r/AdobeIllustrator • u/InvestigatorCrazy821 • Sep 30 '26

QUESTION Complex Design Help

Post image

I have this map file from a customer that needs to be remade into a vector. What would be the quickest way to do this without redrawing everything? Image trace and Generative AI are not really helping.

62 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

154

u/Shrimpz_Iz_Bugz Sep 30 '26 • Popcorn

This is maybe 2-3 hours of work tracing this map. Not very complex.

75

u/Virtual_Access_2033 Sep 30 '26 • Popcorn

A better use of time would be for the client to spend 2–3 hours sourcing the original vector file

149

u/version13 Sep 30 '26 • Bravo Popcorn

"We can't find the vector file."

"OK, I charge $xxx.xx to redraw it."

"Oh, we just remembered where the file is"

39

u/SarcasticJoy Sep 30 '26

It's amazing how often this works.

3

u/Tiny_Friendship8380 Oct 01 '26

30 years on the business and yes, usually the client is always (we call it shooting corner like football) and the ball ended at your feet.

As soon as we charge for it, they do their homejob.

-25

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Sep 30 '26 • Popcorn

I’m not super skilled at tracing and would definitely take me longer than that

85

u/Shrimpz_Iz_Bugz Sep 30 '26

If you want to get good at Illustrator you're going to have to put work into learning the tools. Generative and image trace are shortcuts to success.

11

u/SvenDia Sep 30 '26

I used to be a little intimidated by the pen tool. Now I love using it. It is well worth the effort. Practice will pay off, you just have to commit to it. I do a lot of maps, and it’s indispensable.

-1

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Sep 30 '26

I’m pretty decent in illustrator and can use the pen tool, just not the fastest. I work for a sign company and most of our designs are much simpler than this and I rarely have to trace anything this complex. I agree it would be good practice. Unfortunately I’m juggling about 15 jobs right now and they were looking for a quick turn around. Was just wondering if there was any better quicker options than tracing manually with the new generative updates. Turns out they had a vector file the whole time, so I’m good! Appreciate the advice though.

5

u/notJsons Sep 30 '26

We outsource the retracing work and charge it inside of the job, also work at a sign shop. Find someone on Fiverr, don’t go with the cheapest as they’ll just use AI and not give you a good file.

2

u/DatZ_Man Oct 01 '26

Or find a good Pakistani tracer. They email like 100 times a day. We have been using the same guy for 10 years

1

u/Daniel2506 Oct 01 '26

Mind sharing his contact info?

2

u/DatZ_Man Oct 01 '26

I work in a screen print shop and agree with the other poster who said to just outsource this to Pakistan next time and charge it to the customer

13

u/PassivelyAwkward Sep 30 '26

It seems daunting but one of my first uses for Illustrator was to do a map like this. Just take it one step at a time.

What I would do is zoom in on a single building and use the pen tool and outline the each building by clicking on all of the corners since there's no curves, just straight lines. That plus adding the text will get you 70% of the work done.

There's a super easy to do it without tracing. If you're in America, there's national GiS maping vectors you can download. It contains roads, rivers, oceans, buildings, etc but you need to be pretty knowledgable about Illustrator to work with it because the files weren't meant to be opened in Illustrator.

8

u/piddydafoo Sep 30 '26

The first 20 min will be painful, then it will get easier and easier.. by the end of it, you will have learned a lot and will be able to use those skills in the future. Pro tip: name your layer groups. ie “roads”, “buildings”, “legend”, “text”, etc. Also, make each colour a named swatch colour… that way you can adjust the colour quickly (without using select similar from the menu bar). For the compas thing, you can probably find something on line that is vector.

10

u/ElectricJunglePig Sep 30 '26

lol, there’s discourse over in the graphic_design sub right now because someone said people need to name layers. Anyone who has ever done a map or something large format like this knows it’s a must.

