How to get a Centerline Trace in Illustrator 🤔

[Jules]

Oh my pleasure…it came up in another thread and I deleted it when I realized the OP was using Inkscape, not Illustrator. But I figured some new AI users might not know about it yet, so what the heck…

[rpratt]

OMG! (Hug)

[cynd11]

Excellent writeup @jules! This is how I’ve always done it but your explanation is exceptionally clear. Thanks!

[bkressley]

Thanks!

[Hillary]

Thank you. This is very helpful!

[jeremy]

Thanks for this tip, I will be using it on my next trace project!

[marshakt]

Thanks Jules, I’ve been fighting Inkscape and debating upgrading to Illustrator or Draw. This tip alone might push me over the edge. Do you have a trick to go the other way? Meaning, start with a line drawing and turning it into a double vector version?

[Jules]

Absolutely, and that is even easier. Take your single line stroke, set a really wide Stroke width for it, and then select it, and do Object > Expand. (Boom! Two lines.)

[adrianf]

An inkscape version of this tutorial would be great if there are any inscape gurus out there!

[Jules]

Inkscape has a plugin. There’s a link in the Matrix (just added it when I wrote this up.).

[marshakt]

Sweeet!

[morganstanfield]

@Jules, I could hug you! This is just what I needed for a project I’m working on now. Thanks for saving me the time!

[pam4arts]

Thanks!

[fugee13]

I am having some serious with this and I’d really appreciate some help. When I try to do what you said it takes away most of the image and just keeps a few random black segments of the outline. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I have a line drawing a bart simpson. I want to engrave the inside line art and then cut out the outline shape of bart. How do I do that? This centerline trace is something I really need to figure out because I’ll need to use it a lot. PLEASE HELP!

[Jules]

If you want to engrave the inside lines and then cut out around them, you do not want to do this kind of trace. (This will make cut or score lines out of the whole thing.)

All you need to do to engrave the image is Embed the jpeg image into the SVG file. The Glowforge will take care of engraving the image for you. Then you would need to create a Cut line around the image. You can do that with the Auto-Trace but it takes a few steps.

I will put some screen shots up later that show how to do it using Auto-Trace.

[Jules]

@fugee13 - I’ve put up a little tutorial on the process in Illustrator - here:

How to Create a Cut Line around a bitmap Engrave in Illustrator

A question came up in another tutorial about how to add a cutting outline to an image that you want to engrave in Adobe Illustrator. There are several ways to do it. Some of them would involve using another program like Photoshop or GIMP, and those might be a little easier for beginners, but rather than having to bring yet another program into the mix, I thought I’d show how it can be done in Illustrator. Creating a Shaped Cut Line in Illustrator: 0. Look closely at your jpeg image for …

[pam4arts]

Thanks so much for posting this

[Jules]

No prob!

[tricia.brooks]

Adobe illustrator looks a little different on my screen so I am unable to follow these steps. Not sure what i am doing wrong.

[dklgood]

Welcome to the forum.

What looks different? How far did you get in this example before things looked different?