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Converting coloured maps to black and white line drawings in Illustrator

Monolith

On hundreds of occassions, I've converted Digimap Carto data to Black and White line drawings in Illustrator. I need to sort this out quicksharp as I need to export the file as .dwg to mill as a 2d profile on the CNC machine tomorrow but can't engage my tired brain to see sense.

To explain:

This is what my obtained map data appears as



This is what I normally end up with from the very simple process of clicking > View >Outlines. I'm importing the image in jpg format.




I'm far from a hotshot in Illustrator but it's totally flummoxed me why I just see a white box around where the image is instead of seeing each of the elements outlined as per the latter image.

Any help is much appreciated for an Illustrator idiot here!

 
Nov 11, 09 4:38 pm
LML

do you usually import as .jpg? The only way I'm aware of to get linework out of a raster image (like a .jpg) in illistrator is to use live trace. perhaps you were importing vector data previously? if you have the option, do that now.

Nov 11, 09 6:35 pm  · 
 · 
Monolith

I don't think I ever was. At least I can't remember that being the case. I just took it from Digimap (UK map services). Very confusing!

Nov 11, 09 8:14 pm  · 
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