Home > Tutorials > Illustrator > Intermediate

Illustrator Tutorial 0002 - Creating a Cut-out style Illustration from a Photo Template

Creating an illustration from a photo is a fairly simple, if time-consuming, process in Illustrator. Explaining this process is a little more difficult. In this tutorial, we are going follow a process I used to turn an element from a photo into a vector object for use on my web site and printed materials.

We are going to turn this	into this.

Here goes. Download this archive,

ai0002-archive.sit - 19 K

and let's get started!

I started with a grayscale image and used the Cutout filter in Photoshop (FILTERS>ARTISTIC> CUTOUT) in order to cut down and simplify things. I could have stopped there, but the result was not very clean, would not be easily scalable, and would not have the look that I wanted. So, I turned to Illustrator.

1. Open Illustrator. A new document should open automatically. Go to the FILE menu and choose PLACE. Select the ai0002-template.jpg file from the ai0002-archive folder.

2. The placed file will appear on the first layer of the document. We want to lock this layer to prevent it from being accidentally moved. Go to the Layer palette and click the lock box (next to the Visibility box).

3. Now, let's add a layer for the base color. In the Layers palette, click the New Layer icon . Double-click the layer to see the layer options. Rename the layer "base color" and click the OK button.

4. Select the eyedropper tool from the Tools palette. Click on the medium gray under the eye to set the stroke color. Leave the fill to None. We will reverse this after drawing our shape.

5. Once the color is set, select the Pen tool. This tool creates Bezier curves. Use the pen tool to trace around the edge of the color area. You can dim the placed image by double-clicking the layer and checking the Dim Placed Images box. The shape does not have to be perfect (sometimes line is more interesting if it is not:). Once you have that color area created, lock the layer and create a new layer.

Looks really good right now, right...

6. Now, we need to create the darker area of the eyebrow and the shadow of the eyelid. Hide the base-color layer in order to see the template image. Select the eyedropper tool and click the eyebrow to get the correct color. Use the pen tool to create the shapes.

7. Repeat the process until you have the rough shapes of the eye and eyebrow.

8. Looks pretty good, but something is missing. If we placed this file into a Photoshop document, we would see that we are missing the white of the eye. It looks good in Illustrator because the page color is white. Luckily, this is a minor problem that is easily corrected. Create a new layer and call it white.

9. In the new layer, create an oval of the approximate size needed. We are not looking to create something EXACTLY the correct size, but rather a CURVE that will be correct for the lower left edge of the eye.

10. Rotate the oval so that the bottom left curve is at the correct angle.

11. We need to change the order of the layers. In the Layers palette, grab the white layer and drag it to below the base color layer.

Hide Layer 1 and see the final product!

There you have it! A scalable, vector version of a photographic element! Sure beats drawing that out by hand!