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Answered

importing png with transparent background into illustrator CS6

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
August 28, 2016
10 replies
103285 views

I have seen this question posted a bunch of times yet none of them are answered correctly it seems. When I try and paste or place a png with a transparent background into Illustrator CS6 (Windows 8.1 64) it does not recognize the transparency. The silly workaround that I have found is dragging/pasting into Powerpoint first and then cutting and pasting into Illustrator, et voila, transparent background is preserved. What is going on? How can I fix this super annoying problem? Thanks in advance.

Correct answer barbara_a7746676

Illustrator will not recognize the transparency in a png if the png is pasted into Illustrator. Instead of copy/paste, first save the png and then File > Place it into Illustrator. Or if you drag the png to your desktop, then drag it into Illustrator it should keep the transparency.

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bojana38855097yh37

Participant

Basically all you have to do in Photoshop is sellect part that you wish to import, cut and paste it it in into a new layer, and also save that selection (Select menu -> Save selection). Than you simply make background layer invisible and save as .png. That should import without any background, ie just a sellection you wish to keep..

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Facundo26151728v9tx

Participant

That's because the PNG format has multiple "types" in the metadata I checked that the "paletteAlpha" type doesn't support transparency in Illustrator and appears with a black background, while "TrueColorAlpha" is working properly.

The way I have found to solve it is to change this format with the program Imagemagick

In my case the code that worked was the following:

magick convert input.png -type TrueColorAlpha -define png:include-chunk=none output.png

P.d.: PowerPoint makes the image work because when it copies it, it copies it in the format that PowerPoint provides, which happens to be a working format for Illustrator.

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Facundo26151728v9tx

Participant

By the way, note that with Imagemagick you can batch-format images, which is astronomically more efficient than the Powerpoint trick.

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Stengel99

Participant

THANK YOU! (Yes, I'm shouting!) I'm 100% with you, that nothing else seemed to work, but your solution did work! Only difference for me is that I used Google Slides instead of PowerPoint.

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Rifter2076

Participant

Here to say that the problem still exists in 2021 lol. The copy/paste from PowerPoint worked. I haven't bothered trying "save as" from Photoshop because I am not worried about transparency.

Thanks for the tip! Still works five years later! 😉

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thatcommsguy

Participant

+1

I can say exactly the same thing. Same problem, can't work out why Illustrator doesn't seem to recognise the transparency, but found that the copy/paste via PowerPoint does the trick. Very strange.

So, yes, thanks to @spaceguy_spiff for the tip!

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CPN9698

Participant

I believe that the aplha channel containing the transparency information gets removed somehow when copy pasting directly. Might be an issue with reading from the clipboard. (Illustrator does some funny stuff for example directly copy pasting text from Word has issues, but pasting within a textbox works perfectly).

There are numerous workarounds though. Place image / Copying from powerpoint etc.

thomash96551741

Participant

I had this problem and it tuned out to be the PNG's Color Mode was the cause.

If I opened the PNG in Photoshop its Mode was "Indexed".

Once I changed it to CMYK I was able to export it as a PNG that maintained it's transparency in Illustrator.

I hope that helps!

- Thomas

raycardillo

Participant

I was having this problem also... going crazy because I knew this worked fine in other contexts. As @thomash96551741 said, the problem for me was also that this particular PNG was saved in Indexed mode instead of RGB mode. I just opened it in Photoshop, changed the mode to RGB, saved, and then dragged and dropped it into Illustrator and all was as expected again. I think others have commented that Illustrator might have trouble with certain format options.

suryaheatz

Participant

Simple

Open in photoshop

Use "save for web " and save as "png" and opt for "png -24" .

Make sure that Transparency box is checked, or else turn it on and save.

now drag and drop it into illustrator.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

On top of wht has already been said there are a couple of options and versions in which PNG can be saved (from numerous applications which might or might not do this correctly).

Illustrator maybe does not understand all of them.

barbara_a7746676

Correct answer

Community Expert

Illustrator will not recognize the transparency in a png if the png is pasted into Illustrator. Instead of copy/paste, first save the png and then File > Place it into Illustrator. Or if you drag the png to your desktop, then drag it into Illustrator it should keep the transparency.

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Hobbes0022

Known Participant

Are you sure this is it? I just did some tests. My PNG got a black background when importing via drag and drop and also via File->Place. What made the black background go away is saving the PNG differently:

- if I allowed Paint.NET to automatically determine the bit depth, the background would be black in Illustrator

- if I set the bit depth to 32 bit, the background was correct (transparent) in Illustrator.