Pete Simon

Here’s a tip for the designer who is seeing QR Codes everywhere and wanting to make print-ready ones (AI files).

This is a cynch, but requires both Photoshop and Illustrator.

Start with a QR code image as generated from your favorite generator. I’ve been using  http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Here’s mine:

1. Once you have your code image, load it into photoshop:

2. Go to Select->Color Range…

3. The Color Range selector will pop up and allow you to pic a pixel from your QR code image. Pick a solid black one and drop the Fuzziness slider down to 0:

4. The selector lines will appear around all the black parts of your QR code image. Go down to the Paths tab (also available via menu option Window->Paths:

5. You will see a new path appear in the Paths tab window called Work Path. Do a CTRL-A to select all of the canvas, and CTRL-C to copy:

6. Now open up Adobe Illustrator and wait the usual forever for it to load. When you awake from your Rip Van Winkle nap, create a new document. Make it a square. You can see below that I have the dimensions at 600x600 pixels:

7. Do CTRL-V to paste the Work Path you copied from Photoshop before you fell asleep for 100 years waiting on Illustrator to load. To the Paste prompt just stick with the default Compound Shape and press OK:

8. The Work Path has been pasted into Illustrator ready paths, and if you’re a designer this excites you:

9. Go to the fill in the tool bar (see tooltip in image above) and choose black:

That’s all there is too it!

You can save this as an AI file and any other designer type can work with it.

I’m using CS4 in this step by step but I’m pretty sure this works a few versions back.

Anyways, I hope this is helpful, and I hope a get a OccupyTumblr’s worth of followers for posting something useful on tumblr.