I'm confused. You want to live trace a vector? Live trace makes vectors from bitmaps.

As far as I know you can't convert a brush back to an illustrator vector, even though the brush itself is based on a vector shape. To my knowledge the only way to get around it would be to use a large brush size and then trace that as a vector in illustrator as you said.

I may be wrong as it seems silly that you can't edit what is essentially a vector but I'm not aware of a way to do it.

If you want to edit a brush you just open the brush palet in Illustrator and drag the brush you want to edit to you document.

Now you will see that are vectors. depending on how the brush was created you must ungroup the brush and sometimes relaese the compound path.

Once this is done you can edit the brush and if you want the changes to be a new brush just drag it to your brushes pallet and voilà youn have a new brush.

The same thing applies for your vectors just drag them to your brush pallet and then you can apply them to your designs. Best thing is to create a brush library of these brushes so you can load them when you need them

Hope this helps
fidel

to create vector art in Illustrator. Why do you want to do it freehand with a brush tool? Unfortunately, it's not a very "freehand" sort of thing to do anyway since Illustrator is technically a mathematical program with points & anchors.

I would suggest using the pen tool for a more accurate and realistic approach to vector art, or if you really are stuck on the freehand look/feel of it, then perhaps you should try Painter or Sketchpad. One of those programs should suffice.

suzanne maestri-walters :: graphic designer

I actually figured it out and can make it more clear for everyone. I have taken a brush in photo shop and created a 200 /200 pixel image of the brush. I then take the file open it in illustrator and use live trace to make that brush vector thus making it editable and i can scale ad or lelete points to make it exactly as I need it in a illustration.

I would go on places that would have photo shop brushes. I was in need of vector shapes circles flowers ect but could not find anyplace that has already made shapes that i can place directly into illustrator. I figured if I could take the photo shop brushes and place them into a file then use live trace it would solve the issue. It has worked so far so good if you want more information about how to do this let me know

jstiddy