Need Help working with vectorized images

[reko19]

I am in the process of creating side art, need some help. Some of the images are created from low-res jpegs by vectorizing them using vector magic software. After everything is sized and arranged in the illustrator, how do I make these images suitable for printing. They don't look good at all especially in the areas with a lot of details such as faces, etc. Do I convert them back to tiffs and try to edit them in photoshop. I haven't done this before so any tips would be appreciated.

[RobbyMac]

Rarely will a trace program do a decent job. There are some cases where photographic work can be vectorized/stylized nicely. But usually with crisp graphic design work they just don't cut it.
Most quality vector art is done by hand (drawing the vectors/shapes/lines).

[reko19]

So once it is vectorized you never go back to photoshop?

[RobbyMac]

I'm not going to speak for everyone else. I work in the print graphics industry, and oftentimes we use a mix of both raster and vector. The file sizes of pure vector is much smaller than that of raster, but the types of images are like apples to oranges. Photographic work is raster, and near impossible, nor practical to convert to vector (unless you are going for some sort of stylized appearance).
But suffice to say, unless some plugin, or filter needs to be applied to a vector image, then no I don't use photoshop. In most cases, if a plugin or filter needs to be applied (like a drop shadow, or blur, etc) then I will apply that to a duplicate, and then import/use the resulting raster along with the vector art together in coreldraw or illustrator, etc.

In about 90% of the cases I am doing my own printing however.

An example of the type of vector work I do (Mostly technical illustration) can be found here. You need to click on the thumbnail image that appears to view the tutorial. It is a brief tutorial on how shading and layering can be achieved using vector software. It is a 'technique' tutorial showing the concept. It is not a 'step by step' tutorial explaining what buttons to click/how to create the artwork.

[reko19]

Thank you for the reply. I'll give it a try but most likely will endup hiring somebody. I am pretty good with photoshop when it comes down to photo editing, but I think I am in over my head on this one.