I need to use the Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator to prepare some images for more work in Photoshop.

I've completed jwebster45206's 2D Comic tutorials which were very helpful, but seems I've missed a setting somewhere with Live Trace.

When I use Live Trace, it traces completely around the image, even when it's a thick line. Ideally I need a thick line to have a single path traced inside it so that I can then add stroke thickness and other effects to it.

I've been looking for the solution for a while and have not been able to find it. Guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks

I am afraid Illustrator can not split 'parts that could be a line' from 'parts that needs to be traced around'. Streamline did have that option, but that also was an 'on' of 'off' option. So that would mean you have to draw the thick lines that you want to vary with by hand. But still, you can also add thickness to the 'traced around'-version Live Trace makes. When you need to 'shrink' a line, you can add a white outline. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hmmm. That's all I've been able to achieve at this point but take a look at this: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=1552&page=6

Some of the paths After Live Trace are a single path traced automatically by Live Trace. The eye is traced around as you describe, but the nose, forehead & ears for example only contain a single path.

I want to achieve that single path stroke.

More specifically, I'm working with bitmapped Kanji. My Live Trace settings trace around it as attached. What I want is what appears to be traced in the nose, forehead and ears area in jwebster45206's tutorial above. 

If I must trace the center of these strokes by hand I will, but I see the center of strokes being traced automatically in the tutorial so I don't want to.

Perhaps there is something I'm not understanding from the tutorial?

Okay. I found it. I now had some time to fire up Illustrator and I must say there is an option that gives a mix between traced-around and centered lines. So I have to admit I was kind of wrong. Well. Fully wrong. So much for blind answering a question about an underexplored option... :-) Take a look at this screenshot (it is in Dutch), the secret lies in the 'fill' ('vullingen') and 'stroke' ('streken') tick boxes. You could try to use only stroke. The Kanji in your example looks rather thick for this kind of translation, but you can try.

Yep, I tried a few experiments, and Hoofdcommissaris seems to have it right. I turned off the fills and cranked the maximum stroke width all the way up, and it traced it... sort of. There are some strange things where the paths cross, so you'd need to delete the artifacts and do an Average and/or Join on the points to reconnect any broken strokes.

Not sure what your goal is, but if you have a stylus, you might be able to get more brushlike results using Illustrator's paintbrush tool with varying pressure.

Anyway, best luck!

Excellent, thanks to both of you very much! I had been experimenting with the Trace Settings but not having a full understanding of the settings seem to have missed the right ones every attempt.

Using jwebster45206's settings it produced a very clean stroke through each part of the kanji (only the top character is presented below). 

Thanks again guys - this saves me a ton of time.

:-)