Print Design: Exporting Paths to Illustrator in Photoshop
by Joey at 4:44 pm
Instead of purchasing pre-made stock vector images all the time, I decided to create my own. In this tutorial I will show you an easy way to create a single tree vector image using Photoshop and exporting the paths to Illustrator to manipulate to your liking.
I found a very nice photo from Dreamstime, and it was a free download. Opening it in Photoshop, you can see it’s already a silhouetted image, which helps out cause even more. Using the Magic Wand Tool, select the black portion of the photograph. As shown in Step 1, go to Select and choose Similar. This will grab the rest of the black near the selected portion of the photo, grabbing those small bits and pieces.
As in Step 2, go to select -> Inverse. Now hit the delete button. The background should disappear. If it doesn’t, then you need to check your layers palette and ensure the lock graphic is not on the right side of the background layer. Again, go to Select -> Inverse, so that the black tree outline is selected once again.
Once that is ready, we can move on to Step 3. Right click somewhere within the selection. Click Make Work Path. When the prompt comes to select the tolerance, make sure it is set to 0.5. With the path created, go to your path palette. Double-click on the work path and call it Path 1.
Now you can begin to export your paths to Illustrator. Go to File -> Export -> Paths to Illustrator. Name the file at your discretion.
Find the file, and open it in Illustrator. The file will appear blank. Using the mouse, click and drag to select the path. Blue dots will appear at this point. Now you can fill it with your selected color and resize.
Tags: exporting, illustrator, paths, photoshop, print design, vector
