try this Noah

Hi Noah,

In this image I placed three images of an sculpture I made in 2002, called Snowman. On the left, is just the regular old jpeg. In the middle, I placed and then selected the image. Under Object, I chose> Live Trace> Tracing Settings. In the preferences box that pops up, it should come up set as Tracing options> Custom. For vinyl-- leave it like that. CHECK THE PREVIEW box. Choose> Mode> Black and White. Choose> Trace Settings> Fills & Strokes (you can also just choose only Fills, but you not only strokes) Choose> Vector> Tracing Result. The threshold will be set at a number, but you can adjust it. Do so and it will preview your image. Get it where you like it and you are set for vinyl.

NOW, for .025 stroke/255 Green (RGB) outlines that will be laser cutter friendly: Bring in another image. Select it. Under Object, choose> Live Trace> Tracing options. That same preferences box will pop up. This time choose Tracing options> Technical Drawing. MODE> Black and white, Trace Setting> STROKES (only). Vector> Tracing result. Check the preview box and adjust your threshold. You should see a black and white line drawing of your image. Yes? If so, good. Adjust the threshold to where you like it. Now, select that line drawing (should be in Black and white). Choose> Object> expand. This will now turn your image into vector lines. Select it, choose .025 stroke. Under your color swatch, click on that little four lined box that we talked about in class. Make sure the top right box is set at transparent (white box with red slash) . Choose the back bottom box (while your image is selected). Select RGB under that little four lined box. Move the green all the way to the right, till you see the number 255. Make sure Red and Blue are set at zero. deselect your line drawing. It should now be very thin pure RGB green lines!

Let me know if this works for you! GOOD LUCK! :)