Chapter 8. Mixing It Up: Working with Vectors and Pixels

There's no velvet rope barring entry to Adobe Illustrator's exclusive vector graphics club. Pixels are always welcomed inside. In fact, in the last chapter, we learned how certain Live Effects use pixels to produce their appearance. In Illustrator, there is indeed a peaceful coexistence between vectors and pixels, and as we discussed back in Chapter 2, Vectors 101, there are benefits to combining both vectors and pixels (such as adding a soft drop shadow to text). There's no reason why you should feel that you have to choose only one graphic type or the other.

Although Illustrator does have the ability to support pixels in some ways (as we'll see throughout this chapter), it in no way replaces the need for applications like Adobe Photoshop. Quite the contrary, in this chapter we'll see how you can bring pixel-based images from Photoshop into Illustrator documents. You will also learn how both Photoshop and Illustrator can work together by enabling you to share editable content between them. You can then focus on producing the kinds of graphics that you need by relying on the strengths of each of these powerful applications.

So turn up the music and feel the pulsing beat of vectors dancing with pixels, because this chapter will also cover Illustrator CS2's ability to assimilate pixels and convert them into vector paths using a feature called Live Trace.