Album logo from sketch to digital

[FrostGiant]

Here's a question I've got for anyone who cares. I've got my album logo sketched out and I need to transfer it to digital so I can drop it in place. But it needs to be cleaned up (letter spacing, straighten lines, line thickness etc.). What's the best way to go about doing this? I've got a feeling I'm going to have to redo the sketch, but if there's an easier way I'd love to know. Thnx.

 

[ColdDarkNord]

convert it in .eps

 

[B-lial]

better redraw it under illustrator so it will be a complete vectorial logo wich can be scaled more easely and without loosing definition.

 

[wingnut4]

what does .eps mean?

 

[ColdDarkNord]

Better use CorelDraw (more convenient to make such things) for redraw ur logo and then export in eps format.

 

[FrostGiant]

Thanks. Kind of what I thought, more software.

 

[Cerulean]

Allright, don't listen to any of them

No serious: ColdDarkNord is right about the eps, but not about the CorelDraw, that's a kiddy program. And surely don't do what B-lial suggests, it can be done much easier. All you need is Streamline and Illustrator, both Adobe programs. Streamline is a program which converts pixels into vectors. That means that you can (after the convertion) very easily change things in your logo, and that you don't have pixels, so when you enlarge the image, you will always keep perfect graphics without distortion or big ugly squared pixels.
So: convert the sketch in Streamline to eps format with vectors, and then go edit it in Illustrator. I have to do such stuff every damn day at school

 

[B-lial]

well thats almost the same way i was talking about. except that i dont trust streamline for complex figures..so i prefer to do it completely manual directly on Illustrator..but its true your way is the easiest.

 

[ColdDarkNord]

Corel never been "kiddy" programme. Its like this shitty talks abour Win vs Unix. And streamline and CorelTrace is total shit when u need to work over logo.

 

[FrostGiant]

It'd actually be much easier to do completely on the computer and screw the sketch I think. I'd really like to have and the spacings, line thinckness, etc. set right away rather than adjusting them later. My sketch is pretty close to what I'd like, but no where near professional looking.

What really sucks is the fact that I just lost my job so purchasing new software may be out of the question for a while. I've got a contingency plan though. The logo is basically a glorified times roman font. I've already played around with it and it doesn't look bad, but I prefer the one I sketched up. It's much more creative and intersting than using fonts everybody and their mother uses. I'll have to do some number crunching and see what I've got for cash.

 

[Seems like Trav]

Draw it in ink. scan it hi res. streamline it. touch up in illustrator. wa-la.

 

[Cerulean]

Aye, that's my story but in short I forgot to mention the ink though, that's indeed the best way

 

[complexprocess]

I've noticed the last version of streamline (that I could find info about anyway) was 4.0 released several years ago, perhaps in 1997. Is there a newer version, or is that what people are using (for those that use it at all).

Flash also traces bitmaps or "raster images", though it isn't good with sharp corners, and it's tough to trick the output into an adobe product. I think I ended up exporting to eps as one of the "alternate media" settings which it allows you to select for cases where people don't have the flash plugin. It was really an obnoxios workaround that didn't even yield excellent results.

 

[mattcira]

Scan it, convert to b/w... make some adjustments to the color levels so it is fairly black vs. white without having hard edges... remove all white from the image so you have a transparent layer with just the black logo stuff... then create an alpha channel with the slection of the logo. Export the layer to Vector Paths... sounds hard, but it is pretty easy, I have done it a million times with OCR stuff at work. People give me photocopies of photocopies and want it in a WORD document.... so I have to do all of those steps to get it right so OCR will recognize the characters.