White filled objects appear to be transparent on export to png

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
February 13, 2026
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I have an Adobe illustrator file that has white filled circles on a map. When I Export the image to a png file, the white fill does not show up. The circles fill appears transparent. What am I doing wrong?

Can any of you experts help me out?

I can provide my file if needed.

Thanks - Jon

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

To add to what Brad posted, there used to be a help page that described the problems with white overprint. The link is still there but the page is the same one as the one with the link:

More like this

• White Overprint in Illustrator

From the WayBack machine:

Artwork created in Illustrator can have white objects applied with unintentional overprint. This becomes apparent only when one turns on the overprint preview or printing separations. This causes delays in the production process and reprinting may need to be performed. Though Illustrator warns users if a white object is applied with overprint, there are scenarios when a white overprint may occur without it coming to the user’s notice. For example:

From this version of Illustrator, you have the Discard White Overprint option to remove white overprint attributes in the Document Setup and Print dialogs. This option is, by default, switched on in both dialogs . If the Discard White Overprint option is not selected in the Document Setup dialog, it can be overridden by selecting the option in the Print dialog.

Scenario 1 An object with overprint is selected, and then a new object with white fill/stroke is created. In this scenario the appearance attributes of previously selected objects is copied to the new object, resulting in overprint applied to the white-filled object.

Scenario 2 A non-white object with overprint is changed to an object with white fill.

To overcome this problem, we now remove the overprint attribute from white objects during operations like printing or saving to EPS or PDF. This enables users to use print and output without the need to check and correct for white-object overprint in artwork. This approach will be optimal for most scenarios - legacy artwork, new artwork, non-White objects with Overprint applied to them when changed to White.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

If you select the white object and look at the Attributes Panel you will see that White is set to Overprint.

J

jdballouAuthor

Known Participant

OK. Can you tell me why that matters?

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Ohh, Ton beat me to it!

Anyway, it matters because of how Postscript objects are drawn - i.e from the bottom up, Every colour value of a new object drawn knocks out the value beneath it, unless specified otherwise. So, normally a white object would override what’s underneath it. Say your background colour is 40C 40M 100Y 20K. A white object is 0C 0M 0Y 0K, so when it is on top, each value in the white knocks out those beneath it, resulting in 0C 0M 0Y 0K. However, when an object is set to overprint, it does NOT knockout what’s below it, so the darker of the two values is used, so in this case, the background colour is darker so those values “win” making the white circle invisible.