[John Mensinger]

You may be expecting something of Live Trace that it just doesn’t do well. Precise but pleasing tracing results can be difficult to achieve. With the path fitting tolerance set to 2, it’s not precise enough, but set it lower, and it’s too precise, producing stepped edges where it “sees” pixels.

Live trace is nice for interpretive, artistic work, but if you need a truly viable vector version of a logo, you’re best off tracing it manually using the Pen tool.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Type > Create Outlines only works on type. You have 2 options:

1. Use Illustrator’s Live Trace feature with a very tight path fitting tolerance.

2. Take it back to Photoshop, make a selection equal to your desired path. Use the Paths panel to convert it to a path, then choose Export Paths to Illustrator.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

It’s possible she’s saving a separate copy for sending to you, and forgetting to ensure that “save layers” is checked in the Save dialog.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

My first thought is the Color Range command.

Choose Select > Color Range.

Use the dropper to sample the desired blue, then use the fuzziness slider to broaden or narrow the range of variation. At a fuzziness of 5-10, you should be isolating your sampled color effectively. Enabling the Localized Clusters feature may be useful as well.

Click OK to return to the image with your Color range results manifested as a selection. You could delete all else, or convert to a layer mask as a non-destructive means of isolating your blue.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Ah yes, Adobe apps can be finicky when it comes to Place vs. Paste. I’m glad you got it sorted out.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Not sure what’s going on with your Live Trace items on the Control Panel, but if all else fails, it’s also on the Object menu.

Don’t forget; as the name implies, Live Trace is live. Even if you apply it with settings you didn’t choose, you can access the Live Trace Options dialog after the fact and make changes.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Open it back up in Illustrator and export it to .swf.

Import to stage or library in Flash.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Edit > Preferences > Type

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Andy, if you intended to offer an example, you link or upload doesn’t show up…

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.

[John Mensinger]

Annnnd…you jumped back in here to defend your post which so helpfully stated, “there’s a thing called Google”?

Of course, there’s at least 10 different ways to produce shaded objects in AI, but for something with the curving reflectivity of a saxophone, Gradient Mesh is a natural fit, regardless of the degree of realism targeted, and I’d highly recommend learning it.

Did I miss reading some rule here discouraging the mention of specific features? Or, am I to understand that you just steered the OP in the general direction of a couple ubiquitous search engines strictly because “it doesn’t have to be realistic”? Surely you didn’t infer that my post had something to do with yours, did you? Come on.

John M:
All of the vim with none of that annoying vigor.