Adobe illustrator 10 Manuale Utente

The auto trace tool traces any image shape automatically. With this tool, you can click the 
edge of a shape you want to trace, and Illustrator draws the entire outline of the shape. 
You can use the auto trace tool to trace lines as well as shapes. When you use the auto 
trace tool to trace a line, it travels all the way around the line and comes back to where you 
clicked, forming a closed path.

The auto trace tool is especially suited to tracing simple shapes and lines. For the best 
results when tracing artwork, trace simpler shapes with the auto trace tool and draw more 
complex shapes with either the pencil tool or the pen tool. You can also use a dedicated 
tracing program such as Adobe Streamline

™

.

1 Open the file that contains the bitmap image you want to trace.

2 Select the auto trace tool  .

3 Position the cross hair on the object you want to trace. You must position the cross hair 
within 6 pixels of the edge of a bitmap shape. The auto trace tool is guided by the 
boundary between differently shaded areas. 

4 Do one of the following:

To trace the entire object, click the object. Illustrator draws the path, beginning where 

you clicked, and follows the shape, keeping the shape on its right. 

The path may be drawn clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on where you click and 
on the shape of the path.

To trace part of the object, drag the pointer from the place on the bitmap shape where 

you want the path to start to the place where you want the path to end. When tracing 
only part of an image, you must start and stop dragging within 2 pixels of the edge of 
the shape.

To connect a new auto trace path to an existing auto trace path, start dragging at the 

anchor point where you want the paths to connect. 

The lines and shapes in bitmap images often contain gaps that become visible when you 
enlarge your view of the image. You can control the accuracy with which the auto trace 
tool traces these gaps using the Tracing Gap option in the Type & Auto Tracing Preferences 
dialog box. 

The gap distance setting tells the auto trace tool to ignore gaps that are equal to or less 
than the number of pixels you specify. For example, setting the distance to 1 tells the auto 
trace tool to ignore gaps of 1 pixel or less.

1 Choose Edit > Preferences > Type & Auto Tracing (Windows and Mac OS 9) or 
Illustrator > Preferences > Type & Auto Tracing (Mac OS X).

Enter 0 (the default), 1, or 2 in the Tracing Gap text box. The value is calculated in number 
of pixels. Click OK.