Coverting to Vector in Illustrator

Let's begin!

Open your raster file in Illustrator. You’ll notice that your image is basically just a square that we can’t do much with. You'll also notice the edges are a little fuzzy or pixelated. We can fix that!

Select the object you want to make vector. Go to your Object menu. Scroll down to Image Trace and select Make and Expand.

 Now, when you select your image you’ll notice it is made of points.

Image Trace will create both the black and white portions of your image. If you use the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow), you can select a white area. Then go to your Select menu, scroll down to Same and select Fill Color. Delete those shapes.

Another trick to make sure you don't have extra white shapes or empty shapes is to move the black portions of your design slightly and view in Outline mode (CTRL/CMD + Y).

Depending on the quality and complexity of your image, you may have an unwanted amount of points. This can cause trouble with the laser. The laser follows a map from point to point. If your design has 180 points on one line, it’s going to slow things down and possibly cause issues. If you can simplify your path you are going to get better results.

Select your object and go to the Object menu again. Scroll down to Path and select Simplify. Make sure live Preview is checked. By just reducing your curve precision slightly you will notice you lose a lot of those points.

Now that you have a clean and simple vector object you’re ready to go through the pre-flight checklist and export your file. When designing in Illustrator, please send us your files in .ai format.