Illustrator: Change the default "Image Trace" Preset button to your custom settings

Glowforge Tips and Tricks
1

I love the illustrator image trace button:
image

But I don’t love going into image trace and messing around all the time, turning off white, etc, and I couldn’t figure out an elegant solution to using my custom GF settings, and mash that one button.

So I googled around, and found an article, which I will link, as it will describe it better than I can. (and has a windows spin)

First saved my favorite trace settings:

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Closed illustrator.

I went to the folder:

/Users//Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings/en_US

I first copied / backed up, then opened the file:
Vectorizing Presets

and moved the top bit of data from my newest preset: collection 20,

	/adobe.vectorize.ip.threshold 181
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.grayscale 50
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.AutomaticcolorsFidelity 100.0
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.FullcolorsFidelity 100.0
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.Limitedcolors 30
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.PathFidelity 94.0
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.CornerFidelity 93.0
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.NoiseFidelity 4
	/adobe.vectorize.ip.OverlappingOrAbutting 0
	/adobe.vectorize.tracing.fills 1
	/adobe.vectorize.tracing.strokes 0
	/adobe.vectorize.tracing.maxstrokeweight 10.0
	/adobe.vectorize.output.snapcurvestolines 1
	/adobe.vectorize.output.ignorewhite 1

and pasted it over the similar text in preset7 which is the button, saved the file, opened illustrator, and it worked.

Now I can’t say my settings are great, but they work for me most of the time.

I will certainly take advice on presets choices!

Links as promised:
Change Default Button:

Location of file to edit on a mac:

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18 Likes
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Thank you so much! Made all the detailed changes spelled out above – and everything works “as advertised”. I’m now able to (in Illustrator) “mash one button” to get a great image trace!

3 Likes
3

Strange, I am using the latest Illustrator program and I don’t see any vectorizing in

Using Windows 10
Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 26 Settings\en_US\x64

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Thanks so much for this information. I am one that almost always goes to specific settings in Image Trace too so this should save me time. I was trying to do something similar (macros?) automating several steps in Word a couple of days ago and my googling just kept failing me. I think it is time my old brain took a couple of refresher courses in the main computer programs I use.

5

If you’re on Windows this might come in handy for other programs

3 Likes
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@marks0266 in testing on a new machine, still on Mac, so maybe it doesn’t translate, but it didn’t have the file in the folder, then I went and created a custom preset and saved it as a new preset, and the file appeared in the folder. I am not sure if the same logic occurs on a PC, just something I noticed.

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1 Like
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Thanks! I use Macs but I’ll still watch it as I’m sure I’ll take away something useful from it.

2 Likes