Can't seem to find this

[Red Blaster]

I've been looking for this tool I used a couple of years ago, but haven't had any luck tracking it, or anything similar, down.

It was basically a tool that overlayed a transparent version of an image over another blank one and allowed you to trace it out.

Anyone know what I'm talking about? @_@

[RE_Alioth2]

I think you can lower the Opacity of the sketched out layer and use the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop for tracing. That's what I've done for years and I am pretty satisfied with how it worked. Try doing that if you have adobe, or if you have SAI, lower the opacity on the same layer and stabilize your pen stroke to your desired S-#

[Spenner]

It depends what you want to do. If you are just tracing an image it is like Alioth describes, having a layer below in your program which is locked, and has a lower opacity.

If you are talking in terms of animation, things get more interesting... look at "onion skinning" and the popular effect of it, rotoscoping, to see what these mean. Hope that solves your issue; what is it that you are specifically working on, or is it a general curiosity of where to start?

EDIT: After looking at what you've been asking I THINK you might actually be asking about something that I know Corel Painter does really well... although I'll admit I forget what the tool is called at the moment.

Nonetheless, if we're talking photoshop, you can use the smudge tool in a unique way to trace. If you set the hardness for something stiff around 75+%, have "Sample All Layers" turned on, and tinker with other settings to get what you like (you have to get a feel for how to stroke overtop of the imagery below-- one long streak will eventually just become a median value of the colours sampled below, i.e. pretty grey. If you use this and short strokes you can get that traced look in terms of colour, and is an easy way to cheat at colouring things using a photo sample without having to painstakingly eyedropper every swatch and manually blend things.

[Red Blaster]

Sweet! I'll try both of your suggestions guys!

Basically what my issue is is that I want to create a design based off something I only have one picture of, so I was going to try to overlay and trace it to turn it into something I can mess around with a lot easier than the original reference.

[RE_Alioth2]

If it's made from pen, try using the Levels or Curves tool in Adobe Photoshop. It's simple to use and gives you line art in moments x3