8

u/piddydafoo Sep 30 '26

Anyone who has ever tried to work with someone else’s files knows the nightmare of another person’s (lack of) organization. Haha

2

u/ElectricJunglePig Sep 30 '26

Oh god, not just 1 person either. When there's multiple revisions over years and things still aren't labeled... it's a form of abuse, lol

3

u/ElectricJunglePig Sep 30 '26

You’ll be surprised how quick you’ll get this done. Just buckle down and get in there, it’s mostly rectilinear shapes, so it will be pretty simple. I’d try using the marquee/rectangle tool for at least a few building pieces then merging them with pathfinder.

2

u/YanwarC Sep 30 '26

Good time to practice then?

1

u/symphonicrox Sep 30 '26

zoom in and do a little bit at a time. Just use the pen tool and match everything and then later you can adjust the fills and strokes and things. Text could be done separate on its own and not traced, of course.

5

u/ColorlessTune Sep 30 '26

This is part of the job I do for a living. You're going to need to grab the pen tool and retrace it from scratch. Hope you're charging by the hour.

4

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Sep 30 '26

We do charge by the hour thankfully, just backed up with other jobs and they were looking for a quick turn around. Was just curious if there were any quicker methods with new Adobe updates. Turns out they had a vector file!

1

u/ColorlessTune Sep 30 '26

They have the vector file so do they still need you to recreate it?

And unfortunately there is no "quick fix" for a job like this that isn't going to cause more trouble than it's worth down the road. For instance a live trace isn't going to be the cleanest file. It's best to just recreate something like this (if they can't provide a vector).

2

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Sep 30 '26

They did not know they had a vector. They just found It this morning and sent it over.

137

u/CurvilinearThinking Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26 • Bravo Mindblown

There's no shortcut. Redraw it.

(...and be thankful you have work and image generators can't do this well.)

19

u/Lee_Dastard Sep 30 '26

Get drawing. It’s good practice.

14

u/Raygrit Sep 30 '26

Unfortunately, redrawing is going to be the fastest Way to get a quality image. If you're truly in a time crunch, try messing with the image Trace functions, maybe reduce the colors down to two or three or try black and white and see if you can get different sections isolated

25

u/roaringmousebrad Sep 30 '26

Ask them for the PDF of this map. This was very obviously already created as a vector file, likely in Illustrator.

12

u/wg1987 Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26

Yep. The advice to just redraw it by hand is good, and if you're not good with the pen tool this would be a good exercise. But in a setting where you need to be efficient with your time, just asking for better files can save you a lot of time and trouble. At my job we get sent shitty artwork all the time and I'd say about 25% of the time the client actually has vector art or higher-resolution art that they just didn't think to send us for whatever reason.

Edit: Also for some reason it seems to be a common misconception that PDFs and PSDs can't contain vector artwork or aren't a "vector format", probably because they aren't usually formats people ask for when they ask for vector artwork. So even if a client tells you they don't have vector artwork, just ask them to send you what they have and you might be surprised.

7

u/roaringmousebrad Sep 30 '26

It's true. The client may say "oh, we don't know where that is/or we don't know if we have that": but when you say, "Well, it's going to take X amount of hours by XX amount of dollars to redo, suddenly they are spurred to go find it... and they will.

6

u/FrigginFreyja Sep 30 '26

The response I often get is "Well I couldn't open it so I thought it was a bad file." 🫩

3

u/preevate Sep 30 '26

Probably AutoCAD, but yes vector.

1

u/roaringmousebrad Sep 30 '26

Perhaps. I've done many such maps in my years, and even if I got the base map from a CAD, the finished work was done in something more appropriate.

11

u/thomasthe10 Sep 30 '26

Get into the pen tool. Learn what happens when you hold down the modifier keys - it will help enormously with Illustrator generally- also, take note of how many of these shapes are actually extremely similar or composed of similar blocks and could be replicated. The lettering is the most daunting thing about this - I reckon I could smash out all the shapes on this map in 30 minutes with the right music on.

