So you’ve wasted an entire day trying to fix an automated process that could’ve taken 15 minutes max if you had done it by hand from the beginning. Then you’ll spend 3 hours trying to clean it up and you’ll drop the towel realizing it’s almost impossible. Finally, you go into outline view, and you realize that the very simple thing you traced has hundreds, if not thousands of points and anchors. Then you have to do a very trivial and easy task, like making a clipping mask with the thing you Image Traced but when you do it, your whole project breaks… you scratch your head trying to figure out what’s the problem. Then you work on your project for 2 hours.

After a good 10 minutes of trial and error with different Image Trace settings, you might end up with a nice result. You might be able to use the Image Trace function and get a mediocre result. As much as you try to avoid it, if you want specific results and quality levels, you’ll go back crawling to Illustrator with your tail between your legs.

Vector art is absolutely a necessity for a lot of projects. I really hated Illustrator and I did my best to avoid it, but this is what happened: I was like you when I was learning design. The program has an Image Trace function that automatically traces images to have them as vectors, but even tho it’s gotten better year after year, I’ve only used it a minuscule amount of times. To convert to vector you’ll end up having to learn Illustrator anyways. I’m not understanding his process, why would a professional do it that way? Why not finish in Illustrator if the result is to be vector, or why not do the whole thing in Photoshop? Thanks in advance! And on that note, I watched this video and he sketches in Procreate and then finishes and colors in Photoshop. The question is, is there a reliable process that would allow me to continue working primarily in Procreate and then convert to vector? Or do I really have to just bite the bullet and buy and learn Illustrator? I know there are other programs but if I’m going to do it then I’d rather get used to the industry standard.

paying for!) Adobe products, but more importantly I’m concerned about potential artistic limitations with vector art. I’m not really interested in learning (or esp. I’m just starting what will be a long project (details in past posts) and the printers require vector graphics, which I have no experience with.

Procreate to vector