Detach line work from colour after live paint

[Jmckz]

Hi,

I've coloured a poster in illustrator using live paint.

I now want to detach the linework from the colour, but it's all merged together (note to self - create duplicate layers when I start next time!)

What can I do to resolve this? 

Thanks,

James

[Larry G. Schneider]

If you make a copy of everything and move it to a new layer you should be able to (with everything selected on the new layer) to just set the fill to None. Then do the same with the original artwork setting but set the stroke to None.

[Jmckz]

Thanks, I did as you said but struggled to get it to work. When I select fill: none on the new layer it just all goes white. I then did as you advised on the original but couldn't see how that would help detatch the black linework from the colour 

[Met1]

You're not "detaching" it, your just turning all the fills to none. Every path, even unclosed ones, have both a stroke* and a fill, it's just they're either on (colored) or off (transparent). You may find that what you will acheieve when all your fills are transparent is that your strokes on sub layers are visible, and this may not be what you want...

*except if it's zero thickness...

[Monika Gause]

Did you already expand the artwork?

Then ungroup it.

[Jmckz]

Yep tried that, can't seem to just get the black linework back 

[Monika Gause]

So you want the paths as before starting live paint?

In that case: Make a copy of the live paint group (if you want to also keep the fills) and then release the copy.

[Jmckz]

Can you explain step by step how you'd do that? Sorry - I'm a newbie! I can get a copy of the live paint group I think, but I don't know what you mean by 'release the copy' 

[Monika Gause]

Please read about Live paint groups in the documentation: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/live-paint-groups.html

In order to make a copy I would probably duplicate the layer it's on. That would depend on the overall structure of your artwork.

Please read about Layers here: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/layers.html

[Ton Frederiks]

After expanding a Live Paint group you will get 2 groups. One with strokes and one with fills.

If you want to keep special strokes and brushes you need to make a copy of them (and hide them) before creating the Live Paint group. After expanding the Live Paint group, you can replace the lines with the copy.