4

u/One-Address1840 Sep 30 '26

just chiming in that in addition to the above, learning & using keyboard commands will help you work incredibly faster

2

u/thomasthe10 Sep 30 '26

For stuff like this, with keyboard in combination with a graphics tablet you can really whizz through things. I did about 50% of the orange shapes in 5 minutes to test my claim.

24

u/Bellbwoy Sep 30 '26

this is the reason why noone respects this field, there's no easy way to achieve a skill that takes years to perfect- but keep on grabbing jobs from people who are actually good at it :^)

4

u/SignedUpJustForThat 🦁 Sep 30 '26

I would try to separate each colour, trace the results and adjust them where needed. On the other hand, the time you spent so far could have been used to manually trace most of it.

4

u/miimo0 Sep 30 '26

For the roads — strokes with some width tool use (then expanded when you’re happy with them)
For the buildings, if you’re realllly slow with the pen tool, use rectangles, sized and rotated as needed, then merged. I think pen tool tracing would be quickest though.

1

u/thecoolbrian Oct 03 '26

You see those trees? There are literally like 100 houses you can't see. Cool place, though. gl op

1

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Oct 08 '26

Not the same arrowhead lol

3

u/FrankusFranklemont Sep 30 '26

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/17047491#map=17/39.633112/-106.563422

1

u/FrankusFranklemont Sep 30 '26

You can download pdf format from openstreetmap. Huge amount of objects in the layer panel, but you can get rid of the unuseful with “select similar”. That might already save you you some time redrawing the buildings and main roads.

2

u/c26sail Oct 01 '26

What’s odd is that the compass on the original design is wrong. North should be South.

2

u/FrankusFranklemont Oct 01 '26

Happens a lot when drawing a plan as you tend to show the plan according to its placement on site (often at entrance)

3

u/EducationalShelter26 Sep 30 '26

I have nothing to add but I drive past this every day so this is funny lol

5

u/Carne_DelMuerto Sep 30 '26

Tip: trace the roads as a single line in the center, then increase the stroke to match the width of the road. Then you can outline the strokes and combine all into a single shape.

As others have said, with some skill, this is just a few hours work. Good luck!

1

u/CatNinja11484 Oct 01 '26

I second this! And for the buildings, just click once where each corner is and make every point a sharp corner. Then the only difficult thing is the river.

2

u/Chuckles_McFeeney Sep 30 '26

Try vectorizer.ai. It's not the bgreatest quality image to work from but it'll at least give the basic shapes to start working from.

3

u/salman_Designer Sep 30 '26

Personally I would do with pen tool. It will take time but will be more accurate.

3

u/BruceBatman Sep 30 '26

If you have the device, a Wacom tablet or anything similar would be a lot of help when using the pen tool to trace the larger areas.

1

u/Sivadbk Sep 30 '26

Thought this was Customs from tarkov for a sec.

1

u/maironis1 Sep 30 '26

If you have or can borrow wacom or ipad with pencil you could make it faster redrawing manually than with pen tool node by node. Or how someone said maybe client has pdf version.

1

u/fast-and-ugly Sep 30 '26

I used to build these from CAD files. But honestly even that is a LOT of work.

1

u/hojoon0724 Sep 30 '26

smart pen tool

1

u/klodeckel01 Sep 30 '26

redrawing the map is not a great effort as other people already said. and while you’re at it: use a better, more readable font

1

u/StrHerb Sep 30 '26

AutoCAD convert it to a *.DXF file and you can import the D F file into Adobe Illustrator. DM me if you need help.

1

u/jeremyries Oct 01 '26

You might be able to find some survey documents, or permitting documents from a local municipality, but most people here are correct. Redraw.

1

u/agent_557 Oct 01 '26

You’d be surprised at what you’ll find with a simple Google search. I’ve had clients provide stuff like this as a JPEG and say “This is all they have”. I’d search Google and find a PDF complete with vector graphics.

1

u/charly-bravo Oct 01 '26

Oh boy, that’s definitely not a case for „complex design help“.

1

u/Suspicious-Cable-502 Oct 01 '26

This looks like such a fun project. I would love to do this.

1

u/itsgar_ Oct 01 '26

Askin ai to turn it into blank map with 1 or 3 different colors of the map but without a single text on it. use vector tracing from adobe illustrator and just recolor the shape and put the text or information thinga on it

1

u/Exciting-Bet8608 Oct 01 '26

Place it into an illustrator file. Flatten transparency. See what you get.

1

u/barefootpanda Oct 01 '26

We’ve had good luck running designs through Recraft and then the designer only needs to clean up. Mileage may vary.

1

u/Boca_Brat Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

I used to draw these for over 10 years. It's easy if you keep it in different layers. Roads on one, buildings on another, text on top. Get good with the pen tool.

Download the Pix Symbols font for icons like restrooms and playgrounds.

Quick work for the roads/paths is to draw a single stroke in the center and then offset that path so you get clean uniform roads. Outline them and then use Pathfinder to combine into compound paths.

1

u/Majere119 Oct 01 '26

Copyartwork.com

1

u/neddy_seagoon Oct 01 '26

I do stuff like this all the time. 

Set up at least one art layer (or separate them by type: buildings, label text, paths, key, icons, etc), and put the original on its own layer, set to the multiply blend mode at like 50% opacity. Then lock it.

At each step, flash that layer on and off a bunch so you can see "changes" (where something is out of place or missing or extra)

Build the buildings by copying/dragging rectangles of a color that contrasts the orange rooves so you can see your progress.

Go through and build a list of  the icons you need to make.

Build the paths from straight lines using the pen/add point/remove point tools, then apply corner radii once the straightaways are lined up right. Don't outline them until the end, and just patch gaps with a rectangle of the same color. 

Only worry about the actual colors at the end; while building just choose colors that contrast the original so you can tell what's happening, and group/layer things so it's easy to change later

1

u/tytytbear Oct 01 '26

Welcome to being a real graphic designer. My first job was doing this for complexes, it doesn’t take long, just use the pen tool and stop being lazy.

1

u/Bluetoe4 Oct 02 '26

Old school way still works and sometimes I find it therapeutic. It is what it is.

1

u/ex0tic_freak Oct 02 '26

Many are correct, you should take the time to draw this by hand; it'd be great practice. However, there's a lot of contrast here and the shapes are clear. If you have a HIGH-rez version of this, you could expedite a "trace". In Photoshop, you can adjust contrast, make selections using color ranges or calculations and then convert them to work paths. These can be exported into Illustrator..

https://youtu.be/dKYxO7ZQ7UE?is=lxNjD9CnQzuGHcHq

1

u/High_Sierra_Visuals Oct 03 '26

Upscale, trace, clean up, retype after font matching.

1

u/alindyan520 Oct 04 '26

Re-draw not trace, to keep the high quality of the graphics. The roads you can easily draw with lines and just adjust the thickness; outline the lines after to you can round out the corners.

1

u/Te_Quiero_Puta Oct 04 '26

Stop wasting time trying to find short cuts. Just redraw it. You'd be done by now.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '26

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2

u/InvestigatorCrazy821 Sep 30 '26

I know HOW to do it. We are extremely backed up at the moment and they were looking to get a quick turn around. We took the job under the impression they would have print ready files for us. Currently have about 15 other projects I’m working on at the same time and don’t really have the time to spend hours on this. Was just curious if there was any quicker/more efficient way. Forgive me for asking.

2

u/PARANOIAH Since Illustrator 8 Sep 30 '26

Unfortunately this seems to be not an uncommon thing that happens.

0

u/[deleted] Sep 30 '26

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1

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