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3 Illustrator questions

hi there,

i'm fairly new to illustrator and have been searching on google for an answer to my problems but no luck yet so i was hoping one of you guys or gals can help me out:

1. is there a way to turn down the smoothing helper when i use the pencil or brush tool? everything i draw is really rounded out and isn't the style i'm going for.

2. can i continually draw lines close to each other without having them merge to combine into a weird shape?

3. if i scan in a hand drawn image, is there a way to automatically remove the white background so that i can add colors under the black hand drawn outlines?

i realize i can do it manually and what not but i was just wondering if illustrator had the capabilities. thanks in advance if you can help me out.

Which version are you using?

1 / 2: take a look at the help file, it should explain very well how to work with the tools.

3: CS2 has a great tracing tool. If you are using an older version, then it will be best for you to trace the image yourself.

1. is there a way to turn down the smoothing helper when i use the pencil or brush tool? everything i draw is really rounded out and isn't the style i'm going for.

2. can i continually draw lines close to each other without having them merge to combine into a weird shape?

**Try using the pen tool instead of a brush or the pencil. The pen allows for you to make great line art and its a whole lot easier then using either the pencil or brush. Just set the fill to none and set your stroke size the width you want the line to be.

3. if i scan in a hand drawn image, is there a way to automatically remove the white background so that i can add colors under the black hand drawn outlines?

**This depends on what the hand drawn illustration looks like. If its high contrast compared to the back ground then you can do some photoshop work and export the paths to illustrator. Other then that doing it by hand is by far the best way. Unless you want to use cutout in photoshop...