Adobe Streamline – not to be confused with StreamLine – is a venerable application that does one job, and one job only: converting raster images to vector art. Those who use it, love it. Those who don't use it, don't even know they need it. Why, then, has Adobe neglected supporting SL for so long?
Some Perspective
Streamline is still in version 4.0. This build was targeted for Windows 95/NT, Macintosh / PowerMac. There hasn't been an update in over five years.
Vector art is arguably in higher demand in recent years then when SL 4 was first released. The heyday of Flash came and went without a new version. Classical animation and Illustration are in demand as ever.
The Vector Aesthetic
Vectors certainly have a look. This aesthetic, love it or not, is in the public consciousness. From classy logos, chunky Anime-inspired characters to urban clothing illos, vector is in.
You need look no further than the recent Apple iPod TV spots and print ads to see the vector aesthetic at work. I know, it's not actually vector art, but the origins of their flattened, solid-colour style is clear.
Why Streamline?
You may wonder why I'm so hung up on an anachronistic technology from the pre-OS X dark ages. My reasons are not entirely nostalgic.
Stock imagery: Stock art isn't cheap. Neither is one source file suitable for all purposes. Consider the abundance of 19th century line illustrations, all public domain, readily available for your designs.
Size: Vectors have the benefit of infinite enlargement with no quality loss. I can recall a logo job I had where I used a scan of an illustration that was no larger than an inch square. I scanned it, retouched it, Streamlined it, then dropped it into Illustrator. In minutes, I had the base of a design I could blow up into poster size.
It looks Good: I can draw well, but with all these applications to keep up with, I don't get much time to practice. You can tweak the vectorization process in Streamline as much as you like, and, yes, it does colour.
You can take a rough sketch, ink it with a fineliner(optional), polish it in Illustrator with full vector transformations, fill it with basic colours, then take it into Photoshop for special effects. A similar process can be done with a photo to achieve an hand-lllustrated look. It sounds like a lot of work, but I got my workflow down to thirty minutes from conception to finished product. Try doing that in Photoshop alone.
Here's an example of my SL work from a couple of years ago:
[Illustration originally shown here.]
Alternatives
Here are some alternative methods of converting rasters to vectors:
Adobe Illustrator has a Trace tool: This feature requires manual selection and is lacking in options.
Macromedia Flash has Bitmap > Trace Bitmap. This feature is more advanced than the previous example, but control is still limited.
The final option available for OS X is an aplication called Silhouette. To its credit, I have only used the demo version. The version I tried is neither as intuititive to use nor as fully featured as Adobe Streamline.
What You Can Do
There are folks at the Adobe forums making a valiant argument for Streamline. The posters range from animators to magazine art directors. Go there and have your voice heard.
If you use a PC, or don't mind using OS9, you can still purchase Streamline 4.0.
Use it. Love it. Streamline is an old program looking for some new users.