppose a good other alternative, as mentioned earlier by someone else, is to use Streamline to scan in your work, although in my experience, you'd have to have traced it over with a dark soft pencil lead or inked it, then adjust the contrast in photoshop to make it stand out in order for Streamline not to go insane (Streamline has it's technical limits, so you practically have to spell it out for it in literal black and white if you want it to do a good job)

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