Out damned spot! (Ridding one's self of a nasty color)

[n00bguyintown]

I recently purchased copies of Illustrator and Photoshop to aid in designing t-shirts. Because of the slickness of Live Trace I have spent almost all my time with AI. After doing about six or seven designs I set out to combine them with a PNG file of a black shirt I had found on the Internet. To my shock and horror large white areas of the Live Trace converted elements were visible and completely ruined the intent of the design; in many cases I hadn't used the color white anywhere else in the design. Sure I can use a PNG file of a white shirt that disguises this glaring defect, but I want to know if there is a way of eliminating these hideous white areas. Any suggestions? Perhaps a method to make a single color (white) transparent?

 

[itchybug]

n00b:

The reason there are those white areas, is because that is the color that was there when you traced it. Think about it, would it make sense for live trace to assume white was transparent (howzabout eyeballs, or eggs)...

The simplest solution I can think of, would be to select one white area (with the group select tool, white arrow with a +), then going to Select>Same>Fill Color, and deleting the resulting selection. You can also just Cut (Ctrl-X) the selection, then lock the current layer and on a NEW layer Paste In Front (Ctrl-F). Now, you can delete unwanted portions and keep the whites of their eyes.

Another way would be to grab the magic wand and set its properties for a small tolerance (Double-click to bring up its palette), then clicking some white, continue as before with the cut-paste thingemabob.

Hope that helps. I don't have Illustrator running at the moment, so I can't check, but there may be an option in the Trace dialog for skipping white (I'll check next time she comes around).

HTH

Bert

http://www.itchybug.com