Vectorizing a Logo From an Image

This tutorial describes in detail how to recreate a logo from a small GIF image that will be suitable to be used in a desktop publishing layout program such as QuarkXPress® or Adobe® InDesign®. It sometimes occurs that a company will not have their logo in vector format. Whether it gets lost or was never delivered in vector format (even though it may have originally been drawn in a vector program) or for whatever reason, you may be called upon to recreate it even from as little as a scan of a printed piece.

I wish to thank the Eco-Life Foundation for allowing permission to use their logo in this example. In this tutorial you will utilize a number of software applications together to achieve the desired result. In this tutorial I used :

Adobe® Photoshop® CS
Adobe® Streamline®
Macromedia® FreeHand® MX 2004

If you prefer, you could use Adobe® Illustrator® instead of FreeHand as the illustration program.

QuickTime® Movies

This tutorial employs QuickTime® movies to help demonstrate how to do the various steps. You will need the QuckTime plugin for your browser. If you don't already have it, you can download it free from the Apple® website here. Your monitor should be setup with a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768 pixels for best viewing. When you click a link to one of the QuickTime movies, it will stream to your computer and start playing automatically. The movies will play with a control bar with VCR controls. You can pause and replay the movie with these controls if you want. If it takes a little extra time to start, then the movie is just streaming enough to your drive to play without interruption. It is simply adjusting to the speed of your connection or network conditions at the time. Just be patient, it will start. The movies were recorded on a Macintosh® so I used Macintosh commands in the narratives. Windows® users please see the translations for these commands at the tutorial steps that show the movies.

Snap To Guides and Snap To Point

In Photoshop® and FreeHand® make sure that "Snap To Guides" is setup. In Photoshop click View > Snap To > Guides. In FreeHand click View > Guides > Snap To Guides. Also in FreeHand, click View > Snap To Point to make sure "Snap To Point" is also enabled.

The Strategy

This is a 2-color logo. The strategy is to first separate the 2 colors into individual shapes that we can trace with Adobe® Streamline® which converts raster images into vector art, then use Adobe® FreeHand® or Illustrator® to clean up the converted vector art to make an EPS file that is suitable for print layouts.

With this logo, the easiest approach to take is to select only the orange areas when separating the two colors because the orange areas are the easiest to isolate. We will first select the orange areas, then invert the selection so everything except the orange is copied. This will isolate the green color. Then we will select the orange areas directly and copy only these for the second color.

Part I: Separate The Green Color

In this part, the best approach is to select the orange areas, then invert the selection so everything except the orange colored areas are selected. This will be the fastest and easiest way to separate the green color.

1. The first step is to load the GIF image into Photoshop®. Click File > Open to open the file.

2. When you first open the file, please observe the Layers Palette. Next to the layer thumbnail image, it says Index. This indicates that the file is indexed color. GIF images use indexed color so we first have to convert it to True Color RGB. This tutorial requires that we work in RGB format so to convert the image to RGB click Image > Mode > RGB. Please notice in the Layers Palette that the word "Index" no longer appears next to the layer, rather you see the word, "Layer 1". Photoshop® does not allow you to add layers to an indexed color image, but it is easy enough to convert to RGB format.

3. For clarity, we will add a new layer to the file and Bucket-Fill it with white so you can see the artwork more clearly. Click the small curled page icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette. This is the "Create a new layer" button.

4. Next, drag the new layer underneath Layer 1 to position it underneath it. Look at the animation below to see how this is done.

5. Next, if the default foreground and background colors are not black and white, click the small black and white icon to the lower left of the color icons at the bottom of the Toolbox.

6. Next, switch the foreground and background colors in the Toolbox by clicking the little arrows in the upper right corner of the the color icons at the bottom of the Toolbox. This will change the foreground color to white so when we use our painting tools, we will be working with white.

7. Next, select the Paint Bucket Tool and make sure the new layer is selected and click anywhere in the document window. This will flood-fill the layer and give the image a white background. Now it is easier to see the detail of the artwork.

8. Next we need to upsample the image so we have more pixels to work with. Click Image > Image Size. In the Image Size dialog please note that this image has a resolution of 72 PPI (pixels per inch). Put a check mark in the "Resample Image" checkbox.

9. Then enter 300 in the Resolution text box. Please note that the number of pixels in the Width and Height boxes now increase to accommodate the new image size. Click "OK" when done.

At this point it would be wise to save the file. Click File > Save As and choose a file name. In this example, I called the file "logo rgb 300.psd".

10. The image will enlarge and new pixels will be created to "fill in" the areas added in the upsampling process.

Note: Photoshop® will allow you to upsample an indexed color image, but please bear in mind that an indexed color image has a maximum of 256 colors while a true color RGB image has over 16 million colors. When you upsample a true color RGB image there will be more intermediate colors to fill in the areas of new pixels than with indexed color. In this tutorial we need the extra colors to provide better lines to trace with Adobe® Streamline® (the tracing program).