Smooth logo cut outs in Illustrator for design of product card

Question

First time posting to Stack and I would identify myself as a hobbyist with adobe suites and the design world...

I'm doing a product card for print in Illustrator. It was requested to have an "As seen in" section near the bottom of the card and Logo's were pulled from websites for this purpose. The problem I'm running into is after removing the background in Photoshop. It appears to be very rough on the curves and some of the text (pixelation). For Web this isn't a problem but this is a handout card and having the rough curves could be visible to everyone reading it.

My process is: - Take the supplied logo (.jpg format), put it into Photoshop. - Use the magic wand tool to select the background and erase. - Use the magic wand tool select the main font and logo and fill it in as soft grey. - Export as .png and load into Illustrator project.

Attached is an example of the pixelation

Is there any or technique after removing the background to smooth the curves back out in Illustrator? Am I missing a simple step? I've tried to vector it in Illustrator but the text and logo become too warped and the lines become inconsistent.

Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Obtaining proper logos is a challenge. You are correct that print jobs show mistakes and low resolution artwork.

In your question I think you caused yourself a problem by starting with .JPG artwork.

.JPGs are a lossy, raster file format. This means their edges are rough, especially when small ones are pulled from the web. The rasters are more pronounced on small scale art.

My first suggestion and the basis of this answer is to obtain better logos.

When I need to get a good version of a logo I have a multi step procedure:

1. Search the net for a large vector version (sites like 'brands of the world' keep indexes of company logos). Take your rastered version and do a reverse image search to see if there are similar but better versions available.
2. Ask the client for a vector version
3. If they don't have it ask to contact their printer, publisher or web designer and see if you can get a good version from them.
4. Trace a low resolution version and sharpen it (this is what you tried to do)
5. Draw it anew.

To trace I bring the best version I have into illustrator, expand it to a couple thousand pixels and use the trace function with "high quality photo" selected.

Looking at the results you will easily be able to tell if what is left will be usable with a little clean up, usable as is or not usable.