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Answered

Help with pathfinder/divide and image trace

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
November 23, 2018
4 replies
1583 views

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to turn one of my line drawings into vector art to use for cards. Here's the drawing:

I've already Image Traced it, and I am happy with the results. The only problem is that I'd like to put the line drawing on a colorized background for cards, which I can't do because the inside of the drawing is filled with white. As you can see:

I tried selecting and deleting, but it did this:

Obviously not what I"m looking for. Finally, after trying many other things, I remembered pathfinder and I tried "Divide" which seemed to work. However, as I was happily deleting all the "divided" white areas, leaving only the lines, I noticed that I was being left with thicker, simpler, and more uniform lines:

comparing the two, I could see I much preferred the more delicate first version with varying widths. However, the first one won't work because it is filled in with white.

What should I do? What can i do to keep the delicate varying widths of lines, but also get rid of the white insides??

Any help would be much appreciated!!!

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Danny Whitehead.

While getting a compound path that you're happy with the weight of is probably better in the long run, you could just use the original trace, grouped and set the blending mode to multiply. That will also make it overprint the green, which is advisable.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Jeremy,

Have you tried a (new) image trace with the setting Ignore White?

That should rid you of the issue, even before it arises.

Danny Whitehead.Correct answer

Legend

While getting a compound path that you're happy with the weight of is probably better in the long run, you could just use the original trace, grouped and set the blending mode to multiply. That will also make it overprint the green, which is advisable.

jeremyers1Author

Known Participant

Ah yes! Thank you so much Danny, turns out the simplest action was the best solution!

For anyone who comes across the same problem, here is what I did:

Image trace, editing with Threshold until happy, not checking "Ignore White"

Expand

select and group illustration

place over colored background

select group and change Blending Mode to Multiply.

I can't express how thankful I am towards all of you for your constant advice and suggestions. I really do appreciate all of it, and have learned a lot. Hopefully I won't have another problem like this one for a while..

tromboniator

Community Expert

My daughter's artwork, not mine.

Peter

Monika Gause

Community Expert

It might just be the result of an optical illusion.

You could try this: select all the white areas.

Apple the opacity 0% to them

Group black and white objects

Make the group a knockout group

You might need to set View > CPU-Preview in order to see the result.

jeremyers1Author

Known Participant

Thank you for responding, I really appreciate it.

I selected all the white areas after dividing and adjusted opacity to %0. I also tried masking and knockout group. Unfortunately nothing worked... it still has noticeably thicker lines than the original.

I've been trying other things since i posted this question, and nothing has gotten me the results I'd like. I've tried deleting all the white portions and then selecting the leftover line paths and offsetting them, but it won't let me offset them to a negative number for some reason, so it only makes the lines thicker.

any other suggestions? I'm sorry, i just don't know why it's doing this. I've had this similar problem with every other project I've tried. No matter what I do, the vector image trace looks largely different than the original.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

As I suspect.

The issue is an optical illusion

What happens when you print it?

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