Step Four

Now I open the pict in Adobe Streamline, a simple little program that just converts grayscale images into eps outline format. I only use two functions here. Under the options menu there's "Conversion Setup" which gives you a window like this:

These are the settings I used for this font artwork. I like to have more curves than straight lines so I changed that from the factory defaults. Also I changed the details per inch ("Tolerance"). I don't know what the other stuff does.

I selected a portion of the artwork and converted it (File: Convert). I didn't like the way the "R" was being broken up, so I hit undo (command-z) and went in to adjust the threshold level. This is under "Options: Color/Grayscale Setup". It gives you a window like this:

I moved the threshold slider from 50% to 39% so anything that's 39% black or darker in grayscale mode goes to black when outlined. This way more of the image goes to black. Here's the before and after:

You can zoom in real close on your image, convert a part of it, undo, adjust your settings, and convert again until you've got something that looks cool. Many a font has come out of accidental settings in Streamline. This is a good place to play around with your scan to see what comes up.

Above is an example of two different typefaces that came from the same grayscale file when I was first learning how Streamline works. I was trying to make something that looked like the top font (CrustiEr) and ended up with the bottom font (Moonshine) because I didn't have the details per inch high enough.

When you are happy with your conversion, save it as an Illustrator file and quit Streamline. Open it up in Illustrator.

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