[Jason Milligan]

Did you work at a really low resolution? I don’t understand why your raster would have so much stair-stepping otherwise. Is it a painting or colored ink drawing? Live Trace will do a great job of converting art to vector, but it won’t reproduce gradients for you (unless something has changed I am unaware of). It will convert them into bands. You could reproduce the gradients in Illustrator and trace the flat colors. Where are you seeing aliasing, everywhere or just the edges of the art?

[Jason Milligan]

First of all, you are working in RGB.
Unless your printer has specifically asked for RGB, you should be working in CMYK since it will give you a more accurate reflection of your final product. Most designers will work with rich blacks instead of straight 100K. It gives you a stronger black and helps stave off registration problems. Try using C40 M40 Y60 K100

Here is a little extra info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black

[Jason Milligan]

I am assuming you are working in Photoshop.
I am also assuming you are working in CS2 or CS3.

If you convert that square layer into a smart object before distorting it, you can accomplish what you are trying to do. All you would need to do to modify it is double click the smart object layer. This opens it in a new window. Drag your new image into that window. Save and close that window. It will update the distorted graphic in the main window.

A smart object works a lot like a placed file in InDesign or Illustrator.
If you are unfamiliar with smart objects, I recommend reading about them in the help files and online. Smart Objects are one of the most useful additions to Photoshop in years.

[Jason Milligan]

Okay, then create a number of circular fills and arrange them on top of the text where you want there to be holes. Shift click all of the circles to select them all and go to Object>Group.
Go to window>pathfinder. This opens the pathfinder palette. If you are unfamiliar with the Pathfinder, read about it in Illustrator Help. It is extremely useful. Select the grouped circles. Hold down shift and select the text also. Click the subtract button (the gray square overlapped by a white square) in the pathfinder.

[Jason Milligan]

Create your bold text.
Create the light text and place it above the bold.
Lineup everything the way you want it.
Select both pieces of text.
In the pathfinder window, click the subtract button.

[Jason Milligan]

Do you have frame blending turned on?
If not, it won’t display the proper pixel motion effect when doing RAM previews.
You need to turn on Pixel Motion for the layer and enable the frame blending switch at the top of the timeline to see the results when you RAM preview. It will probably increase your RAM preview render time considerably.
If you do, it may be an issue with AE trying to calculate what that inbetween frame should look like and giving you something undesirable.

Have you tried using Frame Mix instead?
I believe Pixel Motion uses the frames before and after to create a new frame, a tween of sorts. Most of the time this would be a good thing, but you may have found one of the situations where it is not. Frame Mix will blend (a sort of dissolve) the frames. Not ideal, but probably better than what you may be getting.

[Jason Milligan]

Your printer probably does not support Adobe Postscript.
Without that option, you’ll need to convert most Adobe formats into PDF before printing.

Read more about it here:
https://desktoppub.about.com/cs/printing/a/postscriptprint.htm

and here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Postscript

[Jason Milligan]

command click the thumbnail on the layer itself.

[Jason Milligan]

Have yo contacted Adobe?
It should have been included with your download.
Better to get it from them than somewhere else.

[Jason Milligan]

A quick additional note:

It is often easier to animate multiple simple masks working together than one intricate mask.

For example:
If you were going to roto a torso and head, you may have separate masks for the body, the head, the forearm, hands, etc.