Illustrator for screen printing - Convert image to vector easily with Image Trace

[@miketheprintman]

Image trace is an amazing tool in Illustrator. Your approach is perfect. The only thing I would personally do differently, would be to find the font and retype it instead of using the trace function on the text. Other than that it's a perfect example of taking a low res image and making it print ready. Thanks for sharing.

[@startupscreenprinting]

Thanks Mike! Totally agree. For this order I actually did find the font to replace the text. You’re right always best to use a font vs image trace as it often struggles with text, especially serifs

[@ivanramos5735]

how did you figure the pantone color # (Blue)

[@startupscreenprinting]

Just matched what I saw on screen with a Pantone book I have in the shop to get as close as I could.

[@JoeSenger]

I've used this method on a 3-color .png logo. White is a boundary color of the logo, and a tan also connects to the outer design boundary. When I expand it, these two color fields in the logo go away entirely, leaving the black design areas and one tiny spec of white that is bounded entirely by the black. I've tried the 3 color option instead of the black and white and still can't sort it. Ideas? Thank you!

[@startupscreenprinting]

Sometimes it depends on the quality as to whether image trace works well or not. And sometimes if you can get one section or color good I duplicate and change image trace settings to get the other color and then combine it all. Otherwise doing a separation in Photoshop might work. Send me the file and I might could do some videos to post using it that would show you how I’d do it

[@DivyaaIyer]

Can't we do screen printing without image trace, because i have detailed artwork mandala which i did in procreate, i saved as TIFF file and transferred in illustrator file and embedded it... Now if i convert it into vector through image trace whole artwork is getting spoiled. Please tell me what can be done ???

[@startupscreenprinting]

yeah the point with image trace is to get clean, vector artwork from something that's low quality. If your TIFF file is black, then you're good to go and no real need to convert to vector.