How to create an SVG cut file using Adobe Illustrator

[Music] here we are in adobe illustrator to create an svg cut file that we can use with our cutting machine so we're going to first open a new file we can do that by file new we can open any size at this point let's do eight and a half inches by eight and a half inches and say create here's our blank canvas now our white artboard so we're going to import a drawing or a doodle that we either created by hand or on a tablet with a stylus i used an ipad pro and an apple pencil and i used the app procreate app and i exported the file as a png so i'm going to go ahead and import the png which is a flat image by going to file place and i'll browse for my file select the artwork i'd like to bring into illustrator and click place and now you should be able to click and drag and then let go of your mouse and you should see your image appear within your artboard there i should mention that if you'd like to have the same workspace that i'm using here with all of these tools lining up on the side you should be able to make that happen by going to window workspace and choose essentials classic and that should put all of these tools over here so once you click on the tools the window will pop out okay i'd like to show you what this image looks like once it's imported into illustrator it does come in as a flat image so we're not able to select each color or each element and move them around on their own that's what we are ultimately going to get to so as of right now this is one flat image in order to have each element be on its own and editable and move free as a path we need to use adobe illustrators image trace feature which is here if you look to the right of the image trace button you'll see a drop down arrow select the drop down arrow and since we have multiple colors and we're going to create a multi-colored multi-layered svg cut file this particular image has four colors we have the white background the pink flower the purple flower and the green leaves so we want to select an amount of colors that's greater than what we have for this purpose so we're going to select six colors and we'll click ok it may take a little while depending on how complex your graphic is so i'll say okay so once the file's done tracing then we'll want to click on expand and so you can see it creates these little lines around all of our elements so it's created the paths so we're going to want to go and ungroup all of these paths to do that we'll go to object object ungroup and object and make sure that you can no longer select ungroup and then we're ready to go so the first thing i'd like to do is click on the white and hit delete because i want to remove that white background and now i can show you that once we click on the pink flower we're able to separate it from the rest of the design same with the green leaves everything all of these separate elements are now able to move freely and be edited on their own you could even select this tool and go ahead and start to reshape and and move pixels around if you wanted to i'm gonna command z on the mac to undo that would be control z on the pc okay so now we have our graphic i'm going to select it all and move it over to our artboard now now we're ready to group and create compound paths so then we're able to save and export as an svg cut file so when we're dealing with svg cut files you want to keep in mind that your end result you're cutting out pieces of fabric or vinyl or paper that are flat solid shapes so you don't want to create anything that really has too much texture within it and if you do that's going to be a separate layer of material so you'll want that to be a separate element a separate compound path go ahead and i'll go through the steps of creating this path you can see let's start with the purple flower because we can see here that we have separate petals they're not already attached to the body of this purple flower so we want to go ahead and group all of the purple together and then create that compound path so i'll click on one of the petals hold the shift key click on another petal and then click on the larger portion of the flower as well holding the shift key will allow all of these elements to be selected at the same time so once all of the purple flower has been selected we're going to use our pathfinder tool and within there you'll see the two solid squares which is unite so we're going to click unite automatically group this purple flower together and so with the purple flower selected will then go to object compound path make and i should show you in the layers panel what this actually looks like here so you can see we've just created the compound path out of the purple flower and now we have these separate paths each green leaf is a separate path and then we have the pink flower as its own path here and the green leaves are separate paths as well so let's go ahead and create a compound path with this pink flower so we'll go up to pathfinder click unite we need first we need to select our pink flower pathfinder unite object compound path and make and now if we look in the layers panel we can see that each of the flowers are now compound paths on their own separate layer and now we need to group all of the green leaves together and create a compound path for them so in order to do that we what i like to do is select the items that i've already made compound paths out of go to object lock selection so this way i can do a square selection here and select all of the green leaves at the same time without the purple and pink flower interfering so now that i have the green leaves selected we'll go to the pathfinder tool click unite while it's still selected we'll go to object compound path make and now we can select unselect and then select the green leaves again and you can see that they are all together now if we look at our layers panel we see the three separate compound paths and while i'm in the layers panel i'm going to go ahead and unlock the pink flower in purple flower by clicking the lock the padlock next to the layer okay so now that we have our compound paths we're going to save the file in illustrator and then export the file as an svg cut file now we'll save the file file save as we'll call it vectorized flower save okay and now we will export as an svg file by choosing file export export as and the format type will select the drop down and choose svg and click export and all of these svg options by default are exactly what we need so we can click ok so the file has now been exported as an svg cut file let's go ahead and test it in qriket design space here we are in qriket design space and i will select a new project and i'm going to choose upload so i can browse for the file that we just created i'll select upload image browse and search for the file we called it vectorized flower dot svg and we'll say open save and now we'll select that image and say insert image there comes into cricut design space looks good and now if you come over to your layers panel you can see that each color came in as its own layer so when you go ahead to click make it it'll show each color on its own matte or if you'd like to change the color so you're gonna make a blue flower instead of purple and you want to change it to blue and change it to blue change the purple to a different color you can change it to a lighter blue you want to change the green light or green you can go ahead and say make it and you'll see that it's put each element on its own mat ready to go [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Designer Printables

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Